An 8‑Hour Marathon Reading of 500 Emily Dickinson Poems

in Books, Life, Literature, Poetry | July 7th, 2017

It’s unlike­ly that reclu­sive poet Emi­ly Dick­in­son would have want­ed much fuss made over her birth­day while still alive to cel­e­brate it.

But with the lady safe­ly ensconced in Amherst’s West Cemetery’s plot 53 for more than a cen­tu­ry, fans can observe the day in the man­ner they see fit.

The Library of Con­gress’ Poet­ry and Lit­er­a­ture Cen­ter threw in with the Fol­ger Library in cel­e­bra­tion of her 184th, invit­ing poet­ry lovers to the free marathon read­ing of her work, above (and below).

Poet Eleanor Hegin­both­am cit­ed Dickinson’s let­ter to her edi­tor, abo­li­tion­ist Thomas Went­worth Hig­gin­son–“Are you too deeply occu­pied to say if my verse is alive?”–before prim­ing the break­fast crowd on what they should expect from the 8 hour marathon:

We’re just going to have a day with no dis­cus­sion beyond… And it will be frus­trat­ing that we can’t ask ques­tions, we can’t stop and say, “Oh, my good­ness.  Let’s do that one over again.”  We’re just going to read and read and read.  And from this moment on, the voice of Emi­ly Dick­in­son, through those of you in this room, that’s the only voice we’re going to hear, and won’t that be fun?

Yes, though you may want to pack a nutri­tious snack to keep your ener­gy up. The read­ing slots were secured by means of an online sign up sheet, and while such egal­i­tar­i­an­ism is laud­able, it does not nec­es­sar­i­ly con­fer per­for­mance chops on the inex­pe­ri­enced.

Nat­u­ral­ly, there are stand outs.

Mar­i­anne Noble, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Lit­er­a­ture at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, is a high­light with Poem 75, (2:36:40, above). Her Emi­ly Rocks t‑shirt is pret­ty rad too.

Pro­fes­sor Hegin­both­am is anoth­er sort of treat with Poem 416, 30 min­utes and 40 sec­onds into the sec­ond video, below.

All told, the vol­un­teer read­ers held the podi­um for 8 hours, mak­ing it through 500 poems, slight­ly less than a third of the poet’s out­put.

A tran­script of the event, with the read­ers’ names record­ed before their cho­sen vers­es can be found here.

Sin­gle tick­ets for the Fol­ger’s 2017 Emi­ly Dick­in­son Birth­day Trib­ute, co-host­ed by poet and  fem­i­nist lit­er­ary crit­ic, San­dra M. Gilbert, go on sale August 1.

This marathon read­ing of Dick­in­son’s poems will be added to our col­lec­tion, 1,000 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Online Emi­ly Dick­in­son Archive Makes Thou­sands of the Poet’s Man­u­scripts Freely Avail­able

The Sec­ond Known Pho­to of Emi­ly Dick­in­son Emerges

Bill Mur­ray Reads Poet­ry at a Con­struc­tion Site: Emi­ly Dick­in­son, Bil­ly Collins & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Dis­cuss Emi­ly Dick­in­son with her infor­mal­ly at Pete’s Mini Zine­fest in Brook­lyn this Sat­ur­day. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Behold Lewis Carroll’s Original Handwritten & Illustrated Manuscript for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1864)

in Art, Books | July 6th, 2017

Almost exact­ly 155 years ago, Lewis Car­roll told three young sis­ters a sto­ry. He’d come up with it to enliv­en a long boat trip up the Riv­er Thames, and one of the chil­dren aboard, a cer­tain Alice Lid­dell, enjoyed it so much that she insist­ed that Car­roll com­mit it to paper. Thus, so the leg­end has it, was Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land born, although Lewis Car­roll, then best known as Oxford math­e­mat­ics tutor Charles Lutwidge Dodg­son, had­n’t tak­en up his famous pen name yet, and when he did write down Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, it took its first form as Alice’s Adven­tures Under Ground. You can read that hand­writ­ten man­u­script, com­plete with illus­tra­tions.

Car­roll pre­sent­ed the fic­tion­al Alice’s name­sake with the man­u­script, accord­ing to the British Library, as an ear­ly Christ­mas present in 1864. When his friends encour­aged him to pub­lish it, he per­formed a few revi­sions, “remov­ing some of the fam­i­ly ref­er­ences includ­ed for the amuse­ment of the Lid­dell chil­dren,” adding a cou­ple of chap­ters (the beloved Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter’s tea par­ty being among their new mate­r­i­al), and enlist­ing John Ten­niel, a Punch mag­a­zine car­toon­ist known for his illus­tra­tions of Aesop’s Fables, to cre­ate pro­fes­sion­al art to accom­pa­ny it. The result, reti­tled Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, came out in 1865 and has nev­er gone out of print.

Though Ten­niel’s vivid ren­der­ings of Alice and the eccen­tric char­ac­ters she encoun­ters have remained defin­i­tive, plen­ty of oth­er artists, includ­ing Sal­vador Dalí and Ralph Stead­man, have attempt­ed the sure­ly almost irre­sistible chal­lenge of illus­trat­ing Car­rol­l’s high­ly imag­i­na­tive sto­ry. But today, says Skid­more Col­lege pro­fes­sor Cather­ine J. Gold­en at The Vic­to­ri­an Web, “crit­ics have reeval­u­at­ed Carroll’s car­i­ca­ture-style illus­tra­tion. Car­roll expert­ly inter­twines his hand­writ­ten text with his pic­tures to advance the growth motif. His con­cep­tion of the mouse’s ‘tale’ shaped like an actu­al mouse’s ‘tail’ is an excel­lent exam­ple of emblem­at­ic verse.”

Ten­niel, Gold­en argues, “essen­tial­ly refash­ioned with real­ism and improved upon many of Carroll’s sketchy or anatom­i­cal­ly incor­rect illus­tra­tions, adding domes­tic inte­ri­ors and land­scapes that appealed to mid­dle-class con­sumers of the 1860s.” Even “late twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry graph­ic nov­el adap­ta­tions of Alice in Won­der­land recall many of Carroll’s inven­tive designs as well as those of Ten­niel,” which gives Car­rol­l’s orig­i­nal man­u­script more claim to hav­ing pro­vid­ed the visu­al basis, not just the tex­tu­al one, for the fol­low­ing cen­tu­ry and a half of sequels offi­cial and unof­fi­cial, as well as adap­ta­tions, reen­vi­sion­ings, and reimag­in­ings of this “Christ­mas gift to a dear child in mem­o­ry of a sum­mer day.”

You can view Carroll’s orig­i­nal man­u­script, com­plete with illus­tra­tions, here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land Read by Sir John Giel­gud: A Great Way to Cel­e­brate the Novel’s 150th Anniver­sary

Lewis Carroll’s Pho­tographs of Alice Lid­dell, the Inspi­ra­tion for Alice in Won­der­land

Pho­to of the Real Alice in Won­der­land Cir­ca 1862

See Ralph Steadman’s Twist­ed Illus­tra­tions of Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land on the Story’s 150th Anniver­sary

The First Film Adap­ta­tion of Alice in Won­der­land (1903)

Lewis Carroll’s Clas­sic Sto­ry, Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land, Told in Sand Ani­ma­tion

When Aldous Hux­ley Wrote a Script for Disney’s Alice in Won­der­land

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The Splendid Book Design of the 1946 Edition of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

in Books, Design | July 6th, 2017

decline of roman empire

In 1929, the book pub­lish­er George Macy found­ed The Lim­it­ed Edi­tions Club (LEC), an imprint tasked with pub­lish­ing fine­ly illus­trat­ed lim­it­ed edi­tions of clas­sic books. In the years to come, Macy worked with artists like Matisse and Picas­so, and pho­tog­ra­phers like Edward West­on, to pro­duce books with artis­tic illus­tra­tions on their inner pages. And some­times The Lim­it­ed Edi­tions Club even turned its design focus to oth­er parts of the book. Take for exam­ple this 1946 edi­tion of Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and its pret­ty amaz­ing spine design.

Cre­at­ed by Clarence P. Hor­nung, the design cap­tures the essence of Gib­bon’s clas­sic, show­ing Roman pil­lars pro­gres­sive­ly crum­bling as your eyes move from Vol­ume 1 to Vol­ume 7. George Macy lat­er called the col­lec­tion, which also fea­tures illus­tra­tions by the great 18th-cen­tu­ry print­mak­er Gio­van­ni Bat­tista Pirane­si, “the most her­culean labor of our career.”

Find more infor­ma­tion about this 1946 edi­tion here. Or, if you have deep pock­ets, pur­chase a copy here.

Note: an ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in June 2015.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Free eBooks for iPad, Kin­dle & Oth­er Devices

630 Free Audio Books: Down­load Great Books for Free

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

Free Cours­es in Ancient His­to­ry, Lit­er­a­ture & Phi­los­o­phy

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour Through Ancient Rome, 320 C.E.

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A Digital Archive of Soviet Children’s Books Goes Online: Browse the Artistic, Ideological Collection (1917–1953)

in Books, History, K-12 | July 5th, 2017

At both a geo­graph­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal dis­tance, the Sovi­et Union does­n’t look like much of a place for kids. If you grew up dur­ing the Cold War in, say, the Unit­ed States, you might well have the impres­sion (of which The Simp­sons’ “Work­er and Par­a­site” remains the defin­ing crys­tal­liza­tion) of a gray, harsh­ly util­i­tar­i­an land behind the Iron Cur­tain con­cerned with noth­ing more whim­si­cal than bread lines and pro­duc­tion quo­tas. But if you grew up in the Sovi­et Union, at least at one of the right times and in one of the right places, you might feel a now much-dis­cussed nos­tal­gia, not for the eco­nom­ic dif­fi­cul­ties of your Sovi­et child­hood, but for the sen­si­bil­i­ties of the van­ished soci­ety you grew up in. An online inter­ac­tive data­base called Play­ing Sovi­et: The Visu­al Lan­guages of Ear­ly Sovi­et Children’s Books, 1917–1953 pro­vides a kid’s-eye view into the ear­ly decades of that soci­ety.

A project of the Cot­sen Col­lec­tion at Princeton’s Fire­stone Library, the archive con­tains a vari­ety of ful­ly dig­i­tized chil­dren’s books that show one venue in which, amid these years of “Russia’s accel­er­at­ed vio­lent polit­i­cal, social and cul­tur­al evo­lu­tion,” in the words of the data­base’s front page, cer­tain kinds of graph­ic art could flour­ish. “The illus­tra­tion and look of Sovi­et children’s books was of tan­ta­mount impor­tance as a vehi­cle for prac­ti­cal and con­crete infor­ma­tion in the new Sovi­et regime.”

This ambi­tious effort, dri­ven by “direc­tives for a new kind of children’s lit­er­a­ture” to be “found­ed on the assump­tion that the ‘lan­guage of images’ was imme­di­ate­ly com­pre­hen­si­ble to the mass read­er, far more so than the typed word,” brought in a great many artists and design­ers such as Alexan­der Deine­ka, El Lis­sitzky, and Vladimir Lebe­dev, task­ing them all with cre­at­ing “imag­i­na­tive mod­els for Sovi­et youth in the new lan­guages of Sovi­et mod­ernism.”

Men­tal Floss’ Shau­na­cy Fer­ro notes how many of the books “were designed to indoc­tri­nate chil­dren into the world of the ‘right’ way to think about Sovi­et cul­ture and his­to­ry,” point­ing to a vol­ume called How the Rev­o­lu­tion Was Vic­to­ri­ous, which meant “to ensure the cor­rect inter­pre­ta­tion of the anti-gov­ern­men­tal coup among the young gen­er­a­tion of new Sovi­et read­er­ship.” Some of the oth­er read­ing mate­r­i­al that result­ed, like 1930’s indus­tri­al­ly focused What Are We Build­ing? or the slight­ly ear­li­er How Sen­ka Ezhik Made a Knife, wears its instruc­tion­al val­ue on its sleeve (or rather, its cov­er). Oth­ers, like 1925’s The Lit­tle Octo­brist Ras­cal or that same year’s Chi­na-set A Cup of Tea, offer high­er dos­es of play­ful­ness mixed in with the ide­ol­o­gy.

Play­ing Sovi­et also includes the work of Vladimir Mayakovsky, whose Whom Should I Be?, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive book from the “gold­en age” of Sovi­et Chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture, we fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture ear­li­er this year. Rus­sia Beyond the Head­lines’ Alexan­dra Gueza high­lights Mayakovsky’s  What is Good and What is Bad? (“in which he explains that walk­ing in the rain and thun­der­storms is bad, clean­ing your teeth is good, fight­ing with the boys is bad, while study­ing is good”) and Octo­ber 1917–1918: Heroes and Vic­tims of the Rev­o­lu­tion, whose “good guys” include “a work­er, a Red Army sol­dier, a sailor, a seam­stress” and whose “bad guys” include “a fac­to­ry own­er, a landown­er, a rich farmer, a priest, a mer­chant.” Good­night Moon it cer­tain­ly isn’t, but then, how many Amer­i­can chil­dren’s books had to attempt a fun­da­men­tal rein­ven­tion of soci­ety?

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Children’s Book Whom Should I Be?: A Clas­sic from the “Gold­en Age” in Sovi­et Children’s Lit­er­a­ture

Sovi­et-Era Illus­tra­tions Of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Hob­bit (1976)

Enter an Archive of 6,000 His­tor­i­cal Children’s Books, All Dig­i­tized and Free to Read Online

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

The First Children’s Pic­ture Book, 1658’s Orbis Sen­su­al­i­um Pic­tus

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Bill Gates Recommends Five Books for Summer 2017

in Books | June 22nd, 2017

Sum­mer just offi­cial­ly got under­way. So that means it’s time for Bill Gates, once again, to serve up a new Sum­mer Read­ing List. This list will help you “think deep­er about what it means to tru­ly con­nect with oth­er peo­ple and to have pur­pose in your life.” Or “what it’s like to grow up out­side the main­stream: as a child of mixed race in apartheid South Africa, as a young man try­ing to escape his impov­er­ished life in rur­al Appalachia, or as the son of a peanut farmer in Plains, Geor­gia.”

So, with no fur­ther ado, here’s Bill Gates’ five rec­om­mend­ed reads for the sum­mer. In what fol­lows, this is all Bill speak­ing:

Born a Crime, by Trevor Noah. As a long­time fan of The Dai­ly Show, I loved read­ing this mem­oir about how its host honed his out­sider approach to com­e­dy over a life­time of nev­er quite fit­ting in. Born to a black South African moth­er and a white Swiss father in apartheid South Africa, he entered the world as a bira­cial child in a coun­try where mixed race rela­tion­ships were for­bid­den. Much of Noah’s sto­ry of grow­ing up in South Africa is trag­ic. Yet, as any­one who watch­es his night­ly mono­logues knows, his mov­ing sto­ries will often leave you laugh­ing.

The Heart, by Maylis de Keran­gal. While you’ll find this book in the fic­tion sec­tion at your local book­store, what de Keran­gal has done here in this explo­ration of grief is clos­er to poet­ry than any­thing else. At its most basic lev­el, she tells the sto­ry of a heart trans­plant: a young man is killed in an acci­dent, and his par­ents decide to donate his heart. But the plot is sec­ondary to the strength of its words and char­ac­ters. The book uses beau­ti­ful lan­guage to con­nect you deeply with peo­ple who may be in the sto­ry for only a few min­utes.…

Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy, by J.D. Vance. The dis­ad­van­taged world of poor white Appalachia described in this ter­rif­ic, heart­break­ing book is one that I know only vic­ar­i­ous­ly. Vance was raised large­ly by his lov­ing but volatile grand­par­ents, who stepped in after his father aban­doned him and his moth­er showed lit­tle inter­est in par­ent­ing her son. Against all odds, he sur­vived his chaot­ic, impov­er­ished child­hood only to land at Yale Law School. While the book offers insights into some of the com­plex cul­tur­al and fam­i­ly issues behind pover­ty, the real mag­ic lies in the sto­ry itself and Vance’s brav­ery in telling it.

Homo Deus, by Yuval Noah Harari. I rec­om­mend­ed Harari’s pre­vi­ous book Sapi­ens in last summer’s read­ing list, and this provoca­tive fol­low-up is just as chal­leng­ing, read­able, and thought-pro­vok­ing. Homo Deus argues that the prin­ci­ples that have orga­nized soci­ety will under­go a huge shift in the 21st cen­tu­ry, with major con­se­quences for life as we know it. So far, the things that have shaped society—what we mea­sure our­selves by—have been either reli­gious rules about how to live a good life, or more earth­ly goals like get­ting rid of sick­ness, hunger, and war. What would the world be like if we actu­al­ly achieved those things? I don’t agree with every­thing Harari has to say, but he has writ­ten a smart look at what may be ahead for human­i­ty.

A Full Life, by Jim­my Carter. Even though the for­mer Pres­i­dent has already writ­ten more than two dozen books, he some­how man­aged to save some great anec­dotes for this quick, con­densed tour of his fas­ci­nat­ing life. I loved read­ing about Carter’s improb­a­ble rise to the world’s high­est office. The book will help you under­stand how grow­ing up in rur­al Geor­gia in a house with­out run­ning water, elec­tric­i­ty, or insu­la­tion shaped—for bet­ter and for worse—his time in the White House. Although most of the sto­ries come from pre­vi­ous decades, A Full Life feels time­ly in an era when the public’s con­fi­dence in nation­al polit­i­cal fig­ures and insti­tu­tions is low.

via Gates Notes

Relat­ed Con­tent:

29 Lists of Rec­om­mend­ed Books Cre­at­ed by Well-Known Authors, Artists & Thinkers: Jorge Luis Borges, Pat­ti Smith, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, David Bowie & More

100 Nov­els All Kids Should Read Before Leav­ing High School

Bill Gates Lists His Favorite Books of 2016

5 Books Bill Gates Wants You to Read This Sum­mer

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The Art of the Marbler: An Enchanting Film on the Centuries-Old Craft of Making Handmade Marbled Paper

in Art, Books | June 14th, 2017

The cur­rent mode of scan­dal in busi­ness and pol­i­tics involves email and tweets rather than mem­o­ran­da. But we do not yet live a paper­less world, even if you haven’t dust­ed your print­er in months. Book pro­duc­tion and sales con­tin­ue to rise, for exam­ple, defy­ing pre­dic­tions of a few years back that eBooks would over­take print. Even if we have to some­day make paper in lab­o­ra­to­ries rather than forests and mills, it’s hard to imag­ine read­ers ever let­ting go of the plea­sures of its tex­tures and smells, or of sim­ple, yet sat­is­fy­ing acts like plac­ing a favorite paper book­mark in the creas­es.

We do, how­ev­er, seem to live in a large­ly sta­tion­ary-less world, and we have for some time. As the fine art of mak­ing arti­sanal papers recedes into his­to­ry, so too does the print­ing of books with mar­bled cov­ers and pages.

Yet, if you have on your shelf hard­back books any­where from 30 to 130 years old, you no doubt have a few with mar­bled pat­terns on them or in them. And if you’ve ever won­dered about this strange art form, won­der no more. The 1970 British edu­ca­tion­al film, “The Art of the Mar­bler,” above, offers a broad overview of this fas­ci­nat­ing “mate­r­i­al which has cov­ered books for many cen­turies.”

Pro­duced by Bed­ford­shire Record Office of Cock­erell Mar­bling and direct­ed by K.V. Whit­bread, the short film is a mar­vel of quaint­ness. It effort­less­ly achieves the kind of quirk Wes Anderson’s films strive for sim­ply by being itself. We learn that every mar­bled paper, unlike Christ­mas wrap­ping paper, is a “sep­a­rate and unique orig­i­nal.” And that the process is pre­cious and spe­cial­ized, and near­ly all done by hand. Lest we become too enam­ored of the idea that mar­bling is strict­ly a his­tor­i­cal curios­i­ty these days, the mes­mer­iz­ing video above from 2011 by Sey­it Uygur shows us up close how his par­ents per­form the art of Ebru, Turk­ish for paper mar­bling.

Mar­bling, the “print­mak­ing tech­nique that basi­cal­ly looks like cap­tur­ing a galaxy on a page,” as Emma Dajs­ka writes at Rook­ie, became quite pop­u­lar in the Islam­ic world, where intri­cate pat­terns stood in lieu of por­traits. But the process orig­i­nat­ed nei­ther in Eng­land nor Turkey, but in Chi­na and, lat­er, Japan, where it is known as Sum­i­na­gashi, or “float­ing ink.” The Japan­ese tech­nique, as you can see in the video tuto­r­i­al above from Chrys­tal Shaulis, is very dif­fer­ent from British Mar­bling or Turk­ish Ebru, seem­ing to com­bine the meth­ods of Jack­son Pol­lack with those of the Zen gar­den­er. How­ev­er it’s done, the results, as “The Art of the Mar­bler” tells and shows us, are each one a “unique orig­i­nal.”

“The Art of the Mar­bler” will be added to our list of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of Japan­ese Hand­made Paper: A Short Film Doc­u­ments an 800-Year-Old Tra­di­tion

The Art of Col­lo­type: See a Near Extinct Print­ing Tech­nique, as Lov­ing­ly Prac­ticed by a Japan­ese Mas­ter Crafts­man

How Ink is Made: The Process Revealed in a Mouth-Water­ing Video

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Free Libraries Shaped Like Doctor Who’s Time-Traveling TARDIS Pop Up in Detroit, Saskatoon, Macon & Other Cities

in Books, Television | June 13th, 2017

Image cour­tesy of Dan Zemke.

If you live in a major Amer­i­can city — and maybe even if you live in a major non-Amer­i­can one — you may well have come across a Lit­tle Free Library, those box­es of books open to the pub­lic for whomev­er would like to take one or leave one. Most Lit­tle Free Libraries, often put up on pri­vate prop­er­ty by the res­i­dents of that prop­er­ty, tend to look like over­sized bird­hous­es, but none of the pro­gram’s rules requires them to look that way. A Tokyo sub­way sta­tion, for instance, built one to resem­ble a sub­way car. Oth­er indus­tri­ous Lit­tle Free Library mem­bers have used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pay trib­ute to their obses­sions, and few obses­sions run as deep (deep­er, even, than the obses­sion for trains in Japan) as the one for Doc­tor Who.

The Eng­lish genre-bend­ing spec­u­la­tive-fic­tion show has, since its debut on the BBC back in 1963, fol­lowed the tit­u­lar Doc­tor (just “the Doc­tor,” not “Doc­tor Who,” and cer­tain­ly nev­er “Dr. Who”) through many dra­mat­ic changes of set­tings, and even more notably changes of actors, as he falls into adven­tures with the var­i­ous Earth­lings he encoun­ters. Always on the move, the Doc­tor gets around by means of a machine called a TARDIS, which stands for “Time And Rel­a­tive Dimen­sion In Space.” The­o­ret­i­cal­ly able to change its shape depend­ing on the peri­od of time it lands in, the TARDIS — in a neat demon­stra­tion of the cre­ativ­i­ty that aris­es from con­straints, in this case a severe­ly lim­it­ed pro­duc­tion bud­get — gets per­ma­nent­ly stuck in the shape of a Lon­don police call box, thus repur­pos­ing one of the best-known icons of Eng­lish cities into one of the best-known icons of Eng­lish tele­vi­sion.

The best-known TARDIS-shaped Lit­tle Free Library, which appears at the top of this post, entered ser­vice in a vacant lot in Detroit, a place by now well used to mak­ing urban improve­ments by hand. The father and son behind it “began work last Labor Day, and were aid­ed by an online build­ing com­mu­ni­ty called Tardis Builders,” writes The Verge’s Andrew Lip­tak.

“The final struc­ture stands almost 10 feet tall, weighs almost a ton, and its front shelves holds around 140 books.” These videos show off oth­er book-lend­ing TARDIS­es in North Amer­i­ca, from Bloom­ing­ton, Indi­ana to Macon, Geor­gia to Saska­toon, Saskatchewan — all stand­ing evi­dence of how far Doc­tor Who’s appeal has spread beyond its native cul­ture.

As much as it may seem like noth­ing more than the proud­ly nerdy pur­suit of wor­ship­ful fans, build­ing a Lit­tle Free Library (or in most of these cas­es, a not-so-Lit­tle Free Library) in the form of a TARDIS has a cer­tain con­cep­tu­al valid­i­ty in and of itself. As every Doc­tor Who view­er knows, the TARDIS, not just a device enabling trav­el to any point in time-space, accom­plish­es anoth­er kind of spa­tial feat by hav­ing an inte­ri­or much larg­er than its the exte­ri­or. “We thought it would be cool to fill the TARDIS with items that are large on the inside, like books that hold whole lit­er­ary worlds,” says Dan Zemke, co-builder of the one in Detroit, in a Parade arti­cle. Borges, as well as all the oth­er most bril­liant spec­u­la­tive minds before Doc­tor Who and after it, would no doubt approve.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Brit­Box Now Stream­ing Now Stream­ing 550 Episodes of Doc­tor Who and Many Oth­er British TV Shows

30 Hours of Doc­tor Who Audio Dra­mas Now Free to Stream Online

The BBC Cre­ates Step-by-Step Instruc­tions for Knit­ting the Icon­ic Doc­tor Who Scarf: A Doc­u­ment from the Ear­ly 1980s

Vin­cent van Gogh Vis­its a Mod­ern Muse­um & Gets to See His Artis­tic Lega­cy: A Touch­ing Scene from Doc­tor Who

The Fas­ci­nat­ing Sto­ry of How Delia Der­byshire Cre­at­ed the Orig­i­nal Doc­tor Who Theme

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hayao Miyazaki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

in Animation, Books, K-12, Life, Literature | May 29th, 2017

Once upon a time, books served as the de fac­to refuge of the “phys­i­cal­ly weak” child. For ani­ma­tion leg­end, Hayao Miyaza­ki, above, they offered an escape from the grim­mer real­i­ties of post-World War II Japan.

Many of the 50 favorites he select­ed for a 2010 exhi­bi­tion hon­or­ing pub­lish­er Iwana­mi Shoten’s “Boy’s Books” series are time-test­ed West­ern clas­sics.

Lon­ers and orphans–The Lit­tle Prince, The Secret Gar­den–fig­ure promi­nent­ly, as do talk­ing ani­mals (The Wind in the Wil­lows, Win­nie-the-Pooh, The Voy­ages of Doc­tor Dolit­tle).

And while it may be a com­mon­ly-held pub­lish­ing belief that boys won’t read sto­ries about girls, the young Miyaza­ki seemed to have no such bias, rank­ing Hei­di and Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder right along­side Tom Sawyer and Trea­sure Island’s pirates.

Sev­er­al of the titles that made the cut were ones he could only have encoun­tered as a grown up, includ­ing 1967’s From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil­er and When Marnie Was There, the lat­ter even­tu­al­ly serv­ing as source mate­r­i­al for a Stu­dio Ghi­b­li movie, as did Miyazaki’s top pick, Mary Norton’s The Bor­row­ers.

We invite you to take a nos­tal­gic stroll through Miyazaki’s best-loved children’s books. Read­ers, how many have you read?

Hayao Miyazaki’s Top 50 Children’s Books

  1. The Bor­row­ers — Mary Nor­ton
  2. The Lit­tle Prince — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  3. Chil­dren of Noisy Vil­lage — Astrid Lind­gren
  4. When Marnie Was There — Joan G. Robin­son
  5. Swal­lows and Ama­zons — Arthur Ran­some
  6. The Fly­ing Class­room — Erich Käst­ner
  7. There Were Five of Us — Karel Poláček
  8. What the Neigh­bours Did, and Oth­er Sto­ries — Ann Philip­pa Pearce
  9. Hans Brinker, or The Sil­ver Skates — Mary Mapes Dodge
  10. The Secret Gar­den — Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
  11. Eagle of The Ninth — Rose­mary Sut­cliff
  12. The Trea­sure of the Nibelungs — Gus­tav Schalk
  13. The Three Mus­ke­teers — Alexan­dre Dumas, père
  14. A Wiz­ard of Earth­sea — Ursu­la K. Le Guin
  15. Les Princes du Vent — Michel-Aime Bau­douy
  16. The Flam­bards Series — K. M. Pey­ton
  17. Sou­venirs ento­mologiques — Jean Hen­ri Fab­re
  18. The Long Win­ter — Lau­ra Ingalls Wilder
  19. A Nor­we­gian Farm — Marie Ham­sun
  20. Hei­di — Johan­na Spyri
  21. The Adven­tures of Tom Sawyer — Mark Twain
  22. Lit­tle Lord Fauntleroy — Frances Hodg­son Bur­nett
  23. Tis­tou of the Green Thumbs — Mau­rice Druon
  24. The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes — Arthur Conan Doyle
  25. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweil­er — E. L. Konigs­burg
  26. The Otter­bury Inci­dent — Cecil Day-Lewis
  27. Alice’s Adven­tures in Won­der­land — Lewis Car­roll
  28. The Lit­tle Book­room — Eleanor Far­jeon
  29. The For­est is Alive or Twelve Months — Samuil Yakovle­vich Mar­shak
  30. The Restau­rant of Many Orders — Ken­ji Miyaza­wa
  31. Win­nie-the-Pooh — A. A. Milne
  32. Nihon Ryōi­ki – Kyokai
  33. Strange Sto­ries from a Chi­nese Stu­dio — Pu Songling
  34. Nine Fairy Tales: And One More Thrown in For Good Mea­sure — Karel Čapek
  35. The Man Who Has Plant­ed Welsh Onions — Kim So-un
  36. Robin­son Cru­soe — Daniel Defoe
  37. The Hob­bit — J. R. R. Tolkien
  38. Jour­ney to the West — Wu Cheng’en
  39. Twen­ty Thou­sand Leagues Under the Sea — Jules Verne
  40. The Adven­tures of the Lit­tle Onion — Gian­ni Rodari
  41. Trea­sure Island — Robert Louis Steven­son
  42. The Ship that Flew — Hil­da Winifred Lewis
  43. The Wind in the Wil­lows — Ken­neth Gra­hame
  44. The Lit­tle Hump­backed Horse — Pyotr Pavlovich Yer­shov (Ershoff)
  45. The Lit­tle White Horse — Eliz­a­beth Goudge
  46. The Rose and the Ring — William Make­peace Thack­er­ay
  47. The Radi­um Woman — Eleanor Door­ly
  48. City Neigh­bor, The Sto­ry of Jane Addams — Clara Ingram Jud­son
  49. Ivan the Fool — Leo Tol­stoy
  50. The Voy­ages of Doc­tor Dolit­tle — Hugh Loft­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Essence of Hayao Miyaza­ki Films: A Short Doc­u­men­tary About the Human­i­ty at the Heart of His Ani­ma­tion

Hayao Miyaza­ki Tells Video Game Mak­ers What He Thinks of Their Char­ac­ters Made with Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence: “I’m Utter­ly Dis­gust­ed. This Is an Insult to Life Itself”

Build Your Own Minia­ture Sets from Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Films: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  She’ll be appear­ing onstage in New York City this June as one of the clowns in Paul David Young’s Faust 3. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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