Peace Love Books

Breathless by Jessica Warman When Katie Kitrell is shipped off...

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:05:49 -0400

Breathless by Jessica Warman

When Katie Kitrell is shipped off to boarding school by her distant father and overbearing mother, it doesn’t take her long to become part of the It Crowd. She’s smart, she’s cute, and she’s an Olympic-bound swimmer who has a first class ticket to any Ivy League school of her choice. But what her new friends, roommate, and boyfriend don’t know is that Katie is swimming away from her past, and from her schizophrenic older brother, Will, who won’t let her go. And when he does the unthinkable, it’s all Katie can do to keep her head above water.

Summer Reading List: Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:46:46 -0400

Summer Reading List: Daniel Handler aka Lemony Snicket:

Random House George R.R. Martin Giveaway

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:40:55 -0400

Random House George R.R. Martin Giveaway:

To celebrate the early success of George R. R. Martin’s Dance with Dragons, Random House is running a Twitter giveaway Thursday 7/21 through Monday 7/25.

To be eligible to win, retweet to @randomhouse between 10:00:00 am (ET) and 5:00:00 pm (ET) on the following dates in July 2011 - 7/21, 7/22,…

Harry Potter Tote Bag. by onemoreofme Cute!

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 11:35:57 -0400

Harry Potter Tote Bag.

by onemoreofme

Cute!

(via life through the lens…: paperclip fabric bookmark...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:54:33 -0400

(via life through the lens…: paperclip fabric bookmark tutorial…)

Canadian reveals Somali pirate secrets in new book

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 18:51:47 -0400

Canadian reveals Somali pirate secrets in new book:

A June 1, 2009, photo of Canadian author Jay Bahadur posing with Somali villagers in Dhanane, the semiautonomous region of Puntland, Somalia, while researching a book about piracy.

12 Famous Fairy Tales Deconstructed, Not unlike Emma...

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:34:02 -0400

12 Famous Fairy Tales Deconstructed,

Not unlike Emma Butler’s Movie Parts project, Simone Massoni’s 12 Famous Fairy Tales in Pieces are fun pieces of art that take famous stories and break them down to their components.

—Buzz Feed

Famous for the wrong book

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:30:32 -0400

Famous for the wrong book:

There’s a big difference between an author’s best-known work, and their best

Joseph Heller: There’s only one catch - his best book is Something Happened. Photograph: Todd Plitt/AP

— John Self, The Guardian

I would have to agree, Cat’s Cradle is much better Vonnegut book than Slaughterhouse Five…

World War Z by Max Brooks The Zombie War came unthinkably close...

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 17:12:45 -0400

World War Z by Max Brooks

The Zombie War came unthinkably close to eradicating humanity. Max Brooks, driven by the urgency of preserving the acid-etched first-hand experiences of the survivors from those apocalyptic years, traveled across the United States of America and throughout the world, from decimated cities that once teemed with upwards of thirty million souls to the most remote and inhospitable areas of the planet. He recorded the testimony of men, women, and sometimes children who came face-to-face with the living, or at least the undead, hell of that dreadful time. World War Z is the result. Never before have we had access to a document that so powerfully conveys the depth of fear and horror, and also the ineradicable spirit of resistance, that gripped human society through the plague years.

Ranging from the now infamous village of New Dachang in the United Federation of China, where the epidemiological trail began with the twelve-year-old Patient Zero, to the unnamed northern forests where untold numbers sought a terrible and temporary refuge in the cold, to the United States of Southern Africa, where the Redeker Plan provided hope for humanity at an unspeakable price, to the west-of-the-Rockies redoubt where the North American tide finally started to turn, this invaluable chronicle reflects the full scope and duration of the Zombie War.

Most of all, the book captures with haunting immediacy the human dimension of this epochal event. Facing the often raw and vivid nature of these personal accounts requires a degree of courage on the part of the reader, but the effort is invaluable because, as Mr. Brooks says in his introduction, “By excluding the human factor, aren’t we risking the kind of personal detachment from history that may, heaven forbid, lead us one day to repeat it? And in the end, isn’t the human factor the only true difference between us and the enemy we now refer to as ‘the living dead’?”

Note: Some of the numerical and factual material contained in this edition was previously published under the auspices of the United Nations Postwar Commission.

Eyewitness reports from the first truly global war:

“I found ‘Patient Zero’ behind the locked door of an abandoned apartment across town….His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bonds, there was no blood. There was also no blood on his other wounds….He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls. At first the villagers tried to hold me back. They warned me not to touch him, that he was ‘cursed.’ I shrugged them off and reached for my mask and gloves. The boy’s skin was…cold and gray…I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse.” — Dr. Kwang Jingshu, Greater Chongqing, United Federation of China

“‘Shock and Awe’? Perfect name….But what if the enemy can’t be shocked and awed? Not just won’t, but biologically can’t! That’s what happened that day outside New York City, that’s the failure that almost lost us the whole damn war. The fact that we couldn’t shock and awe Zack boomeranged right back in our faces and actually allowed Zack to shock and awe us! They’re not afraid! No matter what we do, no matter how many we kill, they will never, ever be afraid!” — Todd Wainio, former U.S. Army infantryman and veteran of the Battle of Yonkers

“Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it?…For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth.” — General Travis D’Ambrosia, Supreme Allied Commander, Europe

Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a...

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:53:57 -0400

Orphan, clock keeper, and thief, Hugo lives in the walls of a busy Paris train station, where his survival depends on secrets and anonymity. But when his world suddenly interlocks — like the gears of the clocks he keeps — with an eccentric, bookish girl and a bitter old man who runs a toy booth in the train station, Hugo’s undercover life, and his most precious secret, are put in jeopardy. A cryptic drawing, a treasured notebook, a stolen key, a mechanical man, and a hidden message from Hugo’s dead father form the backbone of this intricate, tender, and spellbinding mystery. With more than three hundred pages of original drawings, and combining elements of picture book, graphic novel, and film, Brian Selznick breaks open the novel form to create an entirely new reading experience. Here is a stunning, cinematic tour de force from a boldly innovative storyteller, artist, and bookmaker.

An official trailer has been released forHugo, Martin...

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:51:33 -0400

An official trailer has been released forHugo, Martin Scorsese’s adaptation of The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, starring Asa Butterfield, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ben Kingsley, Jude Law, Ray Winstone, Christopher Lee, Helen McCrory, Richard Griffiths, Frances de la Tour, Emily Mortimer and Michael Stuhlbarg. The film is set for a November 23 release.

— Shelf Awareness, July 19th, 2011

Wreck This App- Kerri Smith

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:46:17 -0400

Wreck This App- Kerri Smith:

With Wreck This App, you’ll tap into your creative side in an entirely new way: by exploring your best mess-making and destructive abilities. Guided by more than 50 prompts and using a spectrum of drawing tools, you can tap “holes” through the screen, “Drip” different inks, and then smear them all together, deface your least favorite picture of yourself, scribble furiously, color outside of the lines! And when you’ve wrecked your app, you can post evidence of your creative destruction on Facebook or Flickr!

Based on the world-wide and phenomenally successful book Wreck This Journal by author and illustrator Keri Smith, Wreck This App brings destructive creativity right to your fingertips. Let the wrecking begin!

20 Alcoholic Beverages Inspired By The Harry Potter Series

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:43:07 -0400

20 Alcoholic Beverages Inspired By The Harry Potter Series:

If you’re looking for a way to celebrate (or forget) that a significant piece of your childhood has ended, then these are the drinks to do it with.

Minerva McGonagall

Ingredients:
2 parts brandy, blackberry
1 part gin
1 part vermouth, extra dry
1 tbsp. lime juice Instructions:
‘Rim cocktail glass with lime juice. Add ingredients, mix, and serve.’ Accounting for how awesome she was in the Deathly Hallows conclusion, this drink should be given special purpose.

"Out of Print": Fabulous Books to Fabulous Clothing

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 11:37:11 -0400

For each shirt iheartclassics sell, one book is donated to a community in need through their partner Books For Africa.

Out of Print makes sweet apparel based on classic works of literature. We love their mission and their style. Below are some of our favorite pieces. Thanks to rapunzelizabeth for the tip! Follow her, she’s cool.

Lane Smith, author of one Black Bond Books’ favourite...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 13:09:41 -0400

Lane Smith, author of one Black Bond Books’ favourite children titles, It’s a Book, has a new title coming out this August 30th, 2011! Grandpa Green is a a timeless story of family history, legacy, and love.

Grandpa Green wasn’t always a gardener. He was a farmboy and a kid with chickenpox and a soldier and, most of all, an artist. In this captivating new picture book, readers follow Grandpa Green’s great-grandson into a garden he created, a fantastic world where memories are handed down in the fanciful shapes of topiary trees and imagination recreates things forgotten. In his most enigmatic and beautiful work to date, Lane Smith explores aging, memory, and the bonds of family history and love; by turns touching and whimsical, it’s a stunning picture book that parents and grandparents will be sharing with children for years to come.

Doggy Bookends, It’s always nice to include your pets in...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:58:29 -0400

Doggy Bookends, It’s always nice to include your pets in household duties.

For the 60th Anniversary of The Catcher in the Rye: Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?/Green Day, and more

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:48:09 -0400

For the 60th Anniversary of The Catcher in the Rye: Who Wrote Holden Caulfield?/Green Day, and more:

In honor of the 60th anniversary today of the publication of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, we’re reposting our original list of songsinspired by the novel, supplemented with other Salinger-related songssuggested by our readers.

The Rescuers By Margery SharpIllustrated by Garth Williams The...

Mon, 18 Jul 2011 12:45:50 -0400

The Rescuers

By Margery Sharp
Illustrated by Garth Williams

The Rescuers follows the beautiful white mouse, Miss Bianca, on her very first mission. Full of thrills and humor, Sharp’s book is graced by the pen-and-ink drawings of Garth Williams, the renowned children’s book illustrator of such classics as Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web, and Little House on the Prairie.

Unusual Bookstore Signs

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:56:43 -0400

Unusual Bookstore Signs:

The function of a bookshop sign is to draw attention to the passerby in hopes they will be enticed to enter the store. These signs use large figures catch your eye and one is a little creepy.

— aprettybook.com

The Pirate King by Laurie R. King New York Times best selling...

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 11:54:05 -0400

The Pirate King by Laurie R. King

New York Times best selling author Laurie R. King returns with a swashbuckling Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes mystery that ventures into the world of early silent films. Working on a movie of The Pirates of Penzance takes a less glamorous turn, though, when the pirates take hostages, and Russell must choreograph an escape if she’s going to make it to the final reel.