Will Ashford searches for interesting discarded old books. Then he explores each page of the book hunting for words. That's just part of the process of his artwok Recycled Words:

At some unpredictable point along the way, in my mind, the images start to invent themselves. Using colored vellums, graphite and or India ink to highlight or obscure my words; I create the image of that invention. Though I strive to make each document visually engaging I find it is the words that I value most.

(via kottke)

Posted by Bibi on January 23, 2008 04:44 PM in Art, Books ||

Fairy tale is a fictional story that usually features folkloric characters (such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, witches, giants, and talking animals) and enchantments, often involving a far-fetched sequence of events. The Internet Archive highlighted seven fairy tale books with beautiful illustrations on its blog.

Inspired on those suggestion and on the good memories of a collection of old fairy tale books full of images, I made a search to discover more of those treasures. They have a huge collection with more than four hundred digitalized fairy tales books in English and few other languages, and some of them have more than one version on-line.

Based on that search, I made a list with around 140 fairy tales books and their respective writers, or adaptors, to inspire not only the kids to take a look on them.The best part: you can take a look or even read them in my favourite format for old books, digital, free from allergies. If they aren't enough, try the Manybooks collection of Fairy Tales from Around the World with more formats available to download or read on-line.

Continue reading "Fairy Tales books on Archive" »

Posted by Bibi on January 22, 2008 11:48 PM in Books, Literature, Vintage ||

Australian fiction was an exhibition of material from the Australian Monash University Library Rare Books Collection.

A selection of novels and books of short stories by over one hundred writers, the exhibition covers our national output of fiction from 1845 to 2000. Included are such rarities as Ned Kelly, the ironclad Australian bushranger, published in 1881, less than a year after his execution; Henry Lawson's first book, Short stories in prose and verse (1894); Melbourne and Mars (1889), an early example of Australian science fiction; as well as Patrick White's first novel, The Happy Valley, (1939) which he would not allow to be reprinted.

It's a small, but nice collection of book covers, with some curious titles, such as Melbourne and Mars : my mysterious life on two planets : extracts from the diary of a Melbourne merchant, The joyful condemned and Winning a wife in Australia : a story drawn from actual experiences and illustrative of life in the present day in the Antipodes. And I hope this last just is just a fiction book, because I'm not sure about the methods used to get a wife by its cover. (via Martin Klasch)

Posted by Bibi on January 20, 2008 01:51 PM in Books, Vintage ||

If I had space and money, I would love to have one of those book shelves with a bench, designed by Stanislav Katz. And in the case of having both, and the oportunity to buy it, I would change the pink for blue. His book shelving with the illusion of cubes in perspective is also neat. (via MoCo Loco)

Posted by Bibi on January 17, 2008 08:39 PM in Books, Design ||

This Russian Livejournal page has a serious of beautiful illustrations from the book "Circus", published in 1966 and illustrated by the soviet painter Valery Alffevsky. Alffevsky studied in Vkhutemas, a famous school of Russian Avant-garde. I don't know much about painting styles, but I liked the fluid style, using only ink and watercolour, like sketches.

Posted by Bibi on January 17, 2008 02:48 PM in Books, Illustration, Vintage ||

The Future of Ideas is now Free, announced Lawrence Lessig, Creative Commons CEO, on his blog on 15th January. Now, "The Future of Ideas", is available to download under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license, as his other three books, "Code v2", "Free Culture" and "Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace". Let's say thanks to the brave action of the publisher Random House, letting the book available to download, and specially to Lessig, who wrote and made this all possible.

That's a great opportunity to read it, if you didn't do that yet. For those old-fashioned as me, the book still available to buy in your favourite bookstore, including Amazon. I already got my printed version. (via Creative Commons)

Posted by Bibi on January 17, 2008 12:03 PM in Books, Technology ||

From the University of Delaware Library an exhibition in Special Collections curated by Iris Snyder: From Verne to Vonnegut - A century of science-fiction. Books, articles and more books of early works in science fiction, magazines, dystopias, aliens and others.

Read also:
Jules Verne

Posted by Bibi on September 29, 2007 02:21 AM in Books, Culture ||

Brian Dettmer is the artist behind the wonderful carved into the z-axis of a book above. He transforms those old books in art, as dioramas. More of his art works at Haydeé Rovirosa Gallery, Toomey Tourel and Aron Packer Gallery. (via Coudal Partners)

Posted by Bibi on September 28, 2007 11:27 AM in Art, Books ||

This is one of the three ads created by Ogilvy & Mather India for MPH, which slogan is If children don't read, they'll never know. Classic fairy tales available at MPH. The pretty ad illustrations with modern versions of classic fairy tale characters were made by Jimbo. He shared the final, and many other previous images, of that work on his blog. Don't forget to check his other works on his blog and his Flickr. (via Ads of the World)

Continue reading "MPH classic books ads" »

Posted by Bibi on September 24, 2007 01:19 PM in Books, Illustration ||

I love books and I love plants, that's why the growing book, designed by Eric Zhang looks almost a perfect idea. Almost, because it doesn't look very practice to put in the shelf with the other books. My cats would love it, too. (via Coisas)

People can plant whatever they like in the left side of the book, they should care for it, whatch its growing. During this process readers do not only learn the meaning of life, they create life themselves.

Posted by Bibi on September 20, 2007 06:41 PM in Books, Design ||

The Internet Archive's blog made a special post to celebrate the International Talk Like a Pirate Day: Pirates!. The post points to films, animations, audio archives and books with pirates on Archive's collection. Nice suggestions, specially the animations: Felix the Cat: The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg and Peg-Leg Pedro.

On the Felix the cat cartoon The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, from 1936, Felix's goose, who lays golden eggs, is goose-napped by none other than Captain Kidd. The seven-minutes video is one of the finest Felix available on Archive. You can watch below, on the Internet Archive page, Google Video or at Videos with Bibi, with other Felix cartoons.

The cartoon Peg Leg Pedro from 1938, isn't really a cartoon, it's an advertisement for Chevrolet commercial, where A boy and girl on a trip are attacked by pirates while looking for treasure. It isn't so good as Felix cartoon, but it still amusing. You can watch it at the same places: Internet Archive, Google Video, or Videos with Bibi, and enjoy to watch more Chevrolet cartoons.

Related posts:
Felix The Cat
Vintage Chevrolet Cartoons
Talk Like a Pirate Day 2007

Posted by Bibi on September 20, 2007 04:05 AM in Animation, Audio, Books ||

Once more it's time to celebrate the International Talk Like a Pirate Day. And I will do it on my way, sharing links, since I don't have any pirate costume.

Catster and Dogster users are also participating of this special day, submitting the pictures of their furry fellows dressed as pirates, with the tag "pirate", on Dogster and Catster.

Getting to Know ... International Talk Like A Pirate Day: an interview with Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summer and John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur, the founders of Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Many Books has a nice collection of Pirate Stories of digitalized books in the public domain to read on-line or download, available in many formats.

Photos from International Talk Like A Pirate Day on Flickr. Explore all the previous images or go directly to the 2007 photoset.

Pinup Pirate illustration created by the deviantART artist agrivaine (ChrissieA).

Pirate Pinup: the picture above is a self portrait by the Flickr user Danielle.

Pirates Of The Caribbean 1 and 2 in 30 seconds and re-enacted by bunnies, presented by Starz Bunny Club Exclusive, created by Angry Alien Productions.

Polite Dissent made a great list of comic-book pirates (and pirate comic books) to celebrate the day. (via Pen-Elayne on the Web)

Post Like a Pirate is a pirate translator which also posts directly on Twitter, Myspace or send by email the translated text.

Réunion de piratesses: a collection of illustrations created by several artists to a contest created by the French illustrator Delfine, on her blog, which theme was "fille de pirate" (daughter of pirate). Take a look at the illustrations and on the Hors concours illustration of the contest if you speak French.

The Pirate Pin Up Arrr Mates, the Sexiest Pirate Pinups 'n the Seven Seas. Sexy picturs of pin-up dressed as pirates, or something like that. The picture on the top is from one of those girls, Molly Roger.

Watch the classic silent film The Black Pirate with Douglas Fairbanks at Videos with Bibi, and the special "Talk like a Pirate Day" films Dancing Pirate and Captain Kidd.

WordPress users can Piratify Your Blogs using the Text Filter Suite Plugin. It turns yer blog into pirate-speak on Talk Like a Pirate Day! (via The Mystery of the Haunted Vampire)

The YouTube profile Offcial Wench hosts 23 videos of Cap'n Slappy and Ol' Chumbucket. The last video added, Pirates of the Burning Sea, introduces the video game, "Pirates of the Burning Sea" for the release party in Seattle, Washington on September 19th. You can watch their video Pirates And Ninjas bellow.

Pictures of The Pirate zombie pin-up model. As a good pirate she has a parrot.

And the original Talk Like A Pirate Day site. It has some cool stuff, games and many other links.

Previous posts with pirates:
Devout Dolls
Talk Like A Pirate Day
Courts métrages Annecy
Piratical and Privateering Books in English

Posted by Bibi on September 19, 2007 08:55 PM in Animation, Books, Cinema, Culture, Events, Fun, Fun, Photography, Photography, Pin-ups, Video ||

Replace a good habit for a bad one: stop smoking and go read a book. To help you, try, TankBooks - Tales to take your breath away. The ThankBooks pay a homage to the iconic and successful design objects, the cigarette packs.

Tank is launching a series of books designed to mimic cigarette packs – the same size, packaged in flip-top cartons with silver foil wrapping and sealed in cellophane. [...] The launch titles are by authors of great stature – classic stories presented in classic packaging; objects desirable for both their literary merit and their unique design.

The titles available, for now, include classics by Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, Leo Tolstoy and Franz Kafka. A package of “The Metamorphosis” for me, please. (via hombrelobo)

Posted by Bibi on July 24, 2007 10:58 PM in Books, Design ||

Any plans for tonight? If you live in São Paulo, or nearby, why not go to a blogger meeting? It isn't an "official" blogger meeting, but there will be several known bloggers from the Brazilian blogosphere in the area of São Paulo.

The goal of this event is to promote the books of Biajoni and Alex Castro. The books are Virgínia Berlim, uma experiência, a romance written by Biajoni; Liberal Libertário Libertino and Radical Rebelde Revolucionário, chronicle books written by Alex Castro.

Biajoni talks about the event on his post jornal biajônico and Alex Castro in Lançamento Paulista. If you are planning to buy the books there, take a look at this list. More details about it:

Where: Bar Canto Madalena, Rua Medeiros de Albuquerque, 471, Vila Madalena, São Paulo
When: Today, Saturday, July 21, 2007 at 19h30
Why: To homage the authors, to see and talk with some cool people, to meet the writer of this blog.

And don't worry much about the time. It starts at 19:30h but it goes all night long. I will not be there very early, but I will be there until late (I'm the weird girl with the red hair). See you there!

Posted by Bibi on July 21, 2007 06:25 PM in Books, Events, São Paulo ||

Deanna Molinaro writes and illustrates wonderful not-for-children books that I would like to my kids, if I had some. But why not for children? The books have cute illustrations, adorable creatures and don't have Manichaean stories as the usual books for kids. My favourite is Lonely Sea Monster, which now is available to buy on-line.

She also creates pretty paintings and drawings, and clay sculptures The combination of a cute design with some macabre style is what makes her works very special and so adorable to me. Visit also her blog for news. (via the dead ToM)

Posted by Bibi on July 21, 2007 03:55 AM in Books, Sculpture ||

I don't have a vast knowledge about astronomy. From time to time I find some interesting news to post at the astronomy category. I follow the top news of New Scientist, Popular Science, Scientific American and the fantastic pictures of Astronomy Picture of the Day. And that's all.

I wasn't part of the generation who watched Cosmos on TV. To be sincere, and his fans will have to forgive me, I just knew about Carl Sagan many years after his success to popularize science. And let me scare you a little more: I never watched the series or read his books (until now). However, before you start thinking of throwing some rocks on me, let me say something: I'm "fixing" this problem.

I started reading his last book, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. Partly because I'm curious and it was already on my shelf. But I had other reasons, for instance, it has beautiful images, it's not only about astronomy, and he was a great writer. I don't want to impugn its merits, no way, but I 'd say it's almost "astronomy for dummies".

For a first specific contact with that area, it looks perfect to me, because it does the most important part, as all good books do, it gets your attention and keeps you interested. I'm reading a Portuguese edition, hardcover, published in 1996 that was a gift, and now it's precious. This book is out of print in Brazil and I couldn't find any other version of it. It seems that astronomy isn't so popular in Brazil as I thought.

If I asked someone how should I have first contact with astronomy, that person would probably suggest me the book Cosmos or the TV series. And I said probably, because it is excellent, at least the bits I watched. As part of my plan to fix my lack of the knowledge in this area, I did a quick research about the "Cosmos" videos, since it isn't available in DVD here. It was quick because, you know how those things are nowadays, the videos appear from nowhere, and these did.

My first impressions of Cosmos: amusing, interesting and it's not only about astronomy. It's also about history, culture, biology and about life. I also have to say that Carl Sagan's voice was hypnotic. As far as I can tell, Sagan should have been a fantastic teacher, since the videos are very didactic and his introductions to every subject, captivating. And last, but not least, he already pointed out an important issue, specially nowadays: ecology.

The new age music presented in the episodes is a little too calm for my taste, but it perfectly fits them. If you have the chance to buy the DVD series, do it. Otherwise, take a look at the playlist I did, with all the episodes on-line, with Japanese subtitles. Of course, they won't stay there forever, so start watching them now, or again if you already did, and then buy it.

Posted by Bibi on July 12, 2007 09:58 PM in Astronomy, Books, Science, Science, Video ||

The on-line exhibition from the Bibliotèque nationale de France Comics Before Comics (La BD avant la BD) presents precious panorama of the comics beginning. The visual travel begins with the ancient illustrated bibles made for Kings and the aristocracy's books, inquires about its style origins, it shows the story of narrative, the page layout procedures and it ends with the use of sound in images - dialogues and onomatopoeia.

The exhibition gives a short vision of the comics pre-history, using great examples, like the Bible of Stephen Harding, Danse macabre, Cantigas de santa Maria, Histoire de la fondation de l'ordre cartusien and Little Sammy Sneeze by Winsor Mac Cay, among the several other examples. For a fast visual panorama try iconography page.

Posted by Bibi on March 30, 2007 07:47 PM in Books, Comics, History ||

There is never enough pulp books to post. That's why I would like to invite you to visit the pulp portion of PulpGen. The first reason to take a look there is the biography and bibliography of four pulp fiction author: J. U. Giesy which works appeared in a vast number of magazines included Weird Tales, The Munsey Magazine, Snappy Stories, Droll Stories, Adventure and The Household Magazine; Norvell Page, most known for his The Spider novels; E. Hoffmann Price, who contributed to Weird Tales, Argosy, Adventure and Short Stories among others; and Edmond Hamilton which stories appeared in the pulp magazines from the mid 1920's - 1950's, including Weird Tales, Amazing Stories and Startling Stories.

The second good reason: the characters' pages of Captain Future and The Griffon, with many cover images. And the last, and best, reason: downloadable e-texts of pulp stories. There are 295 stories on-line and 49 more in various states of readiness, from nearly every genre...detective, science fiction, adventure, romance, western, weird menace, sports, aviation, and even finance. All you need is a PDF reader and choose a story to start reading.

Posted by Bibi on March 15, 2007 11:53 AM in Books, Pulp ||

This Into That offers functional art furniture, primarily book shelves on any theme: funniest, book cases, book shelves, among many other shelves made with books and also little reading chairs. All this incredible work of transform books in book shelves is made by Jim Rosenau at his studio in Berkeley, California. He also makes sculptures, sometimes using other materials that not books.

For those that love books as much as I do, an important message No books that could change the course of world events are harmed in the production. The process is explained in procedure and the following pages.

Related posts: Bibliochaise and Matej Krén.

Posted by Bibi on March 2, 2007 03:26 PM in Books, Design ||

P-E Fronning, from Martin Klasch blog, uploaded scanned images of three lovely books at his Flickr set Children's Books. His last addition to the set was Jim, Jock and Jumbo, a children's book published in New York in 1946. The book was illustrated by Swedish artist Einar Norelius. The other two books are: a book about Papier-mâché and Människornas land, a Danish book with illustrations of children and puffins.

After enjoy the cheerful images of those vintage books go to explore the Ephemera and other printed matter, with 75 delightful images also scanned by him. Pretty ads from Swedish, American and German magazines, posters, music sheet covers and prints. According to him, the illustration bellow is a Swedish classic: simple and brilliant. I loved it.

Posted by Bibi on February 26, 2007 07:19 PM in Books, Illustration, Vintage ||