So many books in the world

Google counted, and there are 129,864,880 books in the world. Click through to see how they counted or, if you read one a week, you can get started on the next 2.5 million years of reading.

Dear Daddy Long Legs, please do advise

Some might suggest that, of women in literature, Juliet Capulet might not be the best for love advice. Mostly because she was 13, and my love advice at 13 involved having friends talk to boys for you and wearing Bonne Bell Lip Smackers.

I would prefer to ask...erm...I actually can't think of anyone I would prefer to ask. Awkward. Thoughts?

Outer space + reading = awesome

Outer space is super awesome. Case and point made by this picture, taken from the Hubble:

Check out an explanation of what this picture is and even more pictures, from the book Hubble: A Journey Through Space and Time by Edward J. Weiler, at Boing Boing. They include the Sombrero Galaxy! Man, I wish I were a scientist.

Knowledge of volcanoes trumps that of zombies

Hello, American friends stuck in Europe and European friends stuck everywhere but Europe. Are you mad about this whole Iceland/volcano thing? If so, I hope you are only mad at yourself, for not being properly prepared for the temporary volcano apocalypse in the same manner that I'm sure all of you are ready for the zombie apocalypse and Y2K part 2 (The Reckoning).

For those of you who are sure you would be ready for volcanobliteration, take this quiz of volcano knowledge (um, about volcanoes in literature) and see how you stand. Stand ye strong?

I took this quiz and got 5 out of 10, and the admonition, "Don't blow your top, but nothing much erupted there." So maybe someone else should be in charge of our survival from volcanoes. Volunteers?

George Washington: Thieving scalawag

George Washington forgot to return 2 library books in 1789, and now owes $300,000 in library dues. Shame on you, father of our nation. Returning library books is a civic duty, sir.

1770, a great year for sex

The 1770s, which saw the American Revolutionary War and the beginning of Britain's industrial revolution, was a trying decade for England. Luckily, that timeframe also saw the publication of the erotic pamphlet, The Crafty Chambermaid.

While we all appreciate ye olde erotica (Boccaccio, looking at you), not only is this original mass market written in verse, but the titles of the three segments are faboosh, being "How the young Merchant fell in Love with his Mother's Chambermaid"; "How they met in a Grove, where the young Merchant attempted her chastity"; and "How the Crafty Chambermaid outwitted the Merchant, by putting an old Bunter to her bed, which so affrighted him that he ran down Stairs and alarmed the Family; Concluding with their happy Marriage, and other things of Note".

Also from the article:

Another title in the collection is The Devonshire Garland. "This one's slightly racier," said custodian Emma Wright. "It includes incest and all sorts of things – the main protagonist dies when she realises she's inadvertently slept with her son."

People in the 1770s really knew how to party.

Eating, reading, and Laura Ingalls Wilder

I have a deep love for Laura Ingalls Wilder--at first, when I was little, almost entirely because she was another Laura, but later because her adventures were so awesome. Now I have another reason to love: her written food-gasm. Pete Wells writes:

Some of Wilder’s accounts of hog butchering are exact enough to serve as manuals. If you have a big enough pot (and the fortitude to scrape out a pig’s cranium), you could follow her directions for boiling the head meat, then chopping, seasoning, cooling and shaping it. You would have head cheese. And while her description of Ma’s cooking off the fat in big iron pots over a wood stove might not inspire can-do confidence in a first-time lard renderer, it does, in fact, give a reasonably complete picture of the process, down to the skimming and draining of the crunchy solids, the cracklings.

Om nom nom. Plus, he includes recipes! Hurray, Laura Ingalls Wilder, greatest of writers and first food writer I ever cared about.

Margaret Atwood loves Twitter.

Seriously, she loves the Twitter. She writes:

One follower led to another, quite literally. The numbers snowballed in an alarming way, as I scrambled to keep up with the growing horde. Soon there were 32,000—no, wait, 33,000—no, 33,500… And before you could say LMAO (“Laughing My Ass Off,” as one Twitterpal informed me), I was sucked into the Twittersphere like Alice down the rabbit hole. And here I am.

Oh my goodness, Ms. Atwood, I officially love you.

A man of twists and turns

No, not that man. In fact, men are not the only twisty turny creatures, as these stories fit the description as well! The link leads to a map of the paths of four different stories and the different geographical locales they have shown up in through time.They all start in the Fertile Crescent and most end up in LA. Coincidence?

History! So important!

You have a collection of what?

Mental Floss has an awesome list of odd collections at the libraries of different universities. One of my favorites:

If you’re looking for a particularly obscure spell, Cornell might have some answers for you. The Cornell Witchcraft Collection includes over 3,000 titles that examine the history of persecuted witches. Although the collection—which the school started assembling in the late 19th century—focuses mostly on the theological aspects of treating witches as heretics, there are also Latin volumes on demonology and graphic depictions of the torture of suspected witches.

Maybe there is a reason to go to Ithaca.

Happy anniversary, the phone book

Or, more pointedly, congratulations the phone book, for still being around! What's more:

Thought The Da Vinci Code or the Bible were the most popular printed works ever? Paul Collins, writing in Slate, says you're wrong: the phone book is, having gone viral after the first one-page directory was printed in New Haven in February, 1878. The same posturing for attention that we see today on sites like MySpace or Facebook surfaced there, too, as people changed their names to things like Zznar or Aaaaaron to assure a prominently first or last position in the listings. Thought that language was purer b4 the proliferation of SMS shorthand and twitter books? Because of space constraints, telephone books brought abbreviation to an apotheosis unparalleled until texting. (In phone book speak, you could say that you were meeting “wm” at the “delctssn” after seeing your “phys.”)

Oh snap, modern society. Respect your elders.

Unearthing more of Shakespeare's world

Digging up Shakespeare's lawn was not enough, reader types! Archaeologists have excavated both the Rose and the Globe, and have found...things. Like food remains: oysters, crabs, mussels, periwinkles, cockles, Walnuts, hazelnuts, plums, cherries, peaches, dried raisins and figs. But class ruled all:

The distribution of food remains over the site suggested that there was a class divide in the consumption of snacks. [Julian] Bowsher explained that remains found underneath the gallery seating suggested that the wealthier classes munched on crabs and sturgeon, as well as imported treats like peaches and dried figs. Meanwhile, oyster shells were found scattered all over the yard area, where commoners stood.

"At that time, oysters were indeed the staple diet of the poor," Bowsher said.

There was also a lot of pipe smoking, proving that the Globe and the Rose were mostly in use before the smoking ban in New York. Or they weren't in New York. Science!

Ancient Zelda manuscripte, available in magnet form

An intrepid medievalist, going about the course of his research, has stumbled across an ancient illuminated manuscript that includes the opening scroll from The Legend of Zelda on NES. He managed to copy and upload the image to the internet without damaging the fragile page, so we can all appreciate the talent and wisdom of the ancients.

He goes on to explain some of the conventions of the form. Plus, you can buy it as a magnet.

I'll see you in hell (the video game tie-in)!

Pew pew pew pew oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you there, I was busying shooting the denizens of hell in Dante's Inferno, the video game. Virgil got me past a lot of the circles, but I can't escape Count Ugolino gnawing on my head.

After this, Electronic Arts will be putting out a game based on Boccaccio's Decameron, in which you try to avoid getting the plague by retiring to your country villa and telling stories while the poor die around you. Oh no, watch out for the syphilis!

Grammar lovers beware: People realize language evolves

Stop the presses: some grammar rules do not predate the English language. Once a year somebody pops up and tries to say that grammar rules shouldn't apply because they were different in Shakespeare's day. Apparently, "the grammatical doomsayers had better find themselves some chill pills fast, because the crimes-against-the-language rate is going to skyrocket here in the electronic age."

As a grammatical doomsayer, I say boo, grammar whiners--just because you plan on breaking the rules more often doesn't mean I have to chill out. There are certain standards the English speaking world ascribes to, and to pretend like they're not important because they are somewhat arbitrary is ridiculous. Saying Lord Byron spelled and punctuated differently doesn't change the fact that modern standards do not include replacing c's with k's (even for krazy kars!) or pluralizing with z's. Grammar is for klarity, reader types, and is also just a klassy way to be.

E-merson for the enthusiastic

If you've heard of Hemingway (and I'm not sure if you have), you've probably heard of this "Emerson" guy as well. And for $10 on the internet, you can read the collected works of Emerson—something that would cost you hundred or thousands of dollars in a paper copy.

Clearly Emerson was all about e-books, as Mick Sussman quotes, "'To those dwelling in the old,' wrote Emerson, the new 'comes like an abyss of skepticism,' but 'the eye soon gets wonted to it' as its 'innocency and benefit appear.'" Since disagreeing with Emerson makes you a terrorist (he was a great American!), e-books must be great. Quod erat demonstrandum.

Handwriting is dead, long live the computer

Almost two years ago, Anne Trubek wrote an article declaring the death of handwriting, and people went apeshit. Fast forward to this year, in which she still thinks the same thing, no matter how many people yell. She writes:

Most of us know, but often forget, that handwriting is not natural. We are not born to do it. There is no genetic basis for writing. Writing is not like seeing or talking, which are innate.

Oh, snap. The whole article is really interesting, and recaps a history of the written word and handwriting (really, really briefly). It also says, about A.N. Palmer and his system of handwriting, "He rejected the slightly fey Spencerian for a muscular, rugged script better suited to a commercial culture."

The real question, then, is: did Palmer invent modern handwriting? Or modern MANdwriting?

The art of return

An American soldier who took some things from Hitler's stash at the end of WWII just found out that one of the things he took was a book of Hitler's art (hey, it's a book, it's book related, hence: blog material).

Okay, so it's slightly misleading. These aren't paintings done by Hitler, but pictures of paintings he got (at least one from Mussolini!) that were going to be in a museum. So hey, you, check your attic for WWII treasures that may have been looted. And then mail them to me, and I will sell them on the black market.

...You're welcome.

Digging up Shakespeare's trash

Archaeologists are digging up Shakespeare's lawn, in the hopes of finding his shit. His literal shit. Ahem:

Richard Kemp, of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, said: “We are hoping to find organic debris that will teach us what the great man had for dinner. Our dream find would be the first draft of The Tempest, which we know Shakespeare did write here.”

I don't know if Shakespeare would approve, but, hey, he's dead. Any bets on what they find? Slash what he might have had for dinner?

Some people still use typewriters, also mimeographs

Ok, the mimeograph part was a joke. But many authors heart their typewriters. Says Frederick Forsythe:

"I have never had an accident where I have pressed a button and accidentally sent seven chapters into cyberspace, never to be seen again," he points out. "And have you ever tried to hack into my typewriter? It is very secure."

Touche to you, sir. The main perk I see in a typewriter is no internet, no solitaire (spider or otherwise), no distractions (no this blog is not one massive distraction from potentially more important work, hush). That said, no one would write me comments if this blog was typewriter based. So huzzah technology—you are more useful than not!