We are pretty jazzed to be working with the great folks at the  Bibliographical Center for Research in Denver, Colorado and Ingram Digital on this project. Here is the official press release. Stay tuned for more information as this program develops in 2009.

-POSTED BY THE BOOKHOUND

Today’s title is brought to you by the classic Bob Dylan song ‘Rainy Day Women, 12 & 35′…

I know that this’ll be a difficult pill to swallow (pun intended), but apparently the government believes that drugs are bad. In the event that you are not prepared to believe this, I have provided a recent government report of said topic.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with the subtle disclaimer: BOOKHOUND IS NOT CONDONING THE USE OF DRUGS.

That said, I want to engage you all in convivial discussion about the possibility (I believe, probability), that artistically, much good has come from the ‘assistance’ of various mediums.

Take for instance:

Baudelaire, Burroughs, Carrol

Clinton (whatever- he still smoked it)

Dali, Doyle, Edison, Freud, Gates (as in, William. He too, had some college days), Hoffman, Huxley

I still have quite a bit of alphabet to go- but you see the point. (here is the full list). So I present to you William James. His works in general ask much of the reader insofar as to insist that the very logic that is utilized by the majority of us, is in fact- wrong. A bold move for anyone. Certainly, this wasn’t a man who was out to placate the populous.

They say that alcohol is the truth serum, something to loosen one up, make it easier to ‘mingle’. Imagine then, the boldness that must come from copious amounts of nitrous oxide- one of many ‘tools’ that James was know to employ. For anyone who has ever questioned the nature of things- this is your book. James didn’t just want to check out the grass on the other side of the fence- he wanted to tear the thing down.

Varieties of Religious Experience

BUY THE  BOOK

A link to an AdAge video broadcast where the Google CEO responds to the Nicholas Carr article that was featured here on the blog a couple of weeks ago titled Adult ADHD and the decline of the book as “media”. The basic summary of Schmidt’s response: “it’s the same thing people said about TV forty years ago and we are smarter than ever”.

I am obsessed more than ever about the book as an “unplugging” from *all* electronic media and the value that ritual may offer us over the next 100 years.

Of course I am prejudiced b/c we are in the book business, but there is something therapeutic about what paper (no, not e-paper) does to my eyes if I can muster enough mental discipline to not be distracted in the first five minutes. Call me old school. I also still like taking hikes in the woods.

Watch the video here

- mitchell

POSTED BY THE BOOKHOUND

What I wanted was Steak. What I got was Tilapia. Although not as spectacularly colored next to the haricot vert (a green string bean with French attitude) that would accompany it; the price was too good to pass up. So this led me to wonder- are rising food costs changing the way we eat? I don’t remember eating Tilapia as a child, yet to be sure, it graces the plates of my family often enough to be mentioned.

Fish might just be the new steak, (you know- like flying monkeys are the new dog…), so I’ve done a little internet ‘fishing’ myself, and have found a modicum of proof, so read up on Tilapia’s role in our current dietary culture on SeafoodSource.com.

In honor of our delicious (and affordable) friends- the BookHound offers you ‘How to Cook Fish‘, by Myrtle Reed. Fish- it’s what’s for dinner. And what has been for dinner since this beauty was published back in the late 19th century!

Chock full of little yummies, this’ll give you a fab retort when everyone is standing around whining, ‘what’s for dinner?’ In a snap, you can tell them that they can choose one of TWENTY FIVE different ways to have their whitefish. Seriously.

Fan of eel? Lucky- you have forty-five recipes at your disposal!

Pretty soon- you’ll forget all about that filet mignon, and head straight for your local fishmonger.

You know what they say…’Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”…give a man ‘How to Cook Fish’, and he’ll soon have a party in his mouth.

We have rescued this culinary classic and re-published it in both large or small print. Or you can read it for free online at Gutenberg.org.

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Documenting the American South (DocSouth) includes eleven thematic collections of primary sources for the study of southern history, literature, and culture. These are arranged below in alphabetical order. Click on any collection to access an index of materials limited to that collection. To view an index of all materials in this digital library choose “Authors,” “Titles,” or “Subjects” from the navigation bar at the top of this page. Some materials are cross-referenced in multiple collections.

Check out the collections: http://docsouth.unc.edu/browse/collections.html

A couple of excerpts from a great article by Nicholas Carr I read in The Atlantic flying to American Library Association show in Anaheim last week (yes, on paper…). The article is discussing how “gathering information” online is changing our brains in a way unprecedented in history thus far.

The whole articles is available here: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

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“Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.”

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“As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.”

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“We are how we read.” Wolf worries that the style of reading promoted by the Net, a style that puts “efficiency” and “immediacy” above all else, may be weakening our capacity for the kind of deep reading that emerged when an earlier technology, the printing press, made long and complex works of prose commonplace. When we read online, she says, we tend to become “mere decoders of information.” Our ability to interpret text, to make the rich mental connections that form when we read deeply and without distraction, remains largely disengaged.

* (illustration from Bouncing Stars Artist Journal)