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Midweek Miscellany

The Creative Review previews an exhibition of the graphic design of the Eames opening at the PM Gallery in London next month.

Gravity — A profile of playwright Tom Stoppard, at Intelligent Life:

He gets the old books he needs from the London Library, the open-stack treasure-house in St James’s Square. It was founded by Thomas Carlyle and others in 1841, and Stoppard has been its energetic president since 2005. “I get a big kick out of the very existence of the London Library. I’d say it was an ornament to society, only it is more than an ornament. The centre of gravity of our morality is our literary culture.”

Special — China Miéville’s keynote speech at the 2012 Edinburgh World Writers’ conference on the future of the novel:

The blurring of boundaries between writers, books, and readers, self-publishing, the fanfication of fiction, doesn’t mean some people won’t be better than others at the whole writing thing, or unable to pay their rent that way – it should, though, undermine that patina of specialness. Most of us aren’t that special, and the underlining of that is a good thing, the start of a great future. In which we can maybe focus more on the books. Which might even rarely be special.

And finally…

Girls — Writing at CNN’s Geek Out! blog, Danica Davidson looks at manga’s popularity with women:

“I honestly believe women are just as interested in the comic format as men no matter the country of origin,” said Robin Brenner… author of Understanding Manga and Anime.

“Women are just are more likely to pick up titles that acknowledge or seek them as an audience,” she said.  Japan has been pursuing women and girls as an audience in earnest since the 1970s, whereas we here in the States left that audience behind in the 1970s”