Carpe Libra

The Children’s Museum of Manhattan has a new display on the artwork of the last 65 years of Golden Books. Golden Books ramped up children’s book publishing by including very well illustrated stories. It was their defining touch and is now being honored.

Launched in 1942—the first full year of America’s involvement in the Second World War—Little Golden Books made high quality illustrated books available at affordable prices for the first time to millions of young children and their parents.

“A couple who bought a web domain name as a birthday present for their 11-year-old son have lost a battle with the estate of C.S. Lewis to keep it.”

The boy was a fan of CS Lewis but he may not be so much anymore. Nice testimony.

There are a handful of Christian books on the Carp 500. You won’t find nearly as many Muslim, Buddhist or any other religion’s books. The reason for this is that the Carp 500 was started by a Christian and the initial Carp group were all believing types.

The books included are either very good books on Christianity or at least written by famous Christian types. The Bible used to be on the Carp 500, until it seemed silly to rate the Bible along with The Cat in the Hat. The Bible is no longer on the list.

The Bible is the best book ever written and there will be no discussion on the point. All that being said, for the Carp readers who are interested in Bible reading, you’ll be interested to know that the Codex Sinaiticus, the oldest Greek manuscripts of the Bible, is now available online.

When I first heard of Brothers Karamazov, I thought it was about a bad stretch for Lakers basketball in the 80’s. “Brothers, Kareem is off.”

But it’s not. It’s about Russian guys. So far no basketball at all.

I have read one or two other Russian novels and The Brothers appears to be another one. Each character has 13 different names, none of which I can pronounce. So I nickname them in my head what I think their name is, which usually changes 15 times throughout the book based on noticing another letter in the name I hadn’t picked up on yet. Then, of course, there are approximately 7 million characters, each with 13 different names that I have 15 nicknames for.

This leaves me with approximately 1,365,000,000 characters making plotlines much harder to follow. However, I do think the Russian novelists write well once they get to the point, but they need work on the name thing.

Three signed first edition books from Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia have sold for £30,000. Ever since Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe came out in movie form, people have been collecting Lewis stuff big time. Must be the American money coming in since we didn’t know who he was before there was a movie.

The books were sold be his former private secretary. The money from the auction was given to the Catholic Church in Oxford, even though Lewis claimed to be a Church of England fan. Can you hear the rolling in the grave?

At a fancy cocktail party John McCain rambled on on many subjects including reading. He claims to be a “voracious reader.”

He then said, “I read anything by Hemingway all the time. He’s my favorite author.”

All the time? Now seriously Senator, you can’t really mean all the time. I mean, all the time would mean that you wouldn’t be able to speak at a cocktail party. Sure sounds like more dirty political lies to me. Sucking up to the drugged out literary constituency, but us un-drugged literary types catch on. Nice try John.

It depends what “all” means, no doubt.

A man was accused of stealing a £15million Shakespeare manuscript from Durham University’s Library.

In a letter to the local newspaper, although denying the allegation, he still makes the point that we should ”free the books.” He doesn’t think it’s right for a library to hoard books when they could be sold and the money given to the poor. Hmm.

“Durham University just wants another rare book to salt away in their ivory tower, for no one who is not part of the university can enter its hallowed portals.”

He might sound a tad guilty.

Iran is becoming our newest “threat” in the world, causing talking heads to um, talk. We always hear that Iranians are evil butchers and so forth, but hey, we all bleed the same blood and maybe we all read the same books.

What are the bestselling books in Iran?

J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Persian translations of Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand of Splendid Sun” by Mehdi Ghabraii, books written by the American professional speaker Anthony Robbins and Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne are among the bestsellers in a bookstore on Mirdamad Street

Can we really hate people who like Harry Potter? Give books a chance, man.

Back in the ’80’s I remember reading paperback books where you choose the action. Turn to page 83 if you want to open the door. Page 76 if you want to keep the door closed.

I always died or lost the dog or whatever it was you weren’t supposed to do. I’m a loser that way. But they did provide whole minutes of fun and suspense.

Apparently these books are taking a new life online. Many of the original CYOA books are on websites where you click on a link to see what you’ve chosen and what way you died, probably.

If you’d like to read more about your online CYOA options, click here.

If you’d like to do something completely different, click here.

Boing Boing has a photo of a chair made out of old paperback books. No word as to how comfotable it is.