I like June. It’s a good month for me. I got married in June (six years ago — congratulations, me!) and everyone can feel the psychic vibrations bouncing off kids getting ready for the end of school. It positively cheers one up, it does. And June was a good month here at Upper Fort Stewart judging by all the clicks and awesome comments. Thanks, everybody.

I Read Books Upside Down

Wherein I advise children to vandalize books and ignore authority. I’m available for parental consultation too if anyone needs it. Read I Read Books Upside Down »

Why I Blog About Books

I’m kind of proud about this post. I wasn’t trying to be funny and I just dashed it off in the morning while still half asleep. Consequently it’s all mostly 6:00 a.m. honest. I really appreciate everyone’s great comments on this one. Read Why I Blog About Books »

O’Reilly Media Made My Son Cry

I’m still waiting for that apology, Tim O’Reilly. At this point, I think we’re going to have to step things up and introduce Forgiveness 2.0 if we want to make amends. Read O’Reilly Media Made My Son Cry »

If I Were In High School

If I were in High School I’d probably have a blog. I imagine all the kids have blogs today. And cell phones. They’re probably mo-bloggers. Anyway, here’s a juvenile response to Moby Dick that all started when I laughed out loud while reading the chapter-title The Town-Ho’s Story. Read If I Were In High School »

Embarrassing Reader Dilemmas

The beginning of my little, semi-regular feature (well, there’s one in the series so far). Maybe I could be, like, the Strong-Bad of lit-blogs. How does he type with boxing gloves on anyway? Read Embarrassing Reader Dilemmas »

Thanks Again, Everyone

There’s more somewhat amusing posts coming up, for good or ill, but if you liked these ones you might want to add my blog to your Technorati favorites, join my MyBlogLog community, or bookmark this page on del.icio.us. Don’t tell Tim O’Reilly I’m involved in all this Web 2.0 stuff. He’ll just get smug and never apologize.

As always thanks for reading, thanks for subscribing and thanks for commenting. I’m continually impressed by how great you’ve all been. Thanks for the support.

How’s everyone feeling today? I thought I’d take a moment to gauge your feelings on Upper Fort Stewart. This little project is really made for two groups, me and you. And I’m the least important of the two. You read this site. You make comments here. I want to know what you think. Why? So I can make it better. I’m funny that way. Here’s a few areas of concern to get you thinking.

Writing

• Are the posts too long? Too short?
• Would you like to see more actual book reviews?
• Would you like me to write more? Maybe stick to my posting schedule one week out of 52?
• Would you, like me to use, less commas,?

Doodads

• How’s the sidebar doodad to content ratio? Too high? Too low?
• Does anyone miss my list of recommended Amazon products?
• Does anyone miss my list of interesting recent articles from around the web?
• Does anyone miss quaint words like Doodads, Gee, and Golly? I do.

Design

• Anyone have any trouble viewing this site in their browser?
• Anything weird looking? Horizontal scrolling? Subliminal messages inciting violence towards The Incredible Journey? Missing text?
• Every thing’s easy to read here, right? If it’s not, let me know.

I think that’s it. Any general comments would be appreciated. Anytime. I’ll listen to them all and consider each one. Leave them here in the comment section or send me an email if you’re shy. I’ll try not to make another post like this for at least six months, thanks for bearing through this one.

I’m confusedly horrified and amused by this series of weird Russian Children’s Books with logic that makes the Grimm brothers look like Kant. Here’s two examples:

If you decide not to clean your teeth
then prepare to meet a wild beast!

If you cry each time you eager
Prepare to melt from the tears like piece of sugar

If I were in High School I would definitely be making fun of the following chapter titles from Moby Dick. But, of course, I’m not. I’m a real live, honest to goodness grown-up who would never think of making fun of the following chapter titles.

• Chapter 10 — A Bosom Friend
• Chapter 30 — The Pipe
• Chapter 41 — Moby Dick
• Chapter 54 — The Town Ho’s Story
• Chapter 60 — The Line
• Chapter 63 — The Crotch
• Chapter 80 — The Nut
• Chapter 81 — The Pequod Meets The Virgin
• Chapter 86 — The Tail
• Chapter 124 — The Needle
• Chapter 125 — The Log and Line

I’m glad to be a respectable adult who’s above that sort of thing.

Today we have Upper Fort Stewart’s first embarrassing reader dilemma.

Hey Ian,

Here’s my problem: I’m a really good reader, I mean, really good for my age (I’m in Grade Seven). So I figured I could use a challenge, Leonardo wrote backwards in his journal, I thought I could try reading upside down. Unfortunately, I decided to try it out in English class and my teacher caught me. She thinks I was just pretending to read and daydreaming. Now I look like an idiot and no one will believe I was actually trying to read. The truth, I admit, is just too ridiculous. What should I do?

Sincerely,

D. Essarrabme

That’s a tough one, D. Especially for a middle school kid. Reputation is everything in that zoo. Here’s what I would do: just go with it. Be the goofball kid for a while. Live it up. Then at the end of the term surprise your teacher with a brilliant essay on alternative modes of reading and their associated enhancements to creativity and cognition. That’ll do.

Alternatively, I have a plan B. Of course I have a plan B. It might get you into trouble with the authorities but life is short — listen: break into your class at night and cut all the covers off every book^*. Then, glue them back on upside down and backwards. What do they get you to read in Junior High anyway? The Incredible Journey? No one will be too upset with a messed up copy of The Incredible Journey, will they?

Okay, they probably will. Maybe you shouldn’t do that. At all. Um, stay in school.

Anyone else have any advice? Any legal advice? Don’t forget to send me embarrassing reader dilemmas of your own.

*Don’t do this. Ever.

Too many books is what I’m reading now. It’s starting to get to me. And I don’t think it would be so bad if it weren’t for the fact that I’m still reading Moby Dick. Yep, I’m one of those people now, slogging his way through the middle of it. Will I give up? I don’t think so. I hope not. It’s still really, really good. So it’s not the quality that’s got me slogging. Like I said, it’s the other stuff.

Taking books out of the library has done it, I think. In the past two weeks I’ve read five web design and programming books. Three of them really excellent. It has me looking at the internet in a deeper way – more concerned about it’s future (and the future of what I write) – than I ever thought I would be. Plus, it’s giving me something else to be nerdy about. Who knew there was a Web Standards sized hole in my heart? Check my code for this post, even. I’ve lovingly wrapped your book in cite tags, Mr. Melville. The machines know it’s a book now, rest easy.

I’m also reading Andrew Lang’s Blue Fairy Book to my son. One of those books I missed reading as kid. It showed up on my radar when I was reading a lot of Chesterton and Lewis. I can’t remember which of those fine fellows pointed Lang’s color books out to me but here’s a nice quote from Chesterton on fairy stories:

Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.

By the way, read Chesterton. You don’t necessarily have to read Lewis (Gasp! Heretic!) but Chesterton is a must.

I’m off. I’ve got a lot of not reading Moby Dick and feeling guilty about it to do. Wish me luck!

My home library is getting out of control. There, I’ve said it. That’s the first step, right? I’ve admitted my problem.

My wife has been after me to go shelf-shopping for about a year now but thanks to my superhuman ability of put-offing-ness combined with the fortress-like layers of denial that cradle my book-buying habits I really haven’t given the whole idea very much thought. Besides, they kind of look nice in piles all over the house.

Except. That. They’re. All. Over. The. House.

I need some help. Luckily, there’s people out there that want to help me. Like librarian, Katie Coblentz. She wants to help me. You too. She’s written Your Home Library: The Complete System for Organizing, Locating, Referencing, and Maintaining Your Book Collection (Amazon link). That’s a long title, Katie. Let’s see what the book description says:

This comprehensive kit draws upon the expertise of one of the world’s greatest libraries, the only facility of its kind with both world-class research and circulating collections. It includes a CD containing custom software to organize and record your book collection by title, author, subject, location on your bookshelf, and numerous additional useful categories. Also included are beautiful bookplates, an instruction manual, and an instructive volume on creating and organizing home libraries, written by an experience librarian. The 96-page book celebrates the myriad of joys of being a book lover, and addresses such issues as evaluating and organizing a collection, and keeping it in place with bookends and shelves; caring for books, and the art of loaning books that are actually returned.

Hmm. I probably won’t be able to use the software on my Mac. That’s not good. I still want to read it, though. And that last item, “the art of loaning books that are actually returned,” sounds useful – useful for people that lend books to me, I’m terrible at returning books.

Your Home Library – via Kimbooktu. (You should be subscribing to Kimbooktu, by the way. Awesome blog.)

Just the other day someone asked me, “why a blog about books?” I had a smart answer ready about the blogger set-up screen and form-anxiety. It was a quick answer and somewhat witty but it wasn’t entirely true. The real answer is somewhat more confused and along the lines of another question, “What else besides a blog about books?”

A wise man once wrote, “There is nothing new under the sun. Everything is in vain.” That pretty much sums up life: you’re going to die. Death wins. Of course, Socrates-be-damned, I read that in a book. In a world full of lonely people trying to run backwards away from the one end they all have in common, it’s hard to beat writing, for the most romantic and exciting of all our vain endeavors (there is that other thing we do that works too, though). Books, you punch Death square in the teeth.

I’ve been somewhat amazed by the connectedness and sense of intellectual community that comes with reading my entire life. Some people read to be taken away somewhere else. Some read to be other people. Me, I read to feel larger, to remember things, people and places I haven’t had a chance to forget. Things, people and places – ideas – that really shouldn’t be forgotten, that really shouldn’t die.

Even an entertainment, even the purest drivel and doggerel or latest “graphic novel” puts a leg up over the void. It’s amazing.

I’m going to keep blogging about books and reading and somewhat amusing bookish things. And I’m going to keep on being a wise-ass about it. I hope you don’t mind. It’s better than sounding somewhat crazy.

Anyone else have crazy, half-baked notions about reading? You all know I’d love to hear them. Let ‘em fly.

I am a sucker for a good first line in a novel. It’s really easy to fail to write a good one. And the pressure! No one wants to have another “It was a dark and stormy night.” I’ve only read a few of these first lines in context but I don’t plan on leaving it that way. Makes sense that good books would have good first sentence, doesn’t it?

I am an invisible man. – Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. – Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. – George Orwell, 1984

riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs. – James Joyce Finnegans Wake

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. – Leo Tolstoy (trans. Constance Garnett), Anna Karenina

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. – Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice. – Gabriel García Márquez (trans. Gregory Rabassa), One Hundred Years of Solitude

A screaming comes across the sky. – Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. – Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice

Call me Ishmael.– Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

From 100 Best First Lines of Novels – As chosen by the editors of American Book Review and Ian Stewart, too sleepy to be amusing. Wait, does that count?

Who doesn’t love pop-up books? How about insanely detailed pop up books that have a following with adults as well as children?

According to The Cool Hunter:

Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinhart have taken it upon themselves to transform this childish novelty into something close to art. Their trilogy of pop-up books, known as Encylopedia Prehistorica, can easily claim to be among some of the most sophisticated books ever made. Ornate depictions of sharks and dinosaurs are painstakingly constructed from scratch to create and mimic the movements of the animals in their natural habitats.

Download a movie of the author/creators showing off the book

More info from the publisher

You might want to keep an eye out for the author/creators next individual efforts, a Star Wars Pop Up book and a Chronicles of Narnia effort. Ah, nostalgia – breaking hearts and emptying wallets everywhere.