Goethe was German, as were Beethoven and Bach. So was Anne Frank, whose war-time dairy made her the most famous fourteen year old in the world.

Johaness Gutenberg

And the Printing Press was invented in Germany.

Umm…

Doesn’t quite connect, does it? Well, consider this – Johannes Gutenberg, a German goldsmith and printer, was the one who introduced modern book printing. His invention of mechanical movable type printing started the Printing Revolution and is widely regarded as the most important event of the modern period. His truly epochal invention was the combination of elements (such as use of oil based ink, moving type and wooden printing press) into a practical system which allowed the mass production of printed books and made reading economically viable for printers and readers alike.

That, in today’s language means – ‘wunderbar Gutenberg. Invention was much in need. Seems you just changed the way people will read.’

So, every famous book, whether they were written by philosophers, composers or holocaust survivors wouldn’t have had the same impact and reach if it were not for Gutenberg’s invention. When he began building his press in 1436, it is unlikely that Gutenberg would have realized that he was giving birth to an art form which would take center stage in the social and industrial revolutions which followed.

And it is no wonder that Gutenberg’s legacy has made Germany one of the world’s leading book nations. Clear proof of this are the number of copies published of Kehlmann’s “Measuring the World”, a novel which in 2006 was one of the world’s best-selling books.

"Modern Book Printing" sculpture in Berlin, commemorating its inventor Gutenberg on the occasion of the 2006 World Cup in German

And as for books for children and young people, one of the most successful authors is Cornelia Funke whose Inkheart Series has been made into movies as well. In the fall of each year, the publishing world gathers in Germany at the world’s largest meeting of the trade, the International Frankfurt Book Fair.

To date, Gutnberg remains a towering figure and a popular image in the literary world. In 1999, the A&E Network ranked Gutenberg no. 1 on their “People of the Millennium” countdown, and in 1997, Time–Life magazine picked Gutenberg’s invention as the most important of the second millennium. In 2006, Gutenberg! The Musical!, began its Off Broadway run in New York City.

image courtesy jeanxreviews

We all know him as the man who made us give a look closely at the Monalisa and scan The Last Supper for hidden clues. But before there was The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown was on a different career path. Here’s a look at some unknown and rather interesting facts about the bestselling author.

• Brown graduated from Amherst with a double major in Spanish and English in 1986, after which he turned to music, creating effects with synthesizer, and self-producing a children’s cassette entitled Synth Animals which included a collection of tracks such as Happy frogs and suzuki elephants.

• In 1991, he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as a singer-songwriter and pianist.

• Dan Brown’s first three novels met with little success. It was his fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, which hit the New York Times Best Seller List in its first week in release in 2003.

• The Da Vinci Code’s success led to Dan Brown’s earlier novels flying off book shelves. In 2004, all four of Dan Brown’s novels hit the New York Times Best Seller List in the same week.

• In 2005, Dan Brown made TIME Magazine’s list of the One Hundred Most Influential People of the Year. Brown also placed at Number Twelve in Forbe’s Magazine’s 2005 Celebrity 100 List. The Times estimated that Dan Brown’s income from The DaVinci Code sales alone was in excess of $250 million.

• In 2006, his novel The Da Vinci Code was released as a film by Columbia Pictures. One of the songs, “phiano”, which Brown wrote and performed, was listed as part of the film’s soundtrack.

• The fictional Langdon’’s alama mater is Phillips Exter Academy, the same school that Brown attended.

• Brown has told fans that he uses inversion therapy to help with writer’s block. He uses gravity boots and says, “hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective.”

Janet Dailey

American author of numerous New York Times bestselling romance novels, she is the third largest selling female author in the world. Translated into nineteeen language, her novels have sold more than 300 million copies worldwide. The Guinness Book of World Records recognized her achievement of setting a novel in every state with her “Janet Dailey Americana Series,” in which every state in the United States was represented.

Some of her famous works are:

Touch the Wind (1979)

Foxfire Light (1982)

The Healing Touch (1996)

With This Kiss (2007)

Alexander Pope

Eighteenth-century English poet, he is best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. The third most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson, he is considered a leading literary critic and the epitome of English Neoclassicism.

Some of his famous works are:

An Essay on Criticism (1711)

The Rape of the Lock (1712)

Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady (1717)

Essay on Man (1734)

Dan Wakefield

American novelist, journalist and screenwriter, his best-selling novels, have been made into feature films and documentaries. The New York Times acknowledged him as “one of the country’s most perceptive and sensitive independent commentator-reporters” for his involvement in the civil rights movement.

Some of his notable works are:

Going All the Way (1970)

Starting Over (1973)

Island in the City (1959)

New York in the Fifties (1992)

Harold Robbins

American novelist, who published over 20 books, which were translated into 32 languages and sold over 50 million copies. Since his death, several new books have been published, written by ghostwriters and based on Robbins’s own notes and unfinished stories. His often profane style was referred to in the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, where Kirk cites his work to explain how people in the 20th century talk.

Some of his famous works are:

Never Love A Stranger (1948)

A Stone for Danny Fisher (1952)

Tycoon (1997)

Sin City (2002)

Check out the titles available for rent and purchase from these bestselling authors at the INDIAreads Online Library cum Bookstore.

Pulp Fiction

1994 American crime film directed by Quentin Tarantino, the movie is known for its rich, eclectic dialogue, nonlinear storyline, and  a    host   of cinematic allusions and pop culture references.  Nominated for seven Oscars, it won the award for Best Original Screenplay. Like all other Tarantino flicks, there are a number of narrative sequences within the story. Regarded as one of the most significant films of its era, it has been described as a “major cultural event”, and an “international phenomenon” that influenced television, music, literature, and advertising.

Unbreakable

2000 American psychological thriller written, produced an d directed by M.Night Shyamalan. The film is a study on the dimensions of comic books; exploring the analogies between the real world and the mythology of superheroes. Originally conceived to parallel a comic book’s traditional three-part story structure, Unbreakable tells the story of Philadelphia security guard, David Dunn, who slowly discovers that he is actually a real life superhero.

Blade Runner

1982 science fiction movie starring Harrison Ford, the film earned mixed reviews and polarizes critics with its pacing and thematic complexity. In 2007, the American Film Institute named it the 97th greatest American film of all time in the 10th-anniversary edition of its 100 years … 100 Movies list. Philip K. Dick refused an offer of $400,000 to write a novelization of the Blade Runner screenplay; the movie is currently ranked the third best film of all time by The Screen Directory.

Recently a Singapore company has come up with a rather “novel” idea for ladies’ handbags. Made entirely from real, old hardbacks, designer Caitlin creates one-of-a-kind recycled clutches for ladies using book covers and fabric.

Separating the pages from the cover and keeping the spine as the bottom, the hardback is sown with fabric to complete each purse.

Crafted entirely by hand,it takes her about about 8-10 hours to complete each of her exquisite designs from the collection. Ensuring that none of the books end up being dicarded, none of the pages are thrown away and can even be shipped to customers on request.

Everyone knows the story of Alice and her enchanting daydream to wonderland. It has been acted out on stage, made into animation, and now, even cast as a three dimensional feature. Here are opening lines of Lewis Carroll’s famous book:

Alice was beginning to get very tired of sitting by her sister on the bank, and of having nothing to do: once or twice she had peeped into the book her sister was reading, but it had no pictures or conversations in it, `and what is the use of a book,’ thought Alice `without pictures or conversation?’
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

So each journey does begin with a book after all

A man spent hours watching a butterfly struggling to emerge from its cocoon. It managed to make a small hole, but its body was too large to get through it. After a long struggle, it appeared to be exhausted and remained absolutely still.

The man decided to help the butterfly and, with a pair of scissors, he cut open the cocoon, thus releasing the butterfly. However, the butterfly’s body was very small and wrinkled and its wings were all crumpled.

The man continued to watch, hoping that, at any moment, the butterfly would open its wings and fly away. Nothing happened; in fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its brief life dragging around its shrunken body and shrivelled wings, incapable of flight.

What the man – out of kindness and his eagerness to help – had failed to understand was that the tight cocoon and the efforts that the butterfly had to make in order to squeeze out of that tiny hole were Nature’s way of training the butterfly and of strengthening its wings.

Sometimes, a little extra effort is precisely what prepares us for the next obstacle to be faced. Anyone who refuses to make that effort, or gets the wrong sort of help, is left unprepared to fight the next battle and never manages to fly off to their destiny.

source: paulocoelhoblog.com

They took years in the making. Researched and then deeply re-researched, the product of  hours of sweat and labour. But then, there is always room for error. Here are a few slip ups from some popular titles by renowned authors.

Dan Brown : Angels and Demons

When Vittoria Vetra explains to Robert Langdon how the antimatter containment canisters work, she describes how the built-in battery needs a special charger geared to the specific location. Among the components she mentions that the chargers contain, are servo-coils.

A servo-coil is that part of a hard disk drive (or CD/DVD/BluRay etc. drive) which moves the heads in and out. What on earth would such a component be doing in a battery charger?

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

While in hiding, Anne describes one of the warehouse cats. The cat’s name was Boche and was referred to as a tomcat. In her entry describing the disappearance of Boche, Anne calls him “her”. It’s not just once, but three times. Somehow the cat seemed to have suddenly switched genders.

Eoin Colfer : Artemis Fowl

On page 174, at the bottom of paragraph 2, it says that Mulch burped due to good clay. But surprisingly onn page 178-179, it says that because of Dwarf anatomy, it is physically impossible for a Dwarf to burp!!!

Jeffrey Deaver : The Bone Collector

On the first page of Chapter 28, Amelia Sachs removes and flings away her gasoline-soaked police uniform blouse before entering a burning church. 3 pages later in the church basement she cuts a patch off of her uniform blouse to protect her hand from the hot handle of a fire extinguisher. (pages 342 & 345 of paperback edition.)

Stephen King: Carrie

In part two “Prom Night” (about 22 pages in), Margaret White is thinking back to a time when Carrie was not quite 1 year old. She almost killed Carrie, but her husband Ralph stopped her. Yet earlier in part one “Blood Sport” (about 8 pages in) we learn that Ralph died about 7 months before Carrie was born!

Check out if these slip-ups did actually happen. These titles and lots more, available at the INDIAreads Online Library cum Bookstore.

Though The Camel Bookmobile is a novel by by Masha Hamilton, in a silent, desiccated part of the globe, the camel-borne library actually exists. Operating from Garrissa, capital of the Garrissa district in Kenya’s isolated Northeastern Province, the Camel Book Drive was launched on Oct. 14, 1996. Travelling on camelback, the books reach nomads who set up camp across the wide desert expanse, moving from place to place in search of food and water.

This novel idea was introduced by the government-owned Kenya National Library Service to improve literacy rates in the north-east. Since a static library would have been of no use to nomads, the librarians and their usual task force instead follow them, providing them books wherever they go. While more than 80 percent of the population is illiterate, the camel library targets children rather than catering to the few literate adults. According to head librarian Rashid Farah the book- keepers earnestly believe that in the next ten years they will be able to have a society which is educated, and literate. With the aid of  generous patrons and a growing number of contributors, the library is slowly expanding and is now operating also in Wajir, further along Kenya’s northeast.

You have an old used book and you plan to drop it in garbage? Well, after reading this post you might change your mind about that and try to make some cool paper-cut sculptures from its papers.

Su Blackwell realized that she actually could create some artworks in a similar way. Those are not the books which are made only for kids and those paper sculptures definitely do not fold up when you open them, but they are great examples that you can create a true artwork even from old used book.

Su has made some really amazing sculptures cut from books’ papers and we will show you here some of her most interesting artworks.

Source: zuzutop.com