If Books Grew On Trees

Created by Didier Muller for this year’s International Design Biennial in France, The Library Exchange is an installation intended to foster intra-community book donations and borrowing.
Link

Susan Orlean On Treadmill Desks

Susan Orlean: The Power of Walking While Working : The New Yorker:

 I got my treadmill desk about three months ago, but I’m still in the announcement phase. I would like to have it be known that I have walked while buying shoes online; while Photoshopping pictures of my cats; while e-mailing my son’s soccer coach; and while paying bills.

Incredible Reading Rooms Around the World

The British Museum’s reading room

A collection of exquisite places to settle in with a good book.

Library of Parliament in Canada

Photo credit: Stuck in Customs
William Randolph Hearst’s reading room/study

More at Flavorwire

CBC Books' summer reading list for 2013

Lisa Moore's Caught and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life are on my list as well.
See more CBC Books' summer reading recommendations 

Poet Christopher Logue reads: ‘I shall vote Labour’

In 1965  the British Labour Party’s magazine, Tribune, asked a selection of writers and artists who they would vote for in the 1966 General Election. This is poet Christopher Logue's contribution which he reads in 2002 in this video.

More at Dangerous Minds

A (Late) Mother’s Day Poem

I couldn’t make it to your brunch
But I hope you had a lot of fun
I want to explain to you why I flaked
It has something to do with that guy I told you about, Jake?


We hung out last night and had an awesome time
We were still hanging out this morning at 9
And, well, you always told me I should seize the day
So I thought I would bring him to meet you, okay?


He’s totally sweet, and respects me, I swear
Which is why I knew you’d be fine when you saw his punk hair
I thought we’d stop on the way to buy you candy and flowers
But first he had to get ready; his hairstyle takes hours


He was in my bathroom forever in the morning
We were going to be late, so I gave him a warning
“If you don’t come out of there right now, I swear
My mom’s gonna kill you. Stop doing your hair!”


I swung open the door and felt my heart groan
He was sitting on the floor and texting on his phone
I grabbed the phone out of his hands on a hunch
He was texting some girl to meet up after brunch


The messages were clear, if you know what I mean
I kept asking him about it, but he wouldn’t come clean
So instead of spending Sunday celebrating my mom
I was in my apartment with this guy getting my heart stomped on


It was your special day and I missed because of some dude
And that’s not how you raised me, and it’s really quite rude
I should have sent roses to say sorry on Sunday
or made you a card, or breakfast on a tray


But instead I’ll just say thank you for raising me strong
And being there for me even when my choices turn out wrong
And although my Mother’s Day present is late
I think you’ll like it: I’m dumping Jake.


I love you, Mom. Happy (late) Mother’s Day.


-Cecily


The Hairpin

Are you a grammar guru?

Take this quiz. I got 9 out of 10.

BBC News - 10 questions on grammar

How to Make the Perfect Cup of Tea: 11 Golden Rules from George Orwell

I love a strong cup of tea with a jaffa cake after lunch. I have a special machine that has settings for various types of tea. I mostly drink Barry's tea when I can find it.

Here is a rare recording of George Orwell sharing his tips on making the perfect cuppa.



Via Brain Pickings

Roddy Doyle: 50 Songs I Love

As classic novel The Commitments prepares to hit the stage for the first time, its author Roddy Doyle talks us through 50 songs he loves and the ones that make him proud to be Irish.

See Roddy's songs atSabotage Times

Bookish staircase

Via BOOK RIOT

History's Finest Letters of Motherly Advice

A letter from Anne Sexton to her daughter Linda:

Dear Linda,

I am in the middle of a flight to St. Louis to give a reading. I was reading a New Yorker story that made me think of my mother and all alone in the seat I whispered to her “I know, Mother, I know.” (Found a pen!) And I thought of you — someday flying somewhere all alone and me dead perhaps and you wishing to speak to me.

And I want to speak back. (Linda, maybe it won’t be flying, maybe it will be at your own kitchen table drinking tea some afternoon when you are 40. Anytime.) — I want to say back.

1st I love you.

2. You never let me down.

3. I know. I was there once. I too, was 40 with a dead mother who I needed still. . . .

This is my message to the 40 year old Linda. No matter what happens you were always my bobolink, my special Linda Gray. Life is not easy. It is awfully lonely. I know that. Now you too know it — wherever you are, Linda, talking to me. But I’ve had a good life — I wrote unhappy — but I lived to the hilt. You too, Linda — Live to the HILT! To the top. I love you 40 year old, Linda, and I love what you do, what you find, what you are!—Be your own woman. Belong to those you love. Talk to my poems, and talk to your heart — I’m in both: if you need me. I lied, Linda. I did love my mother and she loved me. She never held me but I miss her, so that I have to deny I ever loved her — or she me! Silly Anne! So there!

XOXOXO
Mom

More letters from famous mothers at Brain Pickings

Where Chefs Eat

Where Chefs Eat: A Guide to Chefs Favourite Restaurants — A worldwide restaurant guide collecting recommendations from acclaimed international chefs.It's a lovely looking book and there's a viddy at the site.

How To Find A Book

Where do you go to track down that book whose title you've forgotten?
Link Via Miss C

'Mockingbird' author Lee sues over copyright in NY

Harper Lee, who wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "To Kill a Mockingbird," filed a lawsuit Friday to re-secure the copyright to it.
 Link

Death is nothing at all

Death is nothing at all Death is nothing at all, I have only slipped away into the next room. I am I, and you are you; whatever we were to each other, that, we still are. Call me by my old familiar name, speak to me in the easy way which you always used, put no difference in your tone, wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow. Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we shared together. Let my name ever be the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of a shadow on it. Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight? I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near, just around the corner. All is well. Henry Scott Holland 1847 -1918

Death is nothing at all