A 24-hour book vending machine in Paris.

"Our biggest vending machine sellers are 'The Wok Cookbook' and a French-English dictionary,'' said Chambon, who added that poet Charles Baudelaire's "Les Fleurs du Mal'' -"The Flowers of Evil'' - also is "very popular.''

I've finally finished entering all of my books (just stuff I own or that is jointly owned, not any of nminusone's titles) into LibraryThing. 629 titles, which is both more and slightly less than I expected. (It makes sense to me, don't hurt your brain chewing on that one too hard.) In part this explains why people hate to help us move. Actually, it's the ( Read more... )

Today is Setting Orange, day 23 in the season of The Aftermath, 3271.

Curse you, chadu! This will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine.

The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana
If you're simply a reader who reads mystery, science fiction or horror, you'll find yourself spending entire afternoons jumping about the book. It's pretty damn amazing how complex ( Read more... )

Catching up in one swell foop. (Plus, I just wanted to use the new default icon.)

The weekend
The good part first: having friends come over for a slack evening of takeout from California Tortilla and sitting around watching Lewis Black DVDs and parts of "The Best of Christopher Walken" from Saturday Night Live. Made me think of zuggy9 and his "Cham-pan- ( Read more... )

I had intended to get up early-ish in the morning, go get another bag of topsoil for the garden, weedwhack the grass in the back yard, maybe dig out summer clothes from storage and put things in bags for Goodwill, and otherwise do productive things. Instead I slept for a bit more than 12 hours after passing out in exhaustion for no apparent reason ( Read more... )

I don't want anyone writing in to point out that I spend too much money on books, many of which I will never read. I know that already. I certainly intend to read all of them, more or less. My intentions are good. Anyway, it's my money. And I'll bet you do it too.

-Nick Hornby, The Polysyllabic Spree "A hilarious and true account of one man' ( Read more... )