16 posts tagged “links”

Used booksellers share the funny, interesting, and odd things they've found in books. (found on Kimbooktu)

Beautiful and whimsy decorating project on Design*Sponge: using your computer to create printable wallpaper with camo-photos hidden within the design. I wish I had a staircase (besides the four flights of stairs up to our walk up).

Way too expensive, but still fun: Pimp My Billy (IKEA bookcase novelty shelf). (found on Kimbooktu)

Fun human calendar. (thanks Ryan!)

If you click on only one link, I recommend this one: Extremely fun art project alert: a blogger creates real life photographs from pictures kids have drawn. (found on How About Orange)

....and in case you missed this, Stephen Colbert's dance off with Rain.

An amusing web page that shows many examples of a single painting being used on a variety of different book covers. (Thanks Ryan!)

On McSweeney's, Ernest Hemingway blogs about the top teams in college basketball.

From the NY Times blog Paper Cuts: the Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing. Funny because it's true. I struggle when writing about books I've read, and I fear that I sound like the examples given on this post far too often.

A great bookcase/book storage roundup on Design*Sponge.

Gorgeous new editions of children's classic novels, from Puffin UK. (Via the Book Design Review Blog)

A church that was remodeled into a gorgeous bookshop seemingly "made in heaven." (Thanks again Ryan!)

A librarian's visit to DOK, an amazing library concept center in Holland. (Thanks Elisa!)

Yesterday at Barnes and Noble I got curious about what newsstands do with magazines that don't sell. I was pretty sure that they don't pay for copies that don't sell, but I didn't know how the process worked. I googled it, and found an informative post that's quite interesting. The ultimate lesson? Subscribe to your favorite magazines if you want them to survive.

Easy DIY gift tags (inspired by the great Ed Emberley)

Very fun "Book" parking garage at the Kansas City Public Library. More pictures of the gorgeous new library in Kansas City. 

A blog I found recently and love: 3191. Two people on opposites sides of the country take a photo each morning. They don't talk about what photo they are taking in advance. They put them together and post them. Such a simple idea, but the result is gorgeous. The photos often compliment each other naturally, even though they are unplanned. This post is one of my favorites, and puts me in a very merry holiday mood.

Mental Floss has a very fun list of their 10 favorite Facebook groups. The groups they found are pretty hilarious.

Fun quiz that determines what your design style is. I like the way the quiz is designed; the visual element is neat (and relevant).

My favorite link of the day is a blog post by Stuart McLean of CBC's radio show Vinyl Cafe. It's an (at first glance) ambitious declaration of the end of his book purchasing days. He has too many books, and most are packed up in boxes in his basement and impossible to access quickly. He declares that he will never buy a book again, only to  discover many necessary loopholes. It's alarming how much I can relate to his goal and his exceptions.

My favorite part of the post:

And I am allowed to buy books if it is a book that more than one person says I should read...like say five people mention it. Okay, maybe five is a lot. Make it three people. Three people and they don’t necessarily have to tell me to read the book, but if they mention it in some way, even if they aren’t speaking to me. Like if I overhear them talking about the book at a dinner party. Or say, see them reading the book on an airplane.

The Birthday Star finder is interesting - you enter in your date of birth and it finds your "birthday star" - a star whose light "set off on its journey at about the same time that you were born." My birthday star is in the constellation Bootes. (found on Neatorama)

Very awesome "House of Books" - click through the slideshow to see all the pictures.
(found on Outside of a Dog)

Krueger Books has a large internet index of author autographs. Quite amusing to click on all your favorite authors and see their signatures.  (found on  Amazon's blog)

And finally, a great review of one of my favorite book series that I read while growing up - Anastasia Krupnik - on Bookshelves of Doom.

Kate Spade's website has three awesome desktop wallpapers for book lovers. They feature beautiful old book covers. You can go to the site and click "Downloads" or you can click directly to them here, here, and here. It's inspired me to design my own desktop background with my favorite covers, but I'm sure it won't turn out as fantastic. {Found on How About Orange}

Betsy Dunlap has the most gorgeous calligraphy samples I've ever seen. It's hard to pick a favorite, but I think this one is it. {found on Design*Sponge}

So, so true. {Comic found by Ryan}

I love these Gothic paper plates. So charming! {found on Mighty Goods}

A very addictive game where you buy and sell houses until you have enough to buy a mansion. Fun and easy. I'm hooked.

Extremely hilarious timeline that explains the history of the internet. The Homestar Runner reference is spot-on.

Great Mental Floss post about the absolutely gorgeous Russian Metro.

A video that morphs 500 years of women in art - morphs the paintings from frame to frame. Fascinating.

Cowboy Eyes. My favorite FOUND magazine online post of late.

A "What Font Are You?" Quiz. I got Fixedsys. I'm not terribly enchanted by this quiz. Neither is the person whose blog I found this link on. Maybe I'll try to write my own "What Font Are You?" quiz. I've only written one internet quiz before (light years ago, in 2003) but I'm proud to say it's the first result that comes up when you google "Edward Gorey Death." Especially since it was just made to make my friends laugh, and had way too many inside jokes in it.

First of all, still loving The Daily Puppy blog, and Dudley the puggle is cute enough to break your heart with just one glance.

Mental Floss posted 15 Reasons Why Mister Rogers Was the Best Neighbor Ever. I'm not sure why, but while I was reading it I was on the verge of tears. It's interesting, and offers a lot of evidence as to how great of a person Mister Rogers was; it wasn't an act. Worth a look.

Another Mental Floss post - this time about more book lists. Some I had seen before, but they link to the 778 best books of all time, which I have never discovered before. It's an interesting list, although polling on 46 people for this seems a rather small amount. (Additionally, who are these 46 people? The link to the list of "sumbitters" leads me to believe they are quite an odd assortment. And why are they called Sumbitters?) However, it's a cool idea for generating a list, and I'd be interested in seeing a similar list gathered in a more credible way.

I'm shyly obsessed with the northern lights, and I love this Neatorama post today with a great picture of the northern lights in Alaska.

The Modern Library's list of 100 Greatest English Language Books is pretty well known in the book world, and here's an interesting NYT page that lists all 100 novels and includes a link to the original New York Times book review, when available.

By far the coolest clock I have ever seen - The Voco Clock talks to you in the morning with charming, clever comments to suggest that you might want to rise at this time. Examples:

I’m so sorry to disturb you sir, but it appears to be morning. Very inconvenient, I agree, sir. I believe it is the rotation of the earth which is to blame, sir.

I’m delighted you have survived another night. May I add my own congratulations to the roar of the world’s approval? Thank you, sir.

You can listen to audio samples on the site as well. The "Good Morning Madam" edition will come out in July.

The Daily Puppy blog brightens my morning every day, and I fell in love with Wilbur, who looks a lot like our beagle did when she was a puppy. (I'm also in love with Lola.)

Beautiful Neatorama post of 10 Divinely Designed Churches.

The Sun Jar is an actual jar of sunshine. It stores sunlight during the day, and then shines during the night. Sort of a grown up "glow in the dark" toy.

Hilarious List of Mundane Dreams from McSweeney's.

Here's an internet trove of wonderful old pictures. The menu bar is on the left; it can be a bit hard to find between the ads.

Essential Architecture has a list of places in the world to see in your lifetime. Click on a city name to see a more extensive list for each location. Here's the New York page.

A beautiful birthday card you can download and print. Cute and useful.

Unnatural portraits made by digitally combining two photos.

Fun list, with pictures, of extreme hotels.

Site that shows photos of fast food from advertisements, compared to how the food actually looks when you get it.

Photos of extremely incredible Russian Cakes.

Another cool post about Kurt Vonnegut: John Irving shares Kurt Vonnegut stories.

Ryan found this cool world map that shows all the places in the world that have been book settings (and their frequency of use). It also shows the settings used over time, and you can clearly see the expansion into North America.

My mom shared this one with me: Literature Map lets you type in the name of an author, and then shows you visually other authors who are similar.