Sunday, September 05, 2004



In these stories you will find some wonderful giants.
You will find beautiful maidens who lived in a black brook.
You will find a large family of little black dwarfs who lived under the river, and you will find a splendid hero.
The little children used to curl up in their mothers' arms, when bedtime came, and listen to the stories of these strange people.
When these little children grew up, they told the same stories to their children.
You will think of great giants walking over mountains.
You will think of the little black dwarfs under the river, and you will hear them hammering, hammering upon their anvils.
Agus mar gum bitheadh iad a’ d anamh imrich

Literature & Art Across Frontiers: Where the stream is the deepest there is silence, but where it is shallowest, it is noisiest
In the age of the Internet, some libraries are going hi-tech. They're now offering e-books -- books you can checkout without ever leaving your home or office.
From the comfort of his Park Ridge home, Paul Pacholski previews his latest library book. He just checked out The Cold River. (smile)
William Archer, on liquid ebooks in February 1888: The object of a story is to belong, to fill up hours; the story-teller's art of writing is to water out by continual invention, historical and technical, and yet not seem to water; seem on the other hand to practise that same wit of conspicuous and declaratory condensation which is the proper art of writing. That is one thing in which my stories fail: I am always cutting the flesh off the bones.

That rare thing, savvy Libraries Go High-Tech With E-Books [link first seen at Buzz of Books; Movement of Books ]
• · The little fire that warms is better than the big fire that burns: Amazon Reviews ; [The extraordinary true review; I couldn’t put it down. It was, uh, magisterial: Lie-in-the-bath-with-a-glass-of-wine kind of book; Jozef Imrich meets Victoria Wood ]
• · · I needed to get a lot of pain out of my system. One day it got too much and I had to write it down: I sat down and wrote for 10 days, exorcising my demons. I've never worked like that in my life. It was a liberating and strange experience [Bonfire of the Humanities A legendary editor at Harvard University Press asks, What good are books? ; Why Read subliminal messages? I'm for Me First ]
• · · · Dragons Saving Saint, Jessica Stockton of Three Lives & Company in New York City, I am a bookseller because ... ; [The art of theft]
• · · · · As a child I spent most of the day running bare feet along the muddy banks of Schwarzenbach (black brook in Vrbov) Go on, make my day if you dare play dirty ; [So there's the formula for writers: tea and sociopathy ]
• · · · · · Guess who invented the idea of going to the beach? Paris and Brisbane have both created city beaches and Bob Geldof was trying to establish one in London; Modern Man Continues to Search for God Grass does not grow on the high road