Happen to know a gearhead, who also loves books?  Perhaps you’re the very person.  WELL, do I have something for you …

{Bookends--tumbled by sksullivan667, Etsy}

Custom bookends made from small transmission gears.  What could be more perfect? 

Of course, they’d be pretty great for the rest of us too.  They’re funky, modern … dare I say, classy?!

I have a confession.  I’m not very good at keeping up on new books.  It’s true.  I usually resort to the classics …or, at the very least, authors I know and love. 

With that in mind, I’m trying something new; with that in mind, I’m asking, “Any New Books?”  And by george, I’m going to get an answer! 

Any New Books?, you see, is a service that delivers a list of recent releases right to your inbox.  You simply sign up … select your categories … confirm your subscription … and away you go.  Even better?  The books are handpicked by a team of passionate readers. 

Give it a try … after all, you never know when you’ll happen upon a book you never knew, you could never live without …

{get a select list of new books delivered to your inbox, weekly}

Ever wish you could take your favorite work of literature, frame it, and hang it upon the wall?  Well,  now you can. 

Thanks to PosterText you can own satin-finish prints–each made up of the entire text of a book, artfully arranged to create an illustration.  They’re modern; they’re elegant; they’re entirely too fabulous. 

They’re also just starting out, which means the selection is small.  But they have my favorite {The Count of Monte Cristo, naturally} …

And they plan to add at least one new print each week.  They also accept requests.   

So get on it: order new a new print … or two … or three.  Then, when all your friends begin to do the same you can say, ”Postertext is your new find?  Why, I’ve been a collector for quite some time…“

Henry David Thoreau’s Walden was published August 9th, 1854.  Based on the two years, two months, and two days he lived on Emerson’s property, Walden Pond, it’s an autobiographical look at flawed social structures, nature, and living simply. 

With that in mind, let’s have ourselves a little read …

Economy {an excerpt}

When I wrote the following pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Massachusetts, and earned my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At present I am a sojourner in civilized life again.  I should not obtrude my affairs so much on the notice of my readers if very particular inquiries had not been made by my townsmen concerning my mode of life, which some would call impertinent, though they do not appear to me at all impertinent, but, considering the circumstances, very natural and pertinent. Some have asked what I got to eat; if I did not feel lonesome; if I was not afraid; and the like. Others have been curious to learn what portion of my income I devoted to charitable purposes; and some, who have large families, how many poor children I maintained. I will therefore ask those of my readers who feel no particular interest in me to pardon me if I undertake to answer some of these questions in this book. In most books, the I, or first person, is omitted; in this it will be retained; that, in respect to egotism, is the main difference. We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking. I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well.  Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. Perhaps these pages are more particularly addressed to poor students. As for the rest of my readers, they will accept such portions as apply to them. I trust that none will stretch the seams in putting on the coat, for it may do good service to him whom it fits.

I would fain say something, not so much concerning the Chinese and Sandwich Islanders as you who read these pages, who are said to live  in New England; something about your condition, especially your outward condition or circumstances in this world, in this town, what it is, whether it is necessary that it be as bad as it is, whether it cannot be improved as well as not. I have travelled a good deal in Concord; and everywhere, in shops, and offices, and fields, the inhabitants have appeared to me to be doing penance in a thousand remarkable ways. What I have heard of Bramins sitting exposed to four fires and looking in the face of the sun; or hanging suspended, with their heads downward, over flames; or looking at the heavens over their shoulders “until it becomes impossible for them to resume their natural position, while from the twist of the neck nothing but liquids can pass into the stomach”; or dwelling, chained for life, at the foot of a tree; or measuring with their bodies, like caterpillars, the breadth of vast empires; or standing on one leg on the tops of pillars–even these forms of conscious penance are hardly more incredible and astonishing than the scenes which I daily witness. The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end; but I could never see that these men slew or captured any monster or finished any labor. They have no friend Iolaus to burn with a hot iron the root of the hydra’s head, but as soon as one head is crushed, two spring up. 

Phyllis Dorothy James, Baroness James of Holland Park {otherwise known as P.D. James}, was born August 3rd, 1920 in Oxford, England.  In honor of her big day, a few words…

“God gives every bird his worm, but He does not throw it into the nest.”

“What the detective story is about is not murder but the restoration of order.”

“In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren’t credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.”

“It was not… that she was unaware of the frayed and ragged edges of life. She would merely iron them out with a firm hand and neatly hem them down.”

“It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.”

“Human kindness is like a defective tap, the first gush may be impressive but the stream soon dries up.”

“What a child doesn’t receive he can seldom later give.”

“We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends.”

“I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.”

“Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.”

“It shows considerable wisdom to know what you want in life and then to direct all your energies towards getting it.”