Poetry:
I got a copy of Crystallography at a good price from Unity Books. ‘Crystallography’ means the study of crystals, but also, taken literally, ‘lucid writing.’ The book exists in the intersection of poetry and science, exploring the relationship between language and crystals – looking at language as a crystal, a space in which the chaos of individual parts align to expose a perfect formation of structure. As Bök himself says, ‘a word is a bit of crystal in formation,’ suggesting there is a space in which words, like crystals, can resonate pure form.
Nox is an epitaph in the form of a book, a facsimile of a handmade book Anne Carson wrote and created after the death of her brother. The poem describes coming to terms with his loss through the lens of her translation of Poem 101 by Catullus “for his brother who died in the Troad.” Nox is a work of poetry, but arrives as a fascinating and unique physical object. Carson pasted old letters, family photos, collages and sketches on pages. The poems, typed on a computer, were added to this illustrated “book” creating a visual and reading experience so amazing as to open up our concept of poetry.
Cultural/literary Crit:
My Mother Was a Computer explores how the impact of code on everyday life has become comparable to that of speech and writing: as language and code have grown more entangled, the lines that once separated humans from machines, analog from digital, and old technologies from new ones have become blurred.
Made in America: Science, Technology, and American Modernist Poets The subtitle says it all.
Non-Fiction:
Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind explores the vast complexities of the human brain and how it works, drawing on real-life case studies of patients suffering from unusual neurological afflictions to explain what occurs in the brain.
Hyper Text Fiction:
Patchwork Girl is a hypertext and a novel. It picks up the monstrous body/monstrous text idea from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and really explores monstrosity in all its various forms.
Library eBooks:
The Penelopiad "Murder comes back to haunt you. For Penelope, wife of Odysseus, running a kingdom while her husband is off fighting the Trojan war is not a simple business. As if it isn't bad enough that he has been lured away due to the shocking behaviour of her beautiful cousin Helen, Penelope must also bring up her wayward son, face down scandalous rumours and keep more than one hundred lustful, greedy, bloodthirsty suitors at bay . . . Perhaps not surprising then that it all ends in murder. Margaret Atwood has given Penelope her own voice so that she can tell her story at last and set the record straight for good."
Zero History "Former rock singer Hollis Henry has lost a lot of money in the crash, which means she can't turn down the offer of a job from Hubertus Bigend, sinister Belgian proprietor of mysterious ad agency Blue Ant. Milgrim is working for Bigend too. Bigend admires the ex-addict's linguistic skills and street knowledge so much that he's even paid for his costly rehab. So together Hollis and Milgrim are at the front line of Bigend's attempts to get a slice of the military budget, and they gradually realize he has some very dangerous competitors. Which is not a great thought when you don't much trust your boss either. Gibson's new novel, set largely in London, spookily captures the paranoia and fear of our post-Crash times."
Black Juice "10 outstanding stories that delight, shock, intrigue, amuse and move the reader to tears with their dazzling imaginative reach, their dark humour, their subtlety, their humanity and depth of feeling."
The Art of Travel ""Lucid, fluid, uplifting" SUNDAY TIMES With the help of a selection of writers, artists and thinkers -- including Flaubert, Edward Hopper, Wordsworth and Van Gogh -- Alain de Botton's bestselling THE ART OF TRAVEL provides invaluable insights into everything from holiday romance to hotel mini-bars, airports to sight-seeing. The perfect antidote to those guides that tell us what to do when we get there, THE ART OF TRAVEL tries to explain why we really went in the first place -- and helpfully suggests how we might be happier on our journeys.
