Sure it seems like a conceptual idea that would never work in real life, but this bathtub is actually completely functional, not to mention totally awesome -or at least, it would be if the creator actually finished the project. BoingBoing is trying to track down leads to find out if it was ever completed or not. If you have any information, share your knowledge in their comments section.

Link Via BoingBoing

My apologies to those of you who might actually like Twilight, but I’m sure you already know that there are plenty of others who would gladly carve up your sparkly vampires into beautiful planters. Since the link to the original source is broken, here’s one to a different tutorial to make your own.

Link Via Craftzine

“We need your help, oh great citizens of the Internet! I’m writing a book with former Disney Imagineer Rolly Crump, and we’re looking for some old photos for it that you may have in your collection. We’re looking for stuff from his time at Disney (such as Adventureland Bazaar in 1963, Tower of Four Winds, The Enchanted Tiki Room in the 60s, It’s A Small World at World’s Fair, The Land in 1980s) and his outside work (like Bear-y Tales at Knott’s Berry Farm, Circus World, and Busch Gardens). Anything that Rolly has brought to life, we’d love to see your photos of it. We will gladly give you credit AND a signed copy of the book if we use your images!”

I know some of you Neatorama readers have been visiting the park for decades, so here’s a good opportunity to take advantage of those old family vacation photos.

Link Via BoingBoing

The magic begins after closing time at Type Books in Toronto. This video is brought to you by the same folks who did Organizing the Bookcase last year, with a lot of help from friends. – via I Am Bored

This great book sculpture and many more like it were completed by a completely anonymous artist who covertly installed them inside a variety of museums, libraries and other locations in Edinburgh, Scotland. While no one knows who is responsible, the artist did reveal herself as a woman in her farewell note. Check out the rest at the link.

Link Via Laughing Squid

At least, not without a lot of nail painting skills. Apparently her other hand features the armies of Gondor, but since they didn’t come out well with her camera, she left out those pictures.

Link Via Geeks Are Sexy

Once upon a time, fairy tales were dark fables designed to scare children into good behavior. This is the story of one American author who thought kids deserved better.

In December 1900, L. Frank Baum was a struggling, 44-year-old writer living in Chicago with his wife and four children. Christmas was only days away, and Baum was desperately searching for a way to buy presents for his family.

On a whim, Baum went downtown to ask his publisher for a royalties’ advance for the five books he’d written that year. He walked out with a check for one of the books, and promptly stuck it in his pocket. He didn’t bother to take a look at it.

When Baum arrived home, his wife, Maud, was ironing a shirt. He reluctantly handed her the check, and at the same moment, they both discovered that it was for $1,423.98—roughly $40,000 today. Paralyzed with disbelief, Maud burned a hole through the shirt.

That book, of course, was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN

Lyman Frank Baum was born in 1856 in Chittenango, New York. As a child, his weak heart limited his capacity for rough-and-tumble play. So, despite being the seventh of nine kids, he spent most of his childhood alone, indoors, and dreaming.

As a young man, Baum leapt like a flea from career to career. By his early 30s, he’d been a journalist, a printer, a postage-stamp dealer, and a champion poultry breeder, which led him into publishing, with his trade journal The Poultry Record. He also ran his own theater company, where he wrote, directed, and acted in his own plays.

Then, in 1881, Baum met his leading lady—Maud Gage, a sophomore at Cornell. But Maud’s mother, Matilda, disapproved of the union. Matilda Gage was a feminist who marched alongside Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony in the women’s suffrage movement. She saw Baum as a flake who’d never amount to anything, and she told her daughter she’d be a “darned fool” to marry the itinerant actor. Yet, Baum’s charm, sincerity, and uncanny ability to tell fantastic stories were no match for Matilda, and he soon won her over. He also became a feminist.

Frank married Maud in 1882, but troubles were around the corner. Baum’s theater company went belly-up, and without local prospects, he looked west for opportunity. In 1888, he moved his family to the Dakota Territory, where he opened a store in the town of Aberdeen. (Years later, when Baum wrote descriptions of the Kansas prairie in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, he was actually describing South Dakota.) His shop, Baum’s Bazaar, sold Chinese paper lanterns, Bohemian glass, gourmet chocolates, and other exotic items. But Baum overestimated the frontier’s demands for novelty shopping. In a few short years, he’d gone bust yet again.

At this point, L. Frank Baum was 35 with no career. He headed east for Chicago, where he received guidance from an unexpected source: his mother-in-law. Matilda Gage convinced Baum to pursue his one true talent, telling stories. In Aberdeen, children had stalked Baum, demanding story hour from the raconteur. Kids loved his tales because they weren’t thinly disguised morality lessons. Instead, Baum’s stories were fantasies filled with candy, toys, magic, and adventure. Heeding Matilda’s advice, Baum decided to give writing a try.

FOLLOWING THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

In 1899, Baum teamed up with illustrator W.W. Denslow and published Father Goose, His Book, a collection of pictures and verse. The collaboration worked so well that it inspired Baum and Denslow to try their hands at a full-length novel.

As a child, Baum had loved the European fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, but he loathed the dark, grisly endings. He envisioned a new American fairy tale in which ingenuity and spunk paid off. In Baum’s words, he wanted to create a world where “wonderment and joy are retained, and the heartache and nightmares left out.”

It was a great idea, but what would he call this utopia? Family legend holds that Baum scanned his office for ideas. While staring at his filing cabinet, he drew inspiration from a label on the bottom drawer marked “O-Z.”

Baum’s book was turned down by every major publishing house. Finally, a distribution company agreed to take on the novel about Oz, but only if Baum and Denslow agreed to shoulder the printing expenses. The bet paid off. Today, the masterful integration of color illustrations and text is heralded as a pioneering achievement in literature, a precursor to the graphic novel. Denslow’s drawings were unique in that they not only reflected the plot, but also furthered it. His vibrant pictures spilled over from one page to the next.

More importantly, children loved Baum’s story. By the end of 1900, Maude had burned a hole through her husband’s shirt, and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was the best-selling book in America.

OZ FEST

Over the next 20 years, Baum would pen more than 70 books under several pseudonyms. Unfettered by gender restrictions, he often wrote under female names, including Suzanne Metcalf, Laura Bancroft, and Edith Van Dyne. Baum also tried his hand at science-fiction, demonstrating a knack for predicting the future on par with H.G. Wells. A running theme in Baum’s work was the triumph of technology over distance and time, and many of his fictional inventions—televisions, satellites, cell phones, laptops—eventually became realities of everyday life.

In 1902, Oz was transformed into a Broadway musical, shortened simply to The Wizard of Oz.
At first, Baum was taken aback by some of the changes. For instance, Dorothy’s faithful companion on the stage wasn’t Toto, but a cow named Imogene.

But when the play became a Broadway hit, Baum softened. He tried to return to the theater to produce his own plays, but all his efforts, including The Whatnexters and The King of Gee Whiz, were flops. He also tried his hand at a vaudeville show, “Fairylogues and Radio Plays,” but that foundered, too.

The truth was that Baum wanted to stop writing about Dorothy and do something new. He intended for the sixth Oz book, The Emerald City of Oz, to be the last in the series. In the story, Baum seals off his fairyland, proclaiming it unreachable from the outside world. But when a film project he was pursuing collapsed, Baum quickly found himself strapped for funds again. He wrote another Oz book, and from then on, Dorothy and the gang kept resurfacing every time Baum needed to pad his wallet.

IT’S A TWISTER

In 1919, Baum died of the same heart condition that had kept him indoors as a child. But even death couldn’t stop the Oz stories from flowing. Baum wrote the 14th book in the series, Glinda of Oz, on his deathbed, and it was published posthumously. After that, various authors churned out 26 official sequels, which have been translated into 22 languages, from Tamil to Serbo-Croatian.

In 1939, the Oz legacy hit a turning point when MGM released The Wizard of Oz movie. Based on Baum’s original storyline, the plot and characters remained relatively faithful to the book, although there were plenty of changes, too. Most of the quotables (“And your little dog, too!”) were Hollywood additions, as were the musical numbers and dancing little people. There were some changes to the story, as well. Dorothy’s slippers, which were silver in the book, were changed to ruby in the movie to show off the new technology of color film.

The key difference between the two versions is that in the movie, Dorothy’s adventure was “all a dream,” while in Baum’s book, Oz was very much real. In fact, later in the book series, Uncle Henry and Auntie Em move to the Emerald City to dine off jeweled plates and converse with talking animals. As it turned out, nobody really wanted to go home to Kansas.

(Image from the NeatoShop)

The movie established Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion as cultural icons. Flying monkeys and yellow brick roads became part of the national psyche, and today, Oz’s popularity shows no sign of waning. The movies, the spin-offs, the Broadway musicals, the plays, and—more recently—the pop-up book just keep cropping up. Much like Dorothy and the gang, Baum took the long way to finding his true calling, but there’s no denying that he left behind an enduring legacy. By writing the quintessential American fairy tale, Baum proved that even late bloomers living in their own fantasy world are entitled to happy endings.

__________________________

The article by Kelly K. Ferguson is reprinted from the May- June 2010 issue of mental_floss magazine.

Be sure to visit mental_floss‘ website and blog for more fun stuff!

Artist Brian Dettmer is a talented artist and his media of choice happens to be books. With a little bit of careful carving, he can make amazing creations from already printed pages. While there are a number of artists who work with books, it seems safe to say that Brian has definately earned his nickname ” the book surgeon.”

Link Via BuzzFeed

Looking at some of the most beautiful libraries in the world, like the Wiblingen Monastery Library in Ulm, Germany seen above, is truly fascinating. But if you’re like me, it might also make you feel depressed about the sad state of your town’s library.

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Game of Thrones

This fantasy epic is filled with so many delicious food and drink ideas that there is already more than one blog out there dedicated to creating the tasty treats in real life. Inn At The Crossroads is the best known of these blogs and the site even has a cookbook coming out soon.

For those looking to spice up their Thanksgiving with some kingly delights, may I recommend the Rack of Lamb in a Crust of Garlic and Herbs served with a cup of Salladhor Saans Hot Wine. If you’d like something a little more exotic for your main course though, the Grilled Snake, served with a spicy mustard sauce, looks rather delightful.

Dune

If you’re familiar with Dune, then you know that it is all about the spices. That being said, the two best recipes from this story are both beverages. Whether you prefer Spice Beer or Spice Coffee, I’m sure either one would make a great contribution to your Thanksgiving menu. Grumpy Frenchman suggests adding cinnamon to your beer for Spice Beer, but he also warns that that makes the foam go crazy, so pour accordingly. Meanwhile, GeekChill has a fantastic recipe for Spice Coffee that blends Chai tea, coffee and cinnamon –yum!

Lord of the Rings/ The Hobbit

Middle Earth is awash with great food and drink, but because most of Tolkien’s stories take place on the road, we tend to hear about the ones that are good for travel…which are not necessarily the most delicious treats around. That being said, while the hobbits seem to tire of Lembas bread, it is certainly the most delicious travel-friendly bread around and The Geeky Chef has a great recipe to make your own.

As for The Hobbit, the many mentions of seed cake seem to indicate that it is certainly one of Bilbo’s favorite foods and Historical Foods has an excellent recipe based on the time period for which Tolkien based the setting for his classic tales. That means, this seed cake is about as close to what Bilbo would eat as possible.

Harry Potter

Between the butterbeer, chocolate frogs and cauldron cakes, wizards and witches have quite a selection of tasty treats for any time of year. Of course, if there are any geek recipes that would actually go great with an otherwise traditional Thanksgiving feast, they would most certainly be Pumpkin Juice or Pumpkin Pasties. HarryPotterRecipes.Net has an absolutely delightful recipe for making your own Pumpkin Juice, sweetened with pineapple juice and spiced with a touch of nutmeg and allspice.

For your Pumpkin Pasties fix, stop by The Geeky Chef and try out this delicious recipe that imagines them as a sort of pumpkin-filled pastry…like pumpkin pie turnovers.

Star Wars

These films contain very few references to food. Even when the characters eat or drink, they never really seem to bring attention to what, exactly, they are putting in their mouths. That being said, Wookiee-Ookies are specifically mentioned in the Star Wars Holiday Special. Although they are best known for being a Christmas treat, they can undoubtedly still be served for Thanksgiving, just like eggnog.

You can find the recipe for these treats over on the website dedicated exclusively to the special, inventively called The Star Wars Holiday Special, and culled from The Star Wars Cookbook.

Firefly

Like Star Wars, while the characters on Firefly do eat and drink on screen, they rarely explain what it is they are actually eating. We know they get most of their vitamins through nutrient bars that can provide a month’s worth of nutrition to someone although they still need to drink water and ingest  calories, but aside from that, few foods are actually mentioned. A few exceptions are Mudder’s Milk, which is enjoyed in large quantities on Higgin’s Moon in the episode “Jaynestown,” and Ice Planets, which River Tam has difficulty eating in the episode “The Message.”

You can find a non-alcoholic version of Mudder’s Milk on the Firefly Wikia and learn how to make your own Ice Planet (essentially ice cream on a string) over on Tasty Planner.

Star Trek

Of course, geek Thanksgivings don’t have to ignore the turkey entirely. After all, in the Star Trek episode “Charlie X,” Captain Kirk is upset because he wants to celebrate Thanksgiving properly with a turkey, but there were none on board. Instead, the crew was going to have to eat meatloaf.

Strangely, while the meatloaf was cooking in the ovens, it suddenly transformed into turkey. It turns out that this was caused by Charles Evans, a young boy the crew recently brought on board, who has incredible powers. On the downside, he later uses those powers against everyone on board and tries to take over the ship, but hey, at least they got a nice Thanksgiving meal out of the ordeal. (For the record, yes, I know that is Picard and the Next Generation crew in the image, it was just the most holiday appropriate shot available.)

While you can always serve turkey as your main course and just reference this episode, you can also try blending the storyline in a little more and serve turkey meatloaf that has been cooked in a turkey-shaped baking pan.

What are your guy’s plans for Thanksgiving dinner? Are you planning to go traditional or do you guys like to mix things up a little more? Do any of you want to actually incorporate something from this article into your meal?

We’ve featured a bunch of pumpkin carvings for Halloween so far, but Flavorwire’s literary collection definitely has some of the most highbrow jack-o-lantern designs we’ve seen so far.

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These days, Anne Frank has one of the best-known holocaust stories and the book has sold 30 million copies around the world. Surprisingly, the tale wasn’t too popular with publishers though, and was rejected sixteen times. One publisher even noted the story was barely worth reading because, “The girl doesn’t, it seems to me, have a special perception or feeling which would lift that book above the ‘curiosity’ level.”

Read about other bestselling books that overcame initial publisher’s rejection at Flavorwire. Link

Talk about an easy subject to research! It might have been easier to write up a “books that have never been banned anywhere” list. The banning of books seems so ridiculous, simplistic, and stupid to most of us. But man, in all his Jeckyll and Hyde glory, will all-too-often, when trying to solve a problem, come up with a solution much worse. This is “the 29th annual Banned Books Week.” The week is used to condemn censorship and “thought police.”

O.K., let’s take a look at a brief (in the scheme of these things) list of books that have been (ironically) banned here in the U.S….

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 has to head this list of “ironic books banned.” Why? Fahrenheit 451 is an entire novel about the future and the banning (and burning) of books. It was banned, ironically, because one of the books that eventually gets banned and burned is the Bible. Drawn your own conclusions, my (hopefully) intelligent readers.

2. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Mark Twain was a racist? A product of the times? Twain uses the bombshell “N” word so as to illustrate the awfulness of the word (and all its connotations). This vicious word is still, far and away, the most highly-charged and controversial word in the English language. So, the knee-jerk reaction is to ban the book. Or better still, as in more recent examples, issue the book with the “N” word cleverly edited out.

3. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

There isn’t enough time to edit out all the examples of the expression “f*** you” being used in this one. Also banned because it promotes youthful rebellion and disrespect of authority. Catcher in the Rye was the book that guy was reading when he shot and killed John Lennon. So maybe if it were still banned…  hmmm, slippery slope, isn’t it?

4. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Handford

Misprint, right? Uh, no. The very first Where’s Waldo? book was, indeed, banned, because in one of the Where’s Waldo? drawings a beach is shown featuring a woman lying on the sand with part of her breast showing. It was actually just a side view of her breast, with a penciled-in microscopic nipple shown.

Do you realize the meticulous research and hours of time it must have taken whoever discovered this “offensive” character amidst all the thousands and thousands of characters featured in a Waldo book?

5. The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank

This is the incredible story of an ever-hopeful and ever-wistful young girl who is eventually killed in the Holocaust. In some ways, it is the ultimate example of the ever-classic theme of “Good vs. Evil.” Or one very good person in the face of perhaps the greatest evil of the past several centuries. Yet despite her incredibly horrible enemies and fate, this remarkable teenage girl still believes in “the basic goodness of mankind.” Banned by the Alabama State Textbook Committee in 1983 for being “a real downer.”

6. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Like our pal Huck Finn, this book has been banned because of the free-flowing use of the “N” word. And like Twain’s book, it is used to paint an accurate picture of the period (and all its ignorance). It has been banned across America for “racial slurs” and for “promoting white supremacy.” Also because a parent thought the way “blacks are treated by members of [the] white community in a way that would upset black children.” Only ironic because never, but never, in the entire history of literature, has good and evil been so clearly portrayed and delineated. Real (not ersatz) racism is shown under a clear magnifying glass, in all its vicious cruelty.

(As a sidebar, to those of you who do not like reading -definitely see the movie. To Kill a Mockingbird is without question one of the greatest movies ever made. One of those rare times “the movie is equally as great as the book it is based upon.”)

7. The Harry Potter Series by J.K. Rowling

The Harry Potter books are far and away the most banned books of the past decade. Extremely ironic in that the Harry Potter series has probably inspired more young people to read than all the Hooked on Phonics and Pizza Hut books in the world.

Also one other point for all those people who have worked so tirelessly to ban these highly-popular books: strip away the magic and the Dr. Seuss creatures and the wizards and sorcerers, and ultimately the series boils down to the message that love, understanding, and tolerance are the most important things in the world.

8. Little Red Riding Hood

(You can’t make this stuff up, folks!)

Little Red Riding Hood has been banned for the use of alcohol (one of the items in Red Riding Hood’s basket is a bottle of wine).

9. Sleeping Beauty

The fairy tale was banned for promoting witchcraft and magic.

10. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

This classic was banned for “vulgar language.”

11. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh

Why do I feel like I am writing a Monty Python sketch? Could there possibly be a more harmless, innocuous book than Harriet the Spy? O.K. this one was banned because it “teaches children to lie, spy, back-talk, and curse.”

12. Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

This book was banned in the South during the Civil War because of its anti-slavery content. Well, heck, that was over 150 years ago. Fortunately, as we all know, man has come a long way since those days of ignorance.

If you’ve ever played The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, then you know how much detail the developers put into creating the in-game books your character can read. That’s why it’s so darn amazing that Reddit user notadoctoreither put together all of the books from the game into one immense leather-bound book. While even the most die-hard fans might not want to flip through the pages when they could be out closing oblivion gates, you can now take time out of your non-gaming life to read the stories and history of the in-game world.

Link Via Geekosystem

Once upon a more staid time, the purpose of children’s books was to model good behavior. They were meant to edify and to encourage young readers to be what parents wanted them to be, and the children in their pages were well behaved, properly attired and devoid of tears. Children’s literature was not supposed to shine a light on the way children actually were, or delight in the slovenly, self-interested and disobedient side of their natures.

Seuss, Sendak and Silverstein ignored these rules. They brought a shock of subversion to the genre — defying the notion that children’s books shouldn’t be scary, silly or sophisticated. Rather than reprimand the wayward listener, their books encouraged bad (or perhaps just human) behavior. Not surprisingly, Silverstein and Sendak shared the same longtime editor, Ursula Nordstrom of Harper & Row, a woman who once declared it her mission to publish “good books for bad children.”

Read more about it at the New York Times. Link -via @Marilyn_Res

There’s certainly some validity to this explanation. Yes, those charts and diagrams are expensive to produce, and the relatively small print runs of textbooks keep publishers from enjoying the kind of economies of scale they get on a bestselling popular novel. Any economist who has a pulse (and probably some who don’t) could poke holes in this argument pretty quickly, though.

In the simplest economic terms, the high price of textbooks is symptomatic of misaligned incentives, not exorbitant production costs. Students hold the reasonable stance that they’d like to spend as little money as possible on their books. Students don’t really have the latitude to pick which texts they need, though.

Read the real story behind sky-high textbook prices at mental_floss. Link

Link -image via AP Photo/Nevada Historical Society.

Ok, so they may not be readable, but they are absolutely adorable and seem simply delicious. They could also be a great way to excite the kiddos about back to school time.

Link Via Craftzine

(Video Link)

Vice Books is releasing a new title based exclusively around kitties and their fashionable styles. All of the delightful outfits are by Japanese cat fashion designer Takako Iwasa.

Via Laughing Squid

Pop Up books are largely considered children’s territory, but WebUrbanist has a great selection of 3D books that grown ups can enjoy too. I certainly would enjoy getting my hands on some of these. How about you guys?

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We have up to 150 books to share, thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor… We’re not telling you to like the book… we just want you to read it and decide for yourself.

Link Via The Mary Sue

Sure you might love Ariel, Belle, Glinda, Scarlet and Sherlock, but did you know they all have serious mental disorders? Cracked takes a look at the character’s questionable mental states with this great article. I think their assessments seem pretty spot on for the most part. What about you?

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Scrolling through the list of great science fiction and fantasy reads below will feel like a journey back in time for some of us, a voyage of discovery for others. But novice or veteran, everyone loves a contest. So, let the voting begin!

Here’s how: Everyone gets 10 votes. Select your top 10 favorite titles, and then scroll down to the bottom of the poll and click “Submit.” Feel free to lobby for your favorites in the comments. We’ll be back in about 10 days with the results.

Even deciding on just ten will be difficult! Link -via Metafilter

(Image credit: Chris Silas Neal)

“Kids might be afraid or ashamed because they are delinquent with the library,” said NYPL official Jack Martin. “The idea of this program is to bring them back in.

Personally, I could have worked off over $100 worth of fines over one summer when I was a kiddo, but I know most youngsters aren’t as eager as I was.

Link Via Consumerist Image Via Wonderfully Complex [Flickr]

This may look like a crazy event frozen in time, or a scene from a disaster flick, but it’s actually an art installation created for the VIA Advertising Agency by artist Wary Meyers. Called “The Basement Stacks”, its name is derived from the fact that the building now utilized by VIA used to be home to the Portland Public Library. Books have never seemed so dangerous!

Link Image via Wary Meyers

There is probably no greater revenge on a teacher that you hated then becoming one of the world’s most successful authors and using them as the basis for your epic villain. Although fighting them to the death with magic would be cool too.

For those of you who’ve ever dreamed of turning your childhood enemies into objects of ridicule and hatred, with a side of jackass to boot, this list is for you. These iconic fictional characters were based on real-life people, and their creators couldn’t give the least bit of a damn who knew it.

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Ingredients:
1 part Liqueur, raspberry (Chambord)
1 part cranberry juice
1 part orange juice
1 Maraschino cherry
1 twist (of peel) orange Instructions:
‘Mix juices and Chambord with ice, strain. Garnish with an orange twist wrapped around a cherry with a sword-pick through it. Serve in a hurricane glass.’

Would you try any of these magically tasty treats?

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A few months ago I wrote an article on non-literary uses for books. If you liked that post, you’d certainly appreciate this great post on WebUrbanist detailing 12 cool artists that use books as their mediums.

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What happens when you rescue over a quarter-million books from the incinerator? You have to buy another house to live in, first. Then you have to figure out what to do with all the books when they start to tear your house apart.

When Shaunna Raycraft learned that her neighbor planned to burn 350,000 books, she decided to take over the collection herself. After all, her neighbor’s husband was a collector and many rare books–including a first edition of Black Beauty–could be found in the sprawling stacks. But now Raycraft and her husband might be forced to burn the books themselves because they don’t know what else to do with them.

They tried selling them on eBay. They tried selling them to other collectors. They even tried selling them to used bookstores. But no one wanted to endure the arduous task of sorting through the books.

Apparently they never seriously considered donating the books, though, because now the plan is to burn them anyway. Bookworms all over are unimpressed–a #savethebooks tag has been tracking the debate on twitter.

Link | Image: CBC News

We like to think of our favorite writers as people we would get along with. So much of what attracts us to literature and philosophy is its author’s stated or implied worldview that it’s disturbing to find out that the writers we love have lived morally questionable — or even reprehensible — lives.

In the spirit of hating the author but loving the work, we’ve rounded up a collection of great books by poets, novelist, and philosophers with unsettling biographies.

Check out the rest of the gallery at Flavorwire. Link

Many cities and urban centers these days are discovering the increasing problem of figuring out what to do abandoned buildings and structures. As populations and industries change many large factories, apartment complexes and even theme parks are left as empty rusting hunks of man-made waste. One publishing company is trying to brainstorm a solution in an upcoming book.

The concept is the brainchild of Gregory Crawford, who recently launched a Kickstarter project in a bid to fund his book, Fall Apart Park, and a publishing company called The Afterwords Archive.  The project will offer creative transformation proposals for abandoned buildings and places, through a combination of fiction, non-fiction, journalism and photo-essays, while adopting re-purposed materials.

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When Alice and Mattia first meet in grade school, they realize that they have one thing in common–they are not yet ready for love. Both have been shaped by profound childhood tragedies that crippled their trust in the world around them. But years later, they eventually learn to trust each other enough to overcome their awkwardness. The Solitude of Prime Numbers is an absolutely flawless literary debut from one of Italy’s most promising new authors and the romance between Alice and Mattia–unconventional though it may be–is one for the history books.

Meet the lovers of nine more modern novels you may want to explore. Link

Inverted

With a little clever placement of elastic, Instructables user fungus amungus was able to create this simple, but seriously eye-catching inverted bookshelf.

Staircase

If you have a lot of books, you may have wished your home came with a set of bookcases built into the walls, but I’m willing to guess you never conceived of using your staircase to hold all of your novels. Architect Tim Sloan did though, and the result is perhaps one of the most functional staircases I’ve ever seen.

The Twins

I don’t know about you guys, but I’m always running out of space in my bookcases, which is why I simply love this expanding Twin Bookshelf by Zeynep Cinisli. Essentially, you get two sets of cupboard shelves and when those fill up, you can just pull them apart for even more shelf space.

REK

Like the Twins, REK by Reiner de Jong is brilliant in that it can be consolidated or expanded as needed. As a bonus, the detailed linework in the design makes it look cool room no mater how extended it happens to be at any given time.

Equations

Here’s one I know you Neatonauts will just love, a bookshelf with an equation built right in to it. Not only does the design, by Estudio Breder, look cool, but it’s also a great way to sort your titles by importance using the parentheses.

The Infinite

While Job Koelewijn’s infinity-sign-shaped bookcase won’t actually hold an infinite number of books, it does hold a lot. Aside from looking cool, the design has a deeper meaning too, representing the infinite knowledge that can be gained from books.

MYDNA

When you’re looking for a bookcase that really reflects your scientific interest, Joel Escalona’s MYDNA bookcase is a perfect option. Aside from the fact that this bookcase has the undeniable look of your favorite twisted ladder structure, it also is unique in that you can access if from four different directions –meaning this case is certainly not intended to be shoved in the corner of a room somewhere.

The United States of America

For those patriotic few who revel in the thought of adorning their walls with pictures and likenesses of the USA, Ron Arad’s USA bookcase is a great way to store your books while keeping with your theme. Best of all, it provides you with a unique organizing system opportunity.

The Dolly

While this dolly bookshelf by Etsy seller StudioDZ might not hold the most books and at $850, it might be one of the more expensive options, but on the upside, it’s certainly the easiest to move.

Books To Go

Rose Cobb’s Books To Go design is another portable bookshelf on wheels, this one secured not by gravity but by a giant vice. Now that’s one way to make sure things don’t get shifted about. Best of all, if your shelf ever fills up, just attach another one to the top and keep on rolling.

The Dog

If you love to read, this NEL dog bookshelf could quickly become your best friend as he holds your favorite titles on his back and holds on to the book you’re currently reading in his mouth.

The City Skyline

Frederik Roije’s “Storylines” bookshelves look like a city skyline and once you add your titles, you can continue with the uneven  drops and peaks or arrange them in a way that will provide you with uneven bottoms that come together with a level top.

The Maze

Once you’re done getting lost in your favorite book, you can put it back in this beautiful maze bookcase by Woodloops, and hopefully not get lost trying to find it again.

The Bed

When it’s up against the wall, this bookcase by Karen Babel might look like a good waste of wall space, but once the bed is laid down on the ground and pushed together, it’s easy to see just how useful this bookcase is for those with smaller homes and apartments. Personally, I’d love to have one of these for when I have company staying over.

Movement

Samulnoli’s Movement Bookcase is a cute décor addition, featuring little arms and legs that actually hug your favorite books. What a great way to show your books some love!

Read & Roll

The Read & Roll Nils Holger Moormann combines all the functionality of a bookcase with the comfort of a chair. It even comes in two versions, the standard and the lounge chair. Best of all, they even come with a giant wheel so you can rearrange your book/chairs whenever you need to.

The Bookwave

The soft fabric used in the ilio’s Bookwave allow it to stretch and shrink as needed so it can expand for your heaviest volumes or shrink to hide itself when not in use. The design is brilliant because it can be hung from any ceiling and used as a room divider or a curtain.

Folded

These slatted bookshelves from Picked By Hand not only look cool, they’re also super functional, allowing the user to bend their shelves up or down as needed to make more space.

I know most people, myself included, tend to stick with the tried and true classic bookshelves, but there are all kinds of models out there for the fashionable bibliophile. Do any of you guys have cool bookcases that are worth talking about?

Fans of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series will recall the city planet Trantor which housed the “Library of Trantor” (also known as the Galactic Library) in which librarians attempted to create an index of all human knowledge. Well now it seems the University of Chicago right here on Earth have built a library that can hold 3.5 million books which are delivered to patrons by a robotic storage system. (This is in addition to the 4.4 million books available from the University’s traditional library.)

The Mansueto library was recently opened to the faculty and students of the University of Chicago. The library’s unique construction is meant to accommodate the way research is done today: online. In the case an old journal article isn’t available online or a book hasn’t been scanned due to copyright limitations, for example, then the student can request the book right there on the computer. The automated storage and retrieval system will deliver the volume to the circulation desk, usually within the five minutes it takes for the student to walk there. Oversized and novelty books are also stored for retrieval.

Link

This furniture dolly has a bookshelf built right in! Or maybe it’s a bookcase that happens to be on wheels. Either way, it’s a neat idea from StudioDz, available for sale at Etsy. Link -via Boing Boing

Spiders Are Wonderful is a story by Toby Vok, labeled as non-fiction for children age 4-6. So I didn’t expect much, until I got to the page you see here. The tale veers off into a delightfully scary direction after that point. Link -via My Own Private Book Club

Before I get started, I want to give a special thank you to WebEcoist and WebUrbanist, who provided a wealth of inspiration and research to this article.

Buildings

Starting on the big scale uses for leftover books, you can build entire structures with them. While Slovakian artist Matej Krén’s building inside The Museum of Modern Art in Bologna (above) may not be structurally sound enough to exist outside another building, the Yellow Pages building (below) might be able to hold its own in a storm. Students from the Dalhousie University Department of Architecture in Nova Scotia built the house using a few wooden and metal beams to hold the thick books in place.

Of course, even if a book building could survive the elements, it would soon become subject to destruction via mold and insects.

Home Insulation

Just because your home can’t be made completely from books doesn’t mean they can’t improve your home though. According to Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller magazine, books are an excellent form of insulation, so even if you don’t want to read certain titles any more, they still can be useful for filling up bookshelves that line the exterior-facing walls of your home.

Bookshelves

Artist Jim Rosenau specializes in making bookshelves and book cases from old books. Why bother chopping down trees to make wood for these book holders when you already have all the materials you need in your pile of books to get rid of?

Desks

If you have a lot of books and need a desk, you’re in luck. All it takes to turn a bunch of books into desk is a nice heavy slab of wood or glass in order to press down on the volumes and give you a smooth writing surface. Both the Brunswick Bound bookstore of Melbourne (above) and the library at the Delft University of Technology (below) are equipped with these stylish and incredibly inexpensive desks.

A Couch

If you need a couch more than a desk, a lot of unwanted books and some tape can be used to make a couch that’s certain to get attention. While the idea comes from “Paper Man,” a Jeff Bridges movie where a frustrated writer uses unsold copies of his first book to create a new couch, the idea is entirely possible –the set designers used real books and packing tape to design the furniture.

A Chair

For something with a substantially smaller book investment, these paperback chairs by artist David Karoff are always a good option. He designed them for a Rhode Island bookstore called Myopic Books, so since they were made to be used by customers on a regular basis, they’re probably quite a bit more comfortable than the book couch.

Lights

“Light up your life with books” sounds like something you’d see on a cheesy library poster from the eighties, but in this case, it’s actually a decorating tip. While you can always buy a beautiful $550 book chandelier from artist Lucy Norman (above), it’s surprisingly easy to make your own less sophisticated model, like the one below, at home. All you need is a lamp shade, a lamp kit, a few hardcover books, a clamp and a drill. Shauna Smith Duty teaches you how in this article on Thrift Fun.

Ceiling Décor

While these books hanging from the ceiling may not provide any useful function, they do look really cool and will certainly make a home with really high ceilings feel a lot more personal and cozy. The original art installation is by Richard Wentworth, but if you wanted to adapt this to your own home, I’m sure some fishing line and a drill would be all you would need.

Christmas Tree

Why chop down a tree when you can make your own out of the same basic material? To be fair, most people couldn’t find enough green books to create a whole tree and even if they did, they might be disappointed with the lack of lighting and ornament options, but for the Gleeson Library at the University of San Francisco, the tree was a perfect holiday decoration.

Image via Shawn Calhoun [Flickr]

Planters

One of the coolest things about using a book as a planter is the fact that you’re using something that was once a living plant to provide care for another plant. I wish I could tell you more about these cool planters, but the company that makes them, Gartenkultur, is Italian and their website doesn’t have an English language version. Using the Google translator though, I was able to discern that they use some kind of insulating materials to ensure the plant can be watered without ruining the book.

Vases

Similarly, these book vases by designer Laura Cahill can be filled with water because hidden inside each papery base is a test tube for water collection. Miss Cahill also makes a great lamp out of book pages and a fun stool out of hard covers.

Clothes

If you’re not interested in decorating your home with books, what about your body? This stunning ball gown by Ryan Novelline is comprised of the covers of discarded Golden Books.

Jewelry

If you need some jewelry to go along with your new Golden Books dress, Little Fly has just the thing –rings, necklaces and more made from the laminated pages of discarded books.

Kindle Case

Are you afraid people will make fun of you for owning a Kindle? Do you hang out in bad neighborhoods where it’s best to hide your valuable possessions? Either way, Etsy seller BustedTypewriter’s carved out book that works as a Kindle case might be just the solution you’ve been hoping for.

3D Artworks

These days, most people are willing to acknowledge that the best part of a Pulp Fiction novel is the cover. Artist Thomas Allen took this idea to a whole new level by cutting and folding these covers and then shooting the images with a shallow depth of field. The result is a fascinating narrative that is even more artistic and vivid than the original artists could have ever hoped for.

Cutout Arts

Brian Dettmer uses a similar medium as Thomas Allen. Only instead of photographing the covers of books that he has moved into position, he instead cuts away at pictures inside of books until the many layers of pages form an all new image. The results are amazingly detailed and strikingly beautiful.

Art Canvases

When most people see a book, they see a series of pages that form a story. Mike Stilkey sees a blank canvas. While he doesn’t exclusively paint on book covers, some of his most eye-catching artworks take advantage of the unique canvases. The only problem I see with the art is how you would take it down if it needed to go to a new museum or to a buyer’s home?

Of course, you can always give your books away to Good Will if you don’t have the motivation to tackle any of these projects yourself.

Have any of you ever used your books for non-literary purposes? If so, please share your stories in the comments.

This bookshelf designed by Corentin Dombrecht is purr-fect for a home with cats -since they are going to climb your bookshelves anyway! The wood is unpainted and unvarnished to prevent a cat from slipping, and there’s a built-in cat hammock on the top. The Cat-Library™ doesn’t seem to be available for sale -yet, but it is making the rounds of design shows. Link -via Metafilter

Mosaic artist Katy Galbraith made this wonderful shower stall of hand-cut tiles with some broken ceramics. There are tile books perched on the sink as well! It turns out, you can enjoy this bathroom yourself, as it is part of a rental accommodation called the Galvelmore House Garden Flat in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland. An artful spot for a private getaway! Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(Image credit: Flickr user Katy Galbraith)

If he were alive, Theodor Geisel would have been 107 years old today. You know him better as Dr. Seuss, the author of those books that taught you to read. In commemoration of the anniversary of his birth, Buzzfeed posted a list of Dr. Seuss trivia, some of which is even new to me! Link

Watch the books dance around while the clock spins in this time-lapse video. It will make you smile. -via Boing Boing

Even for Buenos Aires, the Ateneo Grand Splendid is a big name for a business. From the looks of it, this bookstore is both grand AND splendid! Yes, it was built as a theater, in 1919. The conversion to a bookstore in 2000 was done with care to preserve the grandeur of the original theater. See more pictures at 91 Days. Link -Thanks, Juergen!

Did you know you can get wallpaper that makes a room look like it’s full of books? I thought, “Neat.” Then I saw that there are many patterns of these wallpapers, some more convincing than others. The room pictured has no bookshelf -just wallpaper. See a half-dozen of these patterns at Remodelista Daily. Link -via Everlasting Blort

You’d be surprised at how many book stores across the country (and probably around the world) have cats living in them. It makes sense -people who enjoy books usually enjoy cats as well, often at the same time. In this mental_floss article, you’ll meet a dozen of the many bookstore cats who have their own fans, locally and online. Pictured is Asimov, resident cat at Seek Books in West Roxbury, Massachusetts. Link

Quite a few college towns have a bar named The Library, so you can honestly say you were at The Library last night (The Office is also a popular bar name). However, there is a trend toward bringing books and bars together, particularly in Los Angeles. These are real taverns that are lined with books that patrons can read and discuss -or you can just bask in the literary atmosphere. Styleture shows us four such bars, like The Wellesbourne, pictured here. Link -Thanks, chris!

Google has a new tool in which you can search the books that Google has digitized for a keyword and get statistics from as far back as the 16th century. The Google Book Ngram Viewer gives you data you can use to track the popularity of …just about anything. For example, Geeks Are Sexy looked as terms like “geek”, “computer geek”, and “computer hacker” to ascertain that geeks are indeed, gaining in popularity. Link

A new gallery is up at the Neatorama Art Blog! We welcome Julia Feld, who carves discarded and obsolete books into works of art.

I am a scientist by trade and have always enjoyed the visual elements of science (graphical representations of data, figures of theoretical models, diagrams of complex systems, etc).  People often focus on the information these elements contain, rather than appreciating their aesthetics.  I started carving books to draw attention to their beauty rather than their content.  I have made carvings that display the illustrations the books contain as well as some that depict topographical landscapes and “specimen boxes” that hold paper butterflies

Link

Some horror films are pretty silly even while they scare us to death, and that is often reflected in the titles. In fact, author R.L. Stine was probably influenced by real movies in naming the Goosebumps series of children’s books. If you are familiar with either, you’ll probably do well on today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored 70% because I know a lot of the movies, although I’ve never read a Goosebumps book. Link

If you want to really bring a smile to the face of the geek in your family, select a Christmas gift from a list compiled by geeks for geeks. In this guide from Geeks Are Sexy, you’ll find books that have passed the test -they stimulate the mind as well as entertain it! Link

You may have seen hand-printed marbled paper on the inside covers of books, or inside old luggage or cabinets. This pattern was achieved by floating inks and other chemicals on a liquid surface and then pressing paper against it. Variations in the basic process lead to different types of patterns, like this Spanish moiré on Turkish with gold vein pattern.

The pattern is created by making a Turkish pattern where the first colour used is gold. As further colours are dropped to complete the Turkish pattern, the gold constricts into veins. Then a paper, which has been folded in half is laid onto the bath, moving slightly from side to side to create the curvilinear gradations typical of this pattern.

Learn how other vintage patterns were made at BibliOdyssey. Link