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Books

10 Great Books Starring Cats

By Emily Temple on

The Internet loves nothing more than cats, but it’s rare that we look beyond the cute photos and memes to more seriously consider their place in our world. Flavorwire’s Highbrow Cat Week is an attempt to remedy that, with a series of pieces devoted to analyzing their impact on the cultural realm.

Looking for something that’s kind of like a cat video, but a little more literary? Writers have long been inspired by their pets, and particularly, it seems, by their cats. It’s not surprising then that our feline friends figure prominently in some great books, from Russian classics to YA masterpieces to that one book everyone has definitely read. After the jump, find ten of the greatest books starring kitties of every persuasion. Is this list missing your favorite? Add it in the comments. … Read More

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Design

Clever Posters Chart the Colors in Famous Novels

By Emily Temple on

What colors are the insides of your favorite novels? Well, sure, the off-white of a book page — but what about the worlds they create? In artist Jaz Parkinson‘s color charts project, he has created graphic signatures of novels’ visual content, building mini rainbows that correspond to classic works. Needless to say, there’s a lot of red (blood) and white (milk) in A Clockwork Orange, and miles of black in McCarthy’s The Road. … Read More

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Books

Handwritten Manuscript Pages From Classic Novels

By Emily Temple on

These days, almost all works of literature are written on computers — from their first inklings, saved in a document called “notes,” to their final, emailed-out drafts — and even, increasingly, read on them. In such a climate, we are even more fascinated by the handwritten drafts and original manuscripts of classic literature, from which much can be inferred via handwriting, paper choice, and strength of pen marks. But mostly, they’re nice to look at, so with more than a little help from awesome Tumblr Fuck Yeah, Manuscripts!, we’ve collected a few of our favorite… Read More

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Books

10 Great Movies Based on Poems

By Emily Temple on

We’re all pretty comfortable with the idea of movies based on books — fiction, nonfiction, and even self-help books — but what about books of poetry? Last week, Open Culture posted a fascinating film based on the poetry of Sylvia Plath. While it might seem surprising to see a film based on a poem, it’s actually probably a lot more common than you think. To prove it, find ten great films based on poetry after the jump. Don’t see your favorite? Add it to the list in the comments. … Read More

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Books

Conspiracy Theories About Classic Literary Characters

By Emily Temple on

This week, we read a pretty fascinating article over at Salon, in which Greg Olear argues that Nick Carraway, the narrator of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, was gay and in love with the novel’s eponymous character. Though a Google search indicates that Olear’s not exactly the first person to think of this, we have to admit that we’d never considered the idea before, and his arguments are pretty persuasive. The article got us to thinking about the other theories and alternate interpretations that are floating around about some of our favorite classic literary characters. An investigation, and perhaps a few sides of characters you’ve never seen before, after the jump. … Read More

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Books

Fascinating Photographs of Famous Literary Characters in Real Life

By Emily Temple on

Though they exist in our minds in many forms — the way we conjured them up at first reading, the way they were illustrated or the way they were portrayed on screen — many of our most famous literary characters are in fact based on real people, and have “true” faces beyond any adaptation. Or at least to some extent — at least in fiction, very few characters are true carbon copies (except Kerouac’s). After the jump, we’ve collected a few photographs of the real people behind famous literary characters to invade your memories. Click through to check them out, and since there are of course many more to add to this list, get to it in the comments. … Read More

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Books

The Literary Canon as Graphic Novel

By Emily Temple on

Earlier in the year, we shared some of our favorite selections from the first volume of one of the coolest publishing projects we’ve heard about in a long time — The Graphic Canon, wherein almost 200 classic works of literature will be re-interpreted and published in graphic form by 130-odd visual artists over 1,344 pages in three volumes. Whew. The second installment, The Graphic Canon, Vol. 2: From “Kubla Khan” to the Brontë Sisters to The Picture of Dorian Gray, edited by Russ Kick, hits shelves next week, but we’re lucky enough to have a little preview to whet your appetite. Click through to check out a few standouts from the second volume of this amazing series, and then be sure to pick up a copy of the book for much more. … Read More

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Books

Literature’s Greatest Author and Illustrator Duos

By Heba Hasan on

Some of our favorite book illustrations have become just as near and dear to our hearts as the stories themselves. What would Winnie-the-Pooh be in our minds without those beautiful drawings of the pleasantly rotund, honey-colored bear? The best illustrator and author collaborations make the text inseparable from the images, to the point where we cannot picture the stories without the pictures, or vice versa. To honor the magical relationship that takes place when the right writer and artist meet, we have rounded up some of our favorite author and illustrator duos of all time after the jump.  … Read More

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Books

Yayoi Kusama’s Trippy Illustrations for ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’

By Emily Temple on

“I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland,” declares the dot-crazed Japanese artist in a new edition of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and we’re inclined to agree. We checked out the prolific Japanese artist’s awesome retrospective at the Whitney last week, and a stop in the museum’s gift shop led us to discover yet another treat: Alice in Wonderland has been given the Kusama dot treatment in a charming little book, which came out earlier this year. We think this is pretty much the perfect pairing, and if you do too, click through to check out a few pages from the book, and then be sure to check out this wonderful video to see even more! … Read More

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Pop Culture

10 Fictional Alphabets You Can Actually Use

By Jennifer Lewis on

You’re probably at an age where writing notes to buddies in a bizarre alphabet is not a top priority, but let’s take a minute to remember the good ol’ days — when summer notepads were scribbled with secret scripts that only you and your closest friends understood. Sure, those years might be gone, but that doesn’t mean we all can’t rekindle our love of strange fake alphabets in a grown-up pop culture kind of way, does it? Who wouldn’t love to put, “Can read and write English in Tolkien’s Elvish” on a résumé? Or perhaps Hylian, the language of Link and Zelda? After the jump, we’ve gathered the alphabets and handy English translations of ten awesome fictional languages from film, television, literature, and a couple video games, all thanks to the brilliance that is Omniglot.com. Feel free to write us a note in your chosen language and leave it in the comments. How? There will be a good bit of scanning and linking involved, of course. We never said passing secret notes over the Internet would be easy. … Read More

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