The smell of books ("Smell of heritage: a framework for the identification, analysis and archival of historic odours")

If you're a "bookie," you'll love this scholarly article on the smell of books by Cecilia Bembibre and Matija Strlič. The chart of smells is fantastic. The article appears here.

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Restless Books series "The Face"

By Jack Brummet, Mod Lit Ed.

I've thought a lot about faces the last few years. I've now read both the the Abani and Ozeki volumes of "The Face" series (Restless Books). Both are very fine books. So far, three have been released.

"It's a jazzy concept: Give hugely talented writers the same basic notes (their own faces), turn them loose and watch them riff seemingly endless melodic variations on the theme. The prompt is diabolically clever…. deep, intricate, often funny, and genuinely moving meditations on family, ancestry, race, ethnicity, culture, aging, past, present and future…. If Restless Books can sustain this level of quality throughout the series, I'm in for the long haul.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

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Books by and about giants, rebels, blowhards, madmen, screwups and troublemakers

By Jack Brummet, Lit. Ed.

A lot of my favorite books are about rebels, eff-ups, blowhards, troublemakers, and giants (or some hybrid of these).  It's no coincidence that most of the books on the list are hilariously funny.  Some of these books are often referred to as picaresque novels.  A partial list, off the top of my head:

• almost any book - Jim Thompson
• Rivethead - Ben Hamper
• The Natural Man - Ed McLanahan
• Catch 22 - Jospeh Heller
• Moby Dick - Herman Melville
• In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash - Jean Shepherd 
• The Paul Bunyan Tales - the one true American myth that grew from folk tales in Canada and the midwest, and were collected and expanded upon by later writers.  These are great stories that I have reread my entire life.  When I was about ten years old, I had read every PB book in the King County and Seattle library system.
• Gargantua and Pantagruel - Francois Rabelais
• Bound For Glory - Woody Guthrie
• Amerika - Franz Kafka
• One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
• A Cool Million - Nathaniel West
• Henry IV, Part I - William Shakespeare
• A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
• The Good Soldier Schweik - Jaroslav Hasek
• Don Quixote - Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
• The Magic Christian - Terry Southern
• Blue Movie - Terry Southern
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter S. Thompson
• Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail - Hunter S. Thompson
• The First Third - Neal Cassady
• The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe
• The Monkey Wrench Gang - Edward Abbey
• Lord Of The Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien
• Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
• The Bad Popes - E. R. Chamberlin
• On The Road - Jack Kerouac
• Guerrilla Warfare - Che Guevara
• Revolution for the Hell of it - Abby Hoffman
• Steal This Book - Abby Hoffman
• almost any book - Carl Hiaasen
• almost any book - Elmore Leonard

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Reading Positions

[image provenance unknown

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Book igloo by Colombian artist Miller Lagos.

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Six books I'm going to hold off reading for a while

By Jack Brummet, Non-fiction Editor


Here are six books I'm going to hold off reading for a while.

In print; available from Amazon.

A guy got a patent on keeping a severed head alive.  In print, available on Amazon for $145.

In print; available from Amazon.

In print; available from Amazon. a thoughtful discourse on the creative, 

performative, psychological, and even occult aspects of the sharpener’s art.   

This is written by the same guy who wrote the "Get Your War On" comic strip.

In print; buy it at Amazon.  If you like language, it's pretty interesting to read a chunk of this to feel English without the "E"  He uses surprisingly few awkward constructions (you know that the -ed verbs had to be really tough to work around).  But the lack of "E's" surprisingly changes the sound of the language--both, by the lack of the "E" itself, and by the "A's" and "I's" and "O's" becoming more dominant visually, and in the sound of the language.

Still in print at Amazon.

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Summer reading - some books I read this summer

Here are the books I remember reading this summer. It's a pretty normal mix for me--a touch of Shakespeare, some fiction, some music books, poetry, several expedition books, and a lot of history and nonfiction.


NF - nonfiction; F - Fiction; M - mountaineering/expedition

The Tempest - William Shakespeare (F - more or less, in verse and play form)
The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier - Bruce Barcott (M)
Coltrane: The Story of a Sound - Ben Ratliff (NF)
Moo - Jane Smiley (F)
Julie & Julia - Julie Powell (NF: a cooking memoir)
The land where blues began - Alan Lomax (NF)
The story of Butch Cassady - Charles Kelly (NF)
Searching for the sound - Phil Lesh (NF)
Marvin Bell - Iris of creation (poems)
How to tell a secret - R.J. Huff and J.G. Lewin (NF)_
The last picture show- Larry McMurtry (F)
Montana's righteous hangmen - Lew Calloway (NF)
Memoirs of Fanny Hill - William Cleland (F)
Pop. 1280 - Jim Thompson (F)
In the presence of grizzlies - Peacock and Peacock (NF)
Dark Summit - Nick Heil (M)
Forever on the Mountain - James. M. Tabor (M)
Havana Nocturne - T.J. English (NF)
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