Category: Books

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Books

Tokyo Vice

This interview was posted on Boing Boing last week but I’ve only just got around to reading it. Jake Adelstein is an American journalist who for the past twelve years has been a crime reporter for Japan’s largest newspaper.

Reading the introduction to the interview I wonder if describing his exploits as “crazy adventures” gives them a misleadingly whimsical air.

And as I turned my back to leave, he jumped on me. He started hitting me really hard and kicking me. So I ran to the corner of his room and got a golf club, and kept hitting his knee until his knee broke. I was just running around in circles aiming at his knee. Even after his knee broke, he was still crawling at me. I was like, god! Why don’t you just give up?

Tokyo Vice is out in the UK in July (and it probably makes my ‘had a bath with a heavily-irezumi-ed man’ story look pretty shit)

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Books

A Cover Darkly

A collection of over 650 Phillip K Dick book covers – some pretty trippy covers for some pretty trippy books…

pkd_scanner

pkd_androids

pkd_palmer

Some of the more eagle-eyed among you (the geeks) may notice that the bottom left hand Palmer Eldritch cover is actually the cover to Frank Herbert’s Dune (at least it is to the copy I own) that they just nicked and reused.

(via Design Observer)

PS: Yes I was tempted to title this post ‘Dick Covers’

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Books

Did you know…

Did you know: No matter how dire the circumstances, Professor Robert Langdon prefers not to look at a piece of art on the internet if the original is in a gallery nearby.

More facts about Dan Brown’s favourite protagonist.

See also:

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Books

Want

thesaurus

44 Years in the making, the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary.

The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (HTOED) is a unique new resource charting the semantic development of the huge and varied vocabulary of English. It is the first comprehensive historical thesaurus ever produced for any language, containing almost every word in English from Old English to the present day…

I think I’m just going to want to read it.

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Books

Yōkainatomy

Yōkai Daizukai, an illustrated guide to yōkai authored by manga artist Shigeru Mizuki, features a collection of cutaway diagrams showing the anatomy of 85 traditional monsters from Japanese folklore.

mannendake

The Mannen-dake (”10,000-year bamboo”) is a bamboo-like monster that feeds on the souls of lost travelers camping in the woods.

Read on to find out more about the Mannen-dake, as well as:

  • the Kuro-kamikiri (Black Hair Cutter – it has the black hair, I don’t believe it has a preference as to the colour it cuts)
  • the Makura-gaeshi (Pillow Mover – rather worryingly the fact that it steals souls seems to be glossed over with greater focus put on its pranksome pillow-moving)
  • the Doro-ta-bō (Muddy Rice Field Man)
  • the Hyōsube
  • the Yanagi-baba (Willow Witch – fairly easy going compared to the rest)
  • the Fukuro-sage (a type of Tanuki, complete with prominent scrotum – something they failed to include in Super Mario)
  • Kasha (possible the rock-hardest of the bunch)
  • Bisha-ga-tsuku (named for it’s slusky snow sound – snow bunnies watch out)
  • and finally the would-be-cute-were-it-not-for-its-big-sharp-teeth, octopus-fearing Kijimunaa – hard wired for pranks

(via rocketboom)

Categories
Books

The Road

I’m currently reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, I’m enjoying it but it’s definitely not be the best bedtime reading choice when someone decides that the best way to open their shed is to bash the shit of the door. Only it sounds like they’re trying to bash the shit out of your back door. Clean sheets required.

See also the trailer for the film adaptation – best bit: Omar looking freakin awesome with his post-apocalytpic beard a few seconds from the end.