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Delightful and Hilarious Vintage Library Videos

By Alison Nastasi on

We haven’t stopped giggling over the hilarious 1987 workout video for librarians that we told you about earlier this week. Seeing Betty Glover and her team of aerobicizing bookworms do the “horizontal drawer pull” and “Coke machine kick” to Van Halen and Paul Lekakis’ “Boom Boom (Let’s Go Back to My Room)” inspired us to seek out other vintage library clips. Find out what happens when pop culture and books join forces for literary raps, a Stevie Nicks reading, Captain Kirk confessions, and more. … Read More

New York

Photo Essay: Meet New York’s Loyal Public Library Patrons

By Paul Hiebert on

You know those places with all the books? Those storehouses of archived newspapers, art magazines, academic journals, and fiction written for young adults? Libraries? Well, they’re still here, and according to a new study New York’s public libraries are “serving more people in more ways than ever before.” To get a better sense of who these people are and why they’re still trudging to their local edifice of knowledge in a stay-at-home age of smartphones, Kindles, and the World Wide Web, we visited a few branches throughout the city. Meet the people we met inside. … Read More

Books

Tiny Libraries, DIY Reading Rooms, and Other Micro Book Depots

By Alison Nastasi on

We aren’t shy about sharing our love for books — and all the amazing places they are housed — around here. You visited some of the most beautiful college libraries in the world with us, we told you about our favorite bookstores — and highlighted your picks — plus much more. We wanted to venture into DIY territory and visit some of the tiniest — but gutsiest — libraries around the world. These are unusual places where lit lovers ventured to create a mini community athenaeum, and guerrilla librarians have set up camp in the face of budget cuts and closing institutions. Each micro library’s aim is different, but whether they’re promoting independent/alternative presses, or simply trying to encourage reading, these plucky, little libraries deserve your attention. Tell us your faves, and as always, drop us a line with the ones we may have missed in the comments below. … Read More

Design

Pic of the Day: Coffee Shop Shaped Like Sideways Library

By Judy Berman on

Behold, the seamless combination of three of our favorite things: books, caffeinated beverages, and odd design. No, reader, you’re not hallucinating. This really is a Manhattan coffee shop (a branch of the D’Espresso chain) decorated to look like a library turned on its side. Our friends at Fast Company Design report that “[t]he “books” are actually tiles printed with sepia-toned photos of bookshelves at a local travel bookstore that ring the room, including the floor, walls and ceiling.”  The wall on the left (or should we say the floor?) bears a “dark hardwood herringbone pattern.” Another awesome detail: The light fixtures hang sideways from a wall whose windows look like skylights. … Read More

Books

Literary Links: Sexy Library Edition

By Lauren Hubbard on

We’ve always been big readers here at the Flavorwire office, but lately with the ebook craze flying around, we may have neglected our ink-and-paper pals down at the local library. But they’re not about to take that lying down. Library news is all over the place recently, and in solidarity for our favorite writers and readers, we bring you the latest from the world of overdue books.

A New Jersey librarian named Andy Woodworth has gathered over 4,400 people to a Facebook group, petitioning Ben & Jerry’s to launch a library themed flavor to raise awareness for libraries “in the face of stagnant or slashed state, county, and municipal budgets”. Lots of flavors have been suggested, including Gooey Decimal System, Dusty Stacks and Li-Berry Pie – even Ben & Jerry’s own Arnold Carbone has suggested Malt Whitman, which makes it look like the company is taking the idea seriously. [via The… Read More

Books

Book Within a Book Within an Invisible Library

By Sarah Sternberg on

I’ve often wished that I could have read the first few pages of the ingeniously-titled “Life of Packaging – Fragments of an Autobiography: Volume IX – The Styrofoam Years.” This fictional title, brought to life in the fictional pages of Jonathan Coe’s What a Carve Up! , along with “The Grasshopper Lies Heavy” in Philip K Dick’s Man in the High Castle, and the host of metafictional books conjured up by Dickens, Stephen King, and Haruki Murakami in their own novels, have eluded the general public for the simple fact that they don’t exist — they are perfectly-formed fragments of the fantasy world that the author dangles tantalizingly in front of the readers, but that is never fully graspable.

Until now.

Readers, take my hand as we go through the looking glass and emerge in a reality where these metafictional titles really do exist, courtesy of the Invisible Library. … Read More

Books

Oversight: 1. regulatory supervision 2. an inadvertant omission [Literary Links]

By Kristen O'Toole on

As we mentioned earlier, the long list of finalists for the Man Booker International Prize was announced today by judging panel chair Jane Smiley in a press conference held at the New York Public Library. Flavorwire pal Ron Hogan did some great Twittereporting from the conference; there’s a lot of chatter around the scarcity of East Asian and Middle Eastern writers on this and past Booker Int’l lists.

Speaking of lists and Brits, The Times has a piece on 10 literary one-hit wonders. Apparently, “one-hit” refers exclusively to novels, because the list includes Oscar Wilde, J.D. Salinger, and Sylvia Plath. Who needs plays, short stories, or poetry? … Read More

Books

FW Exclusive: Andrew Beccone Reveals 9 of the Coolest Books You’ve Never Seen

By Caroline Stanley on

The REANIMATION LIBRARY is a small, independent collection based in BROOKLYN where you can find a strange collection of books that have fallen out of mainstream circulation. In the beginning it was just a personal resource for ANDREW BECCONE — a young indie musician who scanned art from random old books to create fliers for his band. But now the space is open to the public, so that artists, writers, and other cultural archeologists can use the books as source material.

Before you make the field trip to Gowanus, check out a sampling of some of Beccone’s favorite finds after the jump. … Read More