Wednesday, December 06, 2006

This and that

  • Love eighteenth-century literature? Know someone who does? Check this out then. It's Mall Flanders, "accessories for reading eighteenth-century British literature." It's got Brobdingnag and Lilliput University T-shirts and sweatshirts, two different Tristram Shandy mugs, a Robert Burns mousepad, an Alexander Pope clock, Academy of Lagado tote bags, and a Pamela journal. If I kept a journal anymore, I'd make sure I kept it in a Pamela journal. It's also got these stickers -- I must get my hands on this Tristram Shandy plotline sticker:


  • You've probably already seen the Un-suggestor (link via Maud), a Library Thing service which tells you what you don't need to read. You type in a book you own or have read, and it comes back with un-suggestions. What interested me about it was that when I typed in Mrs. Dalloway, I got back a whole bunch of religious books. I don't need to read Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Church or John R.W. Scott's The Cross of Christ or Millard J. Erickson's Christian Theology or Max Lucado's Just Like Jesus. Thank heavens. Similar books came up when I typed in Swann's Way, although the Harry Potter books came up too. The religious book results amuse me because I've got a brother who reads just those things. How did we end up in the same family? Well, long story.
  • Finally, I was interested to find this article (via Reading Matters) by Genevieve Tucker in The Australian. It's on book blogging, and it's pretty good. After a glowing mention of Metaxu Cafe, she says, "it's the conversation with other readers that is bringing them back again and again to share their considered readings and thoughts, rather than a constantly shifting, shimmering page of book news and snippets of the here and now." That strikes me as exactly right.