The Readies


Book Description

In 1930, Bob Brown predicted that the printed book was bound for obsolescence. The time has come, he insisted, to rid the reader of the cumbersome book. He invented a machine that would allow one to read books and any text extremely fast and in a hyper abbreviated form. He called these abbreviated texts, with em dashes replacing words: readies. He envisioned sending the condensed texts through wireless networks. The Readies, describes these eponymously named abbreviated texts and his plans for a reading machine, but since he printed only 150 copies, the volume is practically unknown outside of a small circle of scholars. With this new edition, Craig Saper hopes to introduce Bob Brown's Roving Eye Press books to a new generation of readers.




Trouble on the Books


Book Description

Essie Lang’s series debut is perfect for fans of Lorna Barrett, Vicki Delany, and book lovers everywhere. Rookie bookstore owner Shelby Cox must hit the books to learn the ropes before she loses a killer in the stacks. Shelby Cox never intended to become a bookseller, so when the former editor returns to her hometown of Alexandria Bay, nestled in upstate New York’s breathtaking Thousand Islands region, to take over her aunt’s bookstore, she has no idea what to expect. To her amazement, she discovers that she now owns a fifty-percent share in Bayside Books, and will also run the store’s second location in the majestic castle on nearby Blye Island. But just as Shelby is gearing up for the start of the tourist season, the Castle volunteer coordinator is found murdered in the nearby Grotto. Castle caretaker Matthew Kessler is suspect number one, but Shelby thinks the killing may be connected to an earlier era, when violence among Prohibition-era smugglers was rampant in the region. As Shelby launches her own investigation, handsome and unnerving Special Agent Zack Griffin of the Coast Guard Investigative Services tries to quell her smuggling theory and keep her safe. But Shelby is determined to summon all her savvy as a book editor to plot the murder—and find the killer before he strikes again—in Trouble on the Books, Essie Lang’s clever and captivating series debut.




All That Glows


Book Description

For fans of Maggie Stiefvater and Lesley Livingston comes a clever twist on the mortal/immortal love story by hot debut author Ryan Graudin. Intense and electric, this is the ultimate tale of forbidden love. Emrys, a spirited and charismatic Faery Guard of the British monarchy, is sent to London to guard Richard, the bad-boy prince of England, from assassins and paparazzi. Despite her status as a guard of the royals, Emrys struggles with her feelings as she tries to not fall in love with the charming prince. But when an ancient Fae murders the king, Richard’s father, and starts attacking the other royals, Emrys must risk everything to hunt through London’s magical dark side in order to protect her charge—and the boy she loves.




How to Read a Book


Book Description

Investigates the art of reading by examining each aspect of reading, problems encountered, and tells how to combat them.




Readies for Bob Brown's Machine


Book Description

Critical facsimile edition making crucial modernist texts available for the first time since 1931 Restores a rare but highly influential modernist anthology to print in a new critical facsimile editionProvides extensive scholarly commentary, analyses, and newly discovered biographical information, setting the anthology in its broader cultural contextOffers the first collection of avant-garde writing designed to be read on a 'reading machine' invented by the American expatriate poet Bob BrownIncludes both Craig Saper's new Introduction and a separate chapter on the Contributors and their readies. Saper is the leading scholar of Bob Brown's work as well as an important scholar of experimental writing, media, publishing, and artThis new edition of Bob Brown's groundbreaking collection of modernist writing experiments has been out of print since 1931, when Brown's Roving Eye Press originally published it. Only a few copies exist in archives today. The contributors include major modernist writers such as Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, F. T. Marinetti, Eugne Jolas and Ezra Pound, key social realists like Kay Boyle and James T. Farrell and daring queer novelists and artists including Charles Henri Ford and Sidney Hunt. Providing extensive scholarly commentary, analyses and newly discovered biographical information, this book sets the anthology in its broader cultural context. This is an essential resource for those interested in print and book history, the politics and culture of the expatriate avant-garde and the reading machine's impact on reading, writing and literacy.




The Readies


Book Description

In 1930, Bob Brown predicted that the printed book was bound for obsolescence. The time has come, he insisted, "to rid the reader of the cumbersome book." He invented a machine that would allow one to read books and any text extremely fast and in a hyper-abbreviated form. He called these abbreviated texts, with em-dashes replacing words, "readies." He envisioned sending the condensed texts through wireless networks. The Readies, describes these eponymously named abbreviated texts and his plans for a reading machine, but since he printed only 150 copies, the volume is practically unknown outside of a small circle of scholars. With this new edition, Craig Saper hopes to introduce Bob Brown's Roving Eye Press books to a new generation of readers.




Digital Modernism


Book Description

Digital Modernism examines how and why some of the most innovative works of online electronic literature adapt and allude to literary modernism. Digital literature has been celebrated as a postmodern form that grows out of contemporary technologies, subjectivities, and aesthetics, but this book provides an alternative genealogy. Exemplary cases show electronic literature looking back to modernism for inspiration and source material (in content, form, and ideology) through which to critique contemporary culture. In so doing, this literature renews and reframes, rather than rejects, a literary tradition that it also reconfigures to center around media. To support her argument, Pressman pairs modernist works by Pound, Joyce, and Bob Brown, with major digital works like William Poundstone's "Project for the Tachistoscope: [Bottomless Pit]" (2005), Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries's Dakota, and Judd Morrissey's The Jew's Daughter. With each pairing, she demonstrates how the modernist movement of the 1920s and 1930s laid the groundwork for the innovations of electronic literature. In sum, the study situates contemporary digital literature in a literary genealogy in ways that rewrite literary history and reflect back on literature's past, modernism in particular, to illuminate the crucial role that media played in shaping the ambitions and practices of that period.




Stuck on Earth


Book Description

Ketchvar III's mission is simple: travel to Planet Earth, inhabit the body of an average teenager, and determine if the human race should be annihilated. And so Ketchvar—who, to human eyes, looks just like a common snail—crawls into the brain of one Tom Filber and attempts to do his analysis. At first glance, Tom appears to be the perfect specimen—fourteen years old, good health, above average intelligence. But it soon becomes apparent that Tom Filber may be a little too average—gawky, awkward, and utterly abhorred by his peers. An alien within an alien's skin, Ketchvar quickly finds himself wrapped up in the daily drama of teenage life—infuriating family members, raging bullies, and undeniably beautiful next-door neighbors. And the more entangled Ketchvar becomes, the harder it is to answer the question he was sent to Earth to resolve: Should the Sandovinians release the Gagnerian Death Ray and erase the human species for good? Or is it possible that Homo sapiens really are worth saving? Wickedly wry and hysterically skewed, David Klass's take on teen life on our fabulously flawed Planet Earth is an engrossing look at true friends, truer enemies, and awkward alien first kisses. Stuck on Earth is a 2011 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.




White Gold Wielder


Book Description

A continuation of the adventures of Thomas Covenant that began in The Wounded Land and The One Tree.




Of Blood Descended


Book Description

'Beautifully written ... a unique tale told in a unique voice' - S.G. Maclean Summer, 1522. In a wave of pomp, Henry VIII's court welcomes the Imperial emperor, Charles V. Anthony Blanke, the son of the king's late 'black trumpet', John Blanke, is called to Hampton Court by his former employer, Cardinal Wolsey. The cardinal is preparing a gift for King Henry: a masque of King Arthur and the Black Knight. Anthony is to take centre stage. The festive mood, however, quickly sours. Wolsey's historian, charged with proving the king's descent from King Arthur, is found murdered, his body posed in a gruesome tableau. A reluctant Anthony is charged with investigating the affair. His mission takes him on the path trod by the historian, through ancient monastic libraries and the back streets of London. On a journey that takes him from Hampton Court to Windsor and Winchester, and which sees him lock horns with secretive monks, historian Polydore Vergil, and a new face at court, Anne Boleyn, he must discover the murderer, secure the great masque, and avoid King Henry's wrath.