(via livejamie)
I have never been to SXSW, but excited to head down this year for SXSW 2010. In preparation for my time in Austin I polled a few friends to get their advice and thought I would share it here.
…
To the 4 million folks behind these numbers: You’re amazing. It’s because of you we have the greatest jobs in the world. We are eternally grateful.
To our strapping team back in New York (I’m in Florida for something!): It’s an honor to work with people so much smarter than me, that are so good looking.
Thank you.
I’ve been doing some thinking about book merchandise in the past week and have loved that this and the classic book cover tshirts have both popped up in my Tumblr feed. Maybe the universe is trying to tell me I’m doing something right. (via debbiestier)
[video]
Out of Print Clothing. Books on shirts. Shirts on a mission.
DO WANT! ALL OF THEM!
(found via quartercentury)
okay, so if being put on a t-shirt means you’re internet famous, i would like to congratulate salinger, rand, vonnegut, et al, for finally making it on the scene. you now join the ranks of selleckwaterfallsandwich.
bad jokes aside, officially in love with out of print.
Continuations: Defending (Internet) Freedom -
I love Italy - for vacations, that is. But the decision by a judge in Milan to convict several Google employees for the posting of a bullying video on Youtube is a serious threat to the potential of the Internet to be a force for freedom. I have been critical of Google many times on this blog,…
Loren.
30 Examples of Urban Decay.
I didn’t expect this from Web Design Ledger, but they are doing a collage of urban decay photography in their latest post. Beautiful.
I heard about The Girl With Glass Feet in this NY Times review and immediately got a copy (thanks to the good people at Henry Holt!). And while the Times’ reviewer says it much better than I can, I agree—this is truly an unusual and lovely book.
The title is literal—Ida Maclaird’s feet have turned to glass—and she has returned to the misty islands of St. Hauda’s Land to seek a cure, before the crystallization consumes her. St. Hauda’s Land, where Ida contracted her condition, is, as the Times’ reviewer points out, the land of Once upon a time. Misty, forested, populated (maybe) by unusual, magical creatures that flit among the trees—this is a place we think we recognize, but, one gets the sense, could never find on a map.
Aiding Ida in her quest is Midas, a profoundly awkward local who nevertheless possesses some kind of charm—at least, he didn’t annoy me, so there must be some sort of charm (grace?) there. Ida and Midas seek Henry Fuwa, an elusive man who seems to know the island’s secrets, and also take on the help of Carl Maulsen, a Maclaird family friend, as well as several others. The main characters’ back stories connect them all in ways that, in a normal book, would be ridiculous, but here, in this otherworldly land, it feels fated, and right. The complexities of Midas’s relationship with his father seem a bit overwrought, at times, but this is a minor complaint.
For a story about a supernatural affliction, this is a remarkably simple novel—not all that much actually happens, and the cast of characters is small. And Shaw’s writing is restrained but luminous, moving the story along crisply but pausing for moments that visually dazzle or make your heart ache.
In fact, in certain ways this reminds me of Elizabeth Kostova’s The Swan Thieves. Both writers seem extraordinarily gifted when describing their fictional worlds and characters, and both books rely heavily on back story for their force. But where Kostova’s book felt a little bloated, Shaw’s feels economical, giving both the story and the rhetorical beauty of his writing more weight.
When I finished this book I wished it wasn’t over, but I loved how it ended. I couldn’t agree with the Times reviewer more: “The end of the book, saturated with color and emotion, is risky and brave like the message it imparts. Only a heart of glass would be unmoved.”
The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw
Henry Holt & Co.
287 pages