choices

More than two dozen vandals
who hosted a party inside Robert Frost's former home were
ordered to take a class on his poetry, taught by Frost's
biographer. "This is where Frost is relevant," Jay Parini
said to the class, speaking about Frost's poem "The Road
Not Taken." "You come to a path in the woods where you can
say, 'Shall I go to this party and get drunk out of my
mind?' Everything in life is choices."
--Harper's

I Love Libraries

So I've recently decided that part of my life's work will be to tour the world's most beautiful libraries. This one, La Biblioteca de la Real Academia de la Lengua, in Madrid, would be a good place to start. Here is a url for more awesome libraries, from a great travel blog called Curious Expeditions: http://curiousexpeditions.org/?p=78

All I Want is a Silver Plated Tortoise

For more, see Huysmans' "Against Nature"

Too True

"There are only two things that can destroy a healthy man: love trouble, ambition, and financial catastrophe. And that is already three things, and there are a lot more." --Peter Altenberg, Fechsung

Anna Akhmatova

well, if you're going to be a tragic genius, get your heart broken all over the place, suffer physical and artistic persecution from your government and stuff, might as well do it looking like this

A B C X X X

Censorship is bad, but these pictures of censored books are kind of nice.

sweet peripheries

I discovered the website of this library based in Brooklyn called "The Reanimation Library." Basically, it houses a collection of out of print and outdated books, and caters to artists, writers, etc. It sounds totally awesome.
Link

cover charge

okay so here are some scans of book covers from the 40's, 50's, and 60's. The cover art on the more serious novels tend to be better, but i thought some of these were pretty funny.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jl-incrowd/sets/

killing time

Instead of working, I spent some time perusing antique medical texts...this persian skeleton is great. Link.

I love old books

If I had the money and the time, I would collect books like this one. Is it wierd to say that I bet it smells amazing?