[…]
I’m made up of the memories of my parents and grandparents, all my ancestors. They’re in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I’m made up of everyone I’ve ever met who’s changed the way I think."
(Source: fourwasmydoctor, via weareallfromearth)
CEREBRAL MAPPING 2 | Jessica Drenk
Cerebral Mapping 2
cut books, wax
122” x 40”
2012
The Most Gorgeous Book Ever Has No Words Or Pictures, Just Color
This is the RGB Colorspace Atlas by Tauba Auerbach. The 8”x8” hardcover tome is pretty much an encyclopedia of every color in the RGB index. It’s huge, it’s gorgeous, and I want one.
(via albotas)
On my second last day here in Vancouver Cody and I stumbled upon the Book & Comic Emporium, a comic/book/movie store. It was crammed wall to wall and floor to ceiling with reading material. If you’re near Granville definitely check this place out, we spent quite some time in there just browsing (I wonder if they actually take inventory).
Just a little side note, I overheard the owner talking about shutting the place down due to lack of business, so visit soon if you were thinking of going.
Photos by Matthew Viveen
(Source: theviveen)
I remember once we were having iced tea on the Neisser porch and talking and just outside the porch was their badminton court and I was watching some kids play badminton and Ed had just shellacked me, and as I left the court for the porch, he said, “Don’t worry, it’ll all work out, you’ll get me next time” and I nodded, and then Ed said, “And if you don’t, you’ll beat me at something else.”
I went to the porch and sipped iced tea and Edith was reading this book and she didn’t put it down when she said, “That’s not necessarily true, you know.”
I said, “How do you mean?”
And that’s when she put her book down. And looked at me. And said it: “Life isn’t fair, Bill. We tell our children that it is, but it’s a terrible thing to do. It’s not only a lie, it’s a cruel lie. Life is not fair, and it never has been, and it’s never going to be.”
"Excerpt from Jasper Fforde’s The Woman Who Died A Lot:
‘Enid Blyton was writing very much of her time,’ she began, ‘a time of sandwiches, fizzy drinks, English supremacy, endless summers, cranberry jelly and a firmly entrenched and highly workable class system that was the envy of the world.’
I stole a look at Phoebe, who shrugged.
‘Everything was a lot simpler in those days,’ continued Mrs Hilly, ‘and the twisted and corrupted morals we see in modern life are but an aberration that we Blytonians aim to put right. By returning the books to their original and unsullied state before the heinous hand of political correctness trampled their true and guiding spirit, we will build a new England. One that smells of freshly baked bread and echoes with the sprightly call of rosy-cheeked farmer’s wives, dispensing fresh milk from churns to children dressed in corduroy and summer dresses.’
She was in full flow by now. We had all stopped eating, and were staring at her. I think she mistook our shock as agreement, so carried on with even more gusto:
‘To deny modern children the historical context of an age in which most foreigners were untrustworthy and women were useful only in the kitchen denies our children a realistic window into a bygone era that we should be promoting as an ideal to be cherish rather than a past to be improved and airbrushed.’
She stopped and smiled, then began to distribute leaflets that defined in more detail her Blyton-based political ideology.
It was true that Blyton books had been extensively revised over the years to accommodate shifting opinions, and it was also true that her books had been unfairly marked out as being a lot more offensive than they were - owing probably to a certain degree of intellectual snobbery and a fundamental misunderstanding of why they were written. The argument had raged for decades on either side, and culminated in the so-called ‘Noddy Riots’ of 1990, when the warring factions clashed on the streets of Canterbury, inflicting almost £6 million worth of damage and leaving six dead - not even the Marlowe/Shakespeare riots of 1967 had been that fierce.
‘Let me get this totally straight,’ I said. ‘You don’t want to just stop any more changes - you want to return that books to their pre-revisionist state and use them as a template for your view of a new and better England?’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ she replied, beaming happily. ‘A woman’s place is definitely in the home, England functioned better when the working class knew their place, and foreigners are incorrigibly suspect. What do you think “fundamentalist” means in “Blyton fundamentalist”? In fact,’ she went on, now in something of a lather, ‘we aim to reinterpret and enhance the texts to more subtly export our own ultra-English worldview, and have even written a series of commentaries as to what Our Blyton truly meant when she penned her great works. It is our intention to run the nation according to this new and radicalised Word of Blyton - we will insist that England is returned to a world of perpetual summers, simplistic politics and the expulsion of anyone who looks even vaguely foreign, and make the sacred words “gosh”, “crikey” and “wizzo” a compulsory part of the English lexicon.’
‘She doesn’t listen to me at all,’ said dad sullenly. ‘You know those “personal injury” travelling booths where dumb people who feign accidents go to grub for cash?’
Joffy said that he did.
‘They had one up at the Brunel Centre. A display with a table and some chairs. Your mother pretended to fall over it, then claimed she’d broken her hip and told them she wanted to make a claim — against them.’
‘How did it work out?’
‘There were three other personal injury salesmen there, and they all started fighting to represent her. I had to call the police when it came to blows. During the melee, she crept away giggling and said that watching personal injury lawyers punching one another had an inexplicable joy to it.’
‘At least it keeps her from playing dominoes at the day centre.’"
The Mathemagician, from Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth.
Leah Palmer Preiss
Click on the image if you’d like to read my blog post about this one.
A Letter to the Editor of The Times
A GRAVE WARNING TO UNSUSPECTING PERSONS
A report has reached me of a most alarming nature. It appears that some people called Bloomsbury are taking it upon themselves to publish a pernicious book - a novel no less! - that purports to describe the Glorious Revival of English Magic. I do not read novels - I am happy to say that I have never read one - but I understand that they enjoy a certain popularity among the more frivolous classes of society. Young ladies; married ladies; old maids; thoughtless young persons of both sexes; gamblers, profligates and libertines; servants who, whether by accident or design, have acquired an education beyond their station: these are the idle creatures who may be found at any hour of the night or day with a novel in their hands.
I despise all novels whatever the subject. I am told they promote a weakening of the intellect, moral stupor, morbid curiosity, and tend to encourage infections of the chest and eyes. All this is very dreadful but happily it is no concern of mine. But when that novel pretends to disseminate information upon English Magic - ah! then I must protest. Then it is incumbent upon me to warn the British Public of the terrible danger they run merely by opening this book.
As the architect and founder of the aforesaid Glorious Revival, I hope that my disapproval, my severe disapproval, will have some weight with these people called Bloomsbury (whoever they may be). I hope that when they learn they have incurred my displeasure they will cease upon the instant and not print this wicked book. If they remain obstinate, then I shall apply to my friends in the Government. I am not without hopes of success.
I am told that Messrs. Bloomsbury intend to publish this book in other countries. If some gentleman at the Foreign Office will be so kind as to furnish me with a list of those countries we consider our allies (I confess to experiencing some confusion upon this point), I shall be happy to have this letter translated into the relevant languages at my own expense. With the Former Colonies of the Americas, however, I have no sympathy. It is scarcely more than thirty or forty years since that impudent Nation severed itself from its lawful King with acts of wicked rebellion. By all means let this book be published there! If the Americans try to learn magic from it and if they accidentally turn themselves into cats or summon up manticores which consequently devour them, then I cannot see that it will be any great loss to any one.
Gilbert Norrell, Magician-in-Ordinary to the Admiralty
Hanover-square
London
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