Midweek Miscellany

The Backwards Novel Seen Backwards by Tom Gauld.

I also love Tom’s Lost Fairy Tales for a promotional concertina booklet made by his agent Heart (surely there’s a full length book to be had here?).

Ways of Reading from A Working Library:

Every book alights a path to other books. Follow these paths as far as you can.

Lovely.

Back to Basics — Booktwo.org‘s James Bridle on the Apple tablet (what else?):

I’ve spent several years urging publishers to get on board with new technologies and try new things, but equally I hope there’s space for a lot of publishers to get back to concentrating on what they do best: acquiring, editing, producing and publishing books… [W]e should probably stop scrambling to get on the latest bandwagon (vanilla Books-as-Apps, I’m looking at you), and concentrate on the basics: ebook production, metadata, integrated marketing, quality and consideration. There is a lot to be done, but this or that device will never be the be-all-and-end-all of the future of publishing.

I think James has a point. But honestly, no one I know (and that is an admittedly limited sample) believes “this-or-that device” will magically “save” publishing. Surely it is only bloggers in need of straw men and ‘journalists’ paid to hyperventilate who say that kind of shit?

Moving (swiftly) on…

Modern Myths — Will Self on H. G. Well’s The War of the Worlds in The Times:

The War of the Worlds is one of those books that demonstrates our culture’s surprising ability to continue the manufacture of myth. I say surprising, because one would think, with all the technological reproducibility of art now at our disposal — from raw print, to film, to digitisation — that there would be no room left for that hazy instability within which myth thrives.

(Pictured above: The NYRB edition of The War of the Worlds with illustrations by Edward Gorey)

And finally, completely unrelated to books…

Dear Coffee I Love You… Yes, yes, I do. (Pictured above: What I’d Rather Be Doing)