Jarrett House NorthSecond verse, same as the first.

There was an odd comics book ad that stuck in my head as a young comics geek in the 1970s. I still remember three things about the ad: it was a sweepstakes sponsored bythe Clark candy company; it had a big picture of a bunch of Marvel superheroes in the middle; and it promised the [...]

New York Times: Restoring Slumberland. There’s an eerie synchronicity about reading this article at the same time as Cory Doctorow’s Themepunks serial in Salon. Peter Maresca’s painstaking restoration of Winsor McCay’s century old comic strips, which still stretch the limits of the form in both imagination and quality, and his subsequent decision to self-publish the [...]

I will have to find an excuse to be in Harvard Square Friday night, as the divine Julie Powell (of Julie & Julia) will be giving a reading and dinner at Chez Henri. She also has a great interview in Salon today. And how could I have neglected to point to her new blog? Good [...]

Yesterday morning, in a fit of serendipity, my iPod shuffled its way over to Christopher Lydon’s 2003 proto-podcast interview of Julie Powell, the Julie of the Julie/Julia Project. By that same fit of serendipity, Julie’s new (first) book, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, had arrived from Amazon a week [...]

Proving once again that if it’s scary and wrong, someone on the Internet will do it: R U Bean-Curious?, a systematic tasting of Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, the Harry Potter tie-in jelly bean like product. I remember my tasting the beans and thinking the black pepper ones were quite good. (Thanks to Anita for [...]

I keep forgetting to mention that I have two case studies in Bill Ives and Amanda Watlington’s new Business Blogs: A Practical Guide, one about me as a general blogger and one about the work we did at Microsoft on the Blog Portal. The book is full of practical advice about using blogs in the [...]

New York Times: Reviving His Works, on Paper and Plaster. With William Faulkner’s house, Rowan Oak, newly restored to the somewhat eccentric condition in which its owner left it (houseblogger beware! “haphazardly laid pine floors” and “brick patios like wings” that “fostered rot” and “diluted the whole Greek Revival vibe” lurk within), it seems an [...]

Or, more precisely, a blog about Peanuts books, namely The AAUGH blog. By the maintainer of aaugh.com, the definitive site for info on Schulz’s published works, the blog is lovingly, if narrowly, focused on such items as which books overlap with which, critiques of new collections, and news of reprints of Schulz’s non-Peanuts work, such [...]

I have succumbed to that illness to which bibliophiles are most vulnerable: first-edition mania. I used to be perfectly happy to go into a bookstore and find a clean well-designed paperback. Now nothing will do but older editions, the closer to a first the better. Pictured in the Current Reading spot is the latest manifestation [...]

I’m having trouble not creating a ruckus while reading Twisted Toyfair Theatre’s Seder Masochism, a touching story of the Fantastic Four’s Ben Grimm—better known as the Thing—discovering his Jewish roots. Amazing costuming job on the various action figures, and hysterical storyline. (Courtesy BoingBoing.)

Boing Boing: Andre Norton, RIP. Sad to see a talented writer pass, though she did have a long and productive career (even if I can’t for the life of me pick out the books from that list which I avidly devoured as a preteen). Pause a moment and remember Alice Mary Norton (who in writing [...]

Tony Pierce: bookshelf meme. Normally I don’t play these games, but I can’t resist one that allows me to plug low-tech word distribution mechanisms like books. Instructions: ”Copy the list from the last person in the chain, delete the names of the authors you don’t have on your home library shelves and replace them with [...]

It’s been hard to write this one. Will Eisner was such a living legend of the comics field for so long that it’s hard to admit he’s really gone. Especially when unimaginative, fourth-rate artists continue to haunt the pages after his departure. When will we ever see his like again? Best eulogy: Michael Barrier: Will [...]

Wired News: Inside the Mac Revolution. Andy Hertzfeld has taken his great site, Folklore.org, which collected stories from the early days of Apple and the Mac, and published Revolution in the Valley: the Insanely Great Story of How the Mac was Made. Looks cool, even if I have read a lot of it before…

New York Times: A New Forum (Blogging) Inspires the Old (Books). The article name-checks all the usual suspects, including Salam Pax, Jessica Cutler, Ana Marie Cox, Belle de Jour, Real Live Preacher, Julie Powell, and Elizabeth Spiers, but misses Tony Pierce (though he did get featured on Screen Savers). The interesting thing is that bloggers [...]