Re: Crazy Cool Books

Another fun topic go e.! Stacy loved your trimming post, you make me laugh (however you're always very helpful). Love the pistol book Jamie, good find. I found some pretty cool finds too check em out!

This doesn't look like it can be an actual page in a book,  I think it's a display (not sure). But it's still cool so I posted it.

Who had time to make this?! Very cool I wonder if it folds or is this just for presentation purposes...

I would love to have this vintage journal. It doesn't even look like a book, very cool!

 

How much for this cool book stand?

This one is cool and cute, does it come in pink?

Odd & Interesting Facts

I have found this topic to be very enlightening! I tried to research new facts about books that haven't already been discussed. I apologize if I overlap at all:

The first public library in America was opened in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1698.

Charles Dickens called the sickly character in A Christmas Carol “Small Sam” and “Puny Pete” before settling on “Tiny Tim."

The Bible is the best-selling nonfiction book of all time. Since 1815, more than 2.5 billion copies have been sold worldwide. It has been translated into more than 2,200 languages and dialects.Dr. Seuss' full name was Theodor Seuss Geisel. He loved to wear crazy hats to parties. When he was having a hard time coming up with rhymes, he would sometimes put on one of his many “thinking caps” for inspiration.

A.A. Milne, the author of the Winnie the Pooh series, used his son as inspiration for the character Christopher Robin. His son, also named Christopher Robin, grew up hating the stories because his schoolmates teased him about his imaginary friends. When Christopher was born, Milne and his wife wanted to name him Billy. They had second thoughts because they considered Billy too informal, but they didn't like the name William. Instead, they decided to give him two first names, with each parent choosing a name.

Who do you think has sold more children’s books than any other author? J.K. Rowling?Try again! It’s R.L. Stine, the author of the Goosebumps series. More than 220 million of the books have been sold since 1992, when the first book, Welcome to the Dead House, was published. It’s not surprising since Stine produces about two books every month.

Paperback books first appeared in the United States around 1845. They virtually disappeared when the Copyright Act of 1891 banned the reprinting of English titles in paperback form. The books reappeared in 1936, when Allen Lane's Penguin Press, an English publishing house, started to publish them again. By about 1980, about 70% of the books published in the U.S. are paperbacks.

Crazy, Cool Books

Please check out this crazy, cool bookMARK I found! My mom often uses her glasses as a bookmark (with pbk books), so I love the idea of using a flat version of them. I'm curious if anyone is a diligent bookmark user though? I know I always end up just cornering a page or using a random piece of paper to mark where I left off.

 

 

Designer: Rafaela Paludo

 

This book is all about the health benefits of coffee - and author Martha Hayden used coffee residue for its construction. Makes sense.



My Trimming Experience

Hey classmates! So, after hearing everyone's trials and successes trimming their books, I decided I had to try it out for myself. Plus, this gave the me the chance to finally test out the guillotine cutter in the lab and to make something I've been wanting to make for a while: a scrap paper sketchbook.

Since I was just doing this for myself, I decided to try hand-trimming two sides and then use the guillotine cutter for one side. Here's how it went:

First, I gathered a bunch of scrap paper that's been piling up and trimmed it by hand to be roughly the same size. Then I glued the straight side together.

After the glue dried, I cut the top and bottom by hand. The top (above) went really well. I got a nice clean straight cut. Apparently it was beginner's luck.

Trimming the bottom by hand didn't go as well. It wasn't awful, but it was sort of wonky. I was able to clean it up a little bit though, so not too bad.

And then... the guillotine cutter! I lined everything up and the lab assistant showed me how to lower the part of the cutter that presses the pages together, and then pulled the lever. It was very cool. I actually wish I had more stacks of paper with me to cut.

The only thing that didn't turn out 100% was that the edges on the last couple of pages were roughly cut and jagged. So, in the future, I'll have to pad the bottom with some throw-away paper.

Here's the finished sketchbook! It's not perfect, but all the pages are fairly straight and they aren't falling out, so I'd call it a successful experiment. (For the cover, I used part of a cover from an extra paper sample book I had. I loved the texture and thought it would keep with the "scrap" theme.)

PS - Jamie, that book sculpture by Robert The is amazing! It puts my first trimming attempts to total shame.

Re: Crazy, Cool Books

I don't have any crazy, cool books in my collection but here are some that I found that really think outside of the box and got beyond the traditional idea of what a book should be. These designs make books interactive, fun and inspirational.

Book cover design by Thomas Keeley 

http://thomaskeeley.net/index.html

A Growing Book by Eric Zhang. 

The book is about the meaning of life and the idea is that you create life as you learn about its meaning. You can plant whatever plant you'd like on the left side. LED lights positioned under the "pot" help the plant grow and also create a night light that reflects the color of the plant. http://www.yankodesign.com/2007/05/08/growing-book-by-eric-zhang/

While doing some research, I found this guy, Robert The, who takes existing books and turns them into sculptures. It's not exactly book design, because you can't really read the books when he's done with them but I thought his work was really interesting. You can see some more of this work on his site http://www.bookdust.com.

Re: Odd and Interesting Facts about Books

What's more fun than interesting facts about Fifty Shades of Grey? I thought you all would enjoy some of these gems...

As the novel's fan-base is mostly comprised of married women over thirty, some news agencies have dubbed it as "Mommy Porn". News Networks in the U.S. have attributed the success of the novel to the discrete nature of e-reading devices. They have also noted it as an example of the rise in popularity of female erotica.

The Fifty Shades trilogy is based on a Twilight fan-fiction titled Master of the Universe. It was published episodically on the Twilight fan-sites. After comments concerning the racy content of the material E.L. James removed the story from those sites and published it on her own website.

Universal Pictures and Focus Features secured the film rights of the trilogy in March 2012.

During the first six months of 2012, New York City area hardware stores had seen a high jump in the sales of ropes, especially to women.

Virgin Atlantic has streamed the audio books on cross-country flights.

The Damson Dene Hotel in Britain's Lake District replaced the Bibles in all 40 guest rooms with Fifty Shades of Grey.

E. L. James has been named one of Time magazine's 'World's 100 Most Influential People'.

Sources:
http://learnodo-newtonic.com/fifty-shades-of-grey-facts 
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lois-alter-mark/50-shades-of-grey_b_1907994.html

Odd & Interesting Facts

Here are a few more interesting facts to add from my web-dig:

• Did you know The Hulk was originally supposed to be gray? And he was in the very first issue of the series The Incredible Hulk in 1962. (Fortunately) Due to the fact that there were major problems with the inconsistency of printing, they had to choose a color instead.
• Isaac Asimov is the only author to have a book in every Dewey-decimal category. 
• Side note: did anyone watch Tomes & Talismans in middle school? That show single handedly made me love the dewey decimal system.

• Similar to the campus joke "we have a swimming pool on the roof" -- for years now, many continue to fuel the tale that their college library sinks a little each year because the architect failed to take into account the weight of the books. 
• Books that were conceived and/or penned while the author was behind bars: 
• De Profundis by Oscar Wilde
• Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
• The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan
• The Prince by Machiavelli
• And because I love me some Dr. Seuss: "If I Ran the Zoo" published in 1950 contains the first recorded instance of the word "nerd".