The Paper Clip

10 Awful Library Books

colleenb — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 12:06:08 -0700

Two librarians in Michigan know a bad book when they see it. They've gotten so good that they started a site, Awful Library Books, to keep track of the hilariously questionable and outdated books found on public library shelves across the country.

Culture Clash! Best, Worst, and Weirdest Culture to Collide This Week

colleenb — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 00:53:50 -0700

The asexuality
movement

Ex model tells all
in her new
documentary
Picture Me.

Metalicious:
Tracy Morgan imitates
pregnancy in 2007.
Tracy Jordon to do same
on 30 Rock April 23

Visualize
Twitter

People Who Sit in
the Disability Seats
When I'm Standing
on My Crutches . . .
watch the crutch out.

Send in the
erotic cell phone pics
we so know you have.
They might be "art."

Photos of
empty,
swimming
pools

Malls R Us
documentary
in theaters

Apropos of nothing
except 1996

Awkard
Boners

Why Am I
Marrying Him?

50 States
Project

philleif — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 14:55:59 -0700

Air Jordan 1 Phat Low Limited Edition Men's Shoe $95 - Nike

Sarah Palin Will Buy Her Own Clothes

colleenb — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 15:41:31 -0800

Her book, which surely someone else will have to write, could go for $7 million. See, there's totally money in publishing.

colleenb — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 00:02:12 -0700

Wow. WOW. Did you know that there's a blog that's like Sugar for old women named Wow O Wow. That's how long I've been gone. Long enough for old women to start a blog. I bet you thought "she probably hasn't read anything." Well, you would think right. I haven't read a thing! Unless you count the Internet, in which case I've read it all. Wow.

Anyway, I thought I'd check the Book Bench blog at the New Yorker, which was always my go-to site for steeling - oh, sorry, stealing - content, and it did not disappoint. John Updike picked out books for all the candidates. Just like how some people vote, he picked one of his own.

For Obama I’d recommend a novel of mine called The Coup. It’s about an imaginary African country where the dictator pretends to hate the U.S., though he actually went to college here. The politics were based on Gaddafi-what’s he called, not Mohamed, Muammar, right? The joke is how unlike Obama my character is!

Ha! Updike you old coot, what do you have for McCain?

I think he should read another novel, Memories of the Ford Administration. It’s about an academic who hardly remembers Gerald Ford’s term in office because he was too busy committing adultery and researching James Buchanan’s presidency. Buchanan was old, tired, ineffective, and failed to prevent the Civil War; Abe Lincoln succeeded him. Maybe if McCain read the book he’d have the humility to realise he should gracefully yield to a younger, brighter man. Or maybe not.

Sarah Palin: Book Burner or Bear Strangler?

colleenb — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:00:21 -0700

There's so many rumors flying around about what babies Sarah Palin fathered and how her shrill laugh is destroying the Artic, cracking one iceberg at a time, that's it hard to seperate the truth from what we just want to believe. Slate has answered these questions, particurlarly the one closest to relevancy on the Paper Clip: Did she ban books from Alaskan libraries? Well? No. But, she tried

Dirty, Old YA Author Most Affected by Print's Decline

colleenb — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 16:47:31 -0700

The well-heeled book review is disappearing from the newspapers we don't buy. As Book Reviews fold into Calendar sections, the world sighs. Barely.

Just another newspaper editor laid off if you ask me. I'd be concerned about the competition if their computer skills weren't so marginal. While it's true that print will always have the advantage of being contextual and coherent, blogs have the advantage of being read. For example, the Paper Clip has 14 readers. That's 28 eyes.

I was going to weigh the merits and shortcomings of book reviews vs. blogs in an incredibly half-assed fashion, but then I came across this comment in the LA Times book blog. The lament of the forgotten victim:

My middle grade novel is about an eleven year old girl and her relationship with her local newspaper editor.
Am I outdated?

The Ampersand: A Vulgar Sign

colleenb — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:06:48 -0700

alexbalk:

Via Kottke, we are directed to The Ampersand, a blog about what its writer declares to be “often the most attractive punctuation mark of them all.” I call bullshit. The ampersand is the assfaced slag of the graphematic cosmos. It’s nothing more than a Mexican question mark tricked out in a percentage sign’s whorish costume. A love of the ampersand is the sign of a deviant personality, bespeaking dark, aberrant desires and repressed memories of early-childhood abuse. I’d say “Fuck the ampersand,” but that’s exactly what the little trollop wants. I cannot make it any more clear: if you find the ampersand appealing you are a fucking pervert.

Now the @ sign, on the other hand, that’s the kind of symbol you want to stick your dick into. But slow and gentle, and not until you’ve bought it dinner first and maybe some flowers. Because as hot as the @ is, we are talking about one classy piece of punctuation here, and don’t you ever forget it. Sweet, sweet @ sign, I’d like to type you all night long.

What Would Don Draper Read?

colleenb — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:57:54 -0700

In another parsing of Mad Men, the New Yorker's Book Bench marveled over the progression of reading tastes from 1960 and 1962 and Don Draper's jaw line (twice). In season one, Ayn Rand's books were passed around, which if you read this article you'll know will only attract the wrong element today. But! There was also that big todo over Lady Chatterly's Lovah in season one. Look! I found it.

Anyway, come 1962 Don finds himself alone in a bar, and some young beatnik of a creature is reading Meditations in an Emergency . He tells Don, it's not something you would like or read or something simarly undermining. But because Don is an insolent narcissist — and we've seen he's a had at least one tryst with an arty "downtown" woman — we find him reading it by the end of the episode. Taking to a line that sounds more like a someecard in the Cry For Help section than literature:

Now I am quietly waiting for the catastrophe of my personality to seem beautiful again, and interesting, and modern.

Only to mysteriously mail it at the end to some unknown recipient (Could it be Rachael Menken? Could be!)

Sad Economy Lifts Librarian's Spirits

colleenb — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 21:19:26 -0700

Books, those things you can get used on Amazon for pennies, are the first thing to go when the economy slows, after the house anyway. And now, library use is up 13 percent this year. NPR talked to one librarian who is elated to see people lining up to read the paper, use the Internet, and check out books after canceling subscriptions. It turns out, one library goer told her, "you have everything!"