The Free Bin: Soul-Sucking Royals Edition

A collection of recent links on books, writing, and whatever makes me pause a cat video to read a little further.

The current Danish royal family: family portrait or horror franchise poster?

• If you gaze at only one creepy painting of a royal family this year, make it this one. Commissioned by the Queen of Denmark and painted over four years, this royal portrait was executed by an artist said to be inspired by Rembrandt and Caravaggio. He left out “the guy who painted inside cover art for the V. C. Andrews novels.” From the Damien-like child dominating the center to the little princess decapitating her doll, it’s hard to tell which will kill you first. Look here for an enlargeable photo, plus more details on the commission.  

• For something a little lighter, Mario Popova at Brain Pickings has a nice article on a forgotten cookbook produced by Andy Warhol for a friend. The illustrations are delightful.

• Those who  like those sorts of blog posts called “Grammar Mistakes Everyone Makes” should enjoy this one: “12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Makes.” The author makes the case that the former types of articles are not only loaded with errors themselves, but also miss the big picture, and concentrate on pet peeves. 

• “If you're looking for love, and you're dead, Ghost Singles is the site for you” says the home page of this bizarre humor site. The tongue-in-skull singles dating site for the dead lets you browse through (fictitious) profiles of departed souls, containing bios like this one from deadgrrrl, age 94: “I used to like to sew, and miss it so bad! I also miss honey butter like nothing else.” 

 

• I might be biased, having worked in a bookstore so long, but nothing cracks me up like the ridiculous requests of library and bookstore patrons. This writer has a hilarious list of them, and don’t miss the comments, where more frustrated librarians share their best-ofs (like the customer who believed the staff was conspiring with monks).

 

• Dust off that mantis story! An upcoming anthology is seeking tales of bugs and creepy-crawlies, “with six, eight, and millions of legs.” See guidelines here.

Find anything of interest? As always, comments are welcome, and if you’ve stumbled on anything fun yourself, share the link.

The Free Bin: Gross Library Books, Boxing and Noir, Man Vs. Corpse

Welcome to The Free Bin, collecting recent links from around the web about books and other topics that strike my fancy (sometimes simply because the writing is excellent). Rummage around; you’ll probably find something good.

The greasy burger fingerprints are the least of your worries. (via Flickr, Creative Commons License)

• Researchers testing library books found traces of herpes on copies of 50 Shades of Grey. That’s not all: the books also tested positive for cocaine. (Some of my used bookstore co-workers wear rubber gloves when processing. This is why.)

• An Italian TV station is debuting a reality competition show for writers, with the winner receiving a major book deal. The contestants on Masterpiece will be put through a series of writing challenges, but there’s no word yet on whether or not people really want to watch the writing process.

• Boxer-turned-writer Barry Graham has a fantastic essay about boxing and noir, and what makes them both so compelling. (“If you think boxing is only about two men trying to hurt each other, you probably think Moby Dick is about a bunch of guys going fishing.")

• Speaking of noir, this piece on Linda Darnell, part of Criminal Element’s Hard Luck Ladies of Noir series, is one that will stick with you. The gorgeous actress’ life was, the site says, “a recipe for a full-tilt Hollywood tragedy.”

• Zadie Smith has an evocative essay in The New York Review of Books about the Italian painting from 1500 called Man Carrying a Corpse on His Shoulders. It’s a longer read, so if have the “send to Kindle” function enabled on your computer, hit “print” and send it to your device to read later. (I love this function, especially for reading magazine pieces. If you have a Kindle and don’t have it enabled, you simply must.)

Did you find something worthwhile? Did you read something else online recently worth sharing with the Book Dirt crowd? Do tell.

The Free Bin: Book Slides, Googly Eyes, and Other Links

I’ve been pondering a name under which to gather the various links I come across on my lazy weekends. The Rap Sheet cleverly collects crime-related links under the title Bullet Points, and I wanted something that suited my blog just as aptly. The name I’ve settled on comes from my long tenure at a used bookstore, where the free bin outside housed a collection of books deemed unsaleable, but for those willing to dig, could be a treasure trove of the obscure.

So, welcome to The Free Bin. Take whatever you like. It’s free. 

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• Joshua Glenn at HiLobrow has listed 60 great espionage novels, along with some lovely vintage covers for each pick. Because it’s a list of personal favorites rather than a best-of, there are some wonderfully eclectic choices (including my childhood hero, Harriet the Spy).
  

  

  One of HiLobrow's top espionage novels.

  
  
  
  

• Researchers have determined that there’s a single word that appears in pretty much every language, relatively unchanged. When you find out what it is, you’re likely to say “Huh?”

• The Googly Eye Books blog at Tumblr is exactly what it sounds like, a blog, in their own words, “combining two of mankind's greatest achievements: literature and googly eyes.” It’s hard not to be fascinated by the collection of books, both classic and modern, adorned with pairs of sticky googly eyes. Well worth a couple of giggles.

  

  Sherlock Holmes gets the googly-eyes treatment.

• At The Library Journal, The Annoyed Librarian explains to self-publishers why libraries can’t (and usually won’t) put their books on the shelves, and it’s nothing personal. The comments section has some interesting perspectives too, from both sides of the circulation desk.

• Remember the time Columbia University moved its whole collection to another building by putting them on a giant slide? The Paris Review does, and they’ve got pictures, not just of that particular book slide, but of other book slides.

• Shock Totem magazine is reading submissions through November for their fiction magazine (tagline: “Curious tales of the macabre and twisted”). They’re open to most anything dark, with a maximum of 5,000 words: dark fantasy, horror, mystery, suspense, supernatural, morbid humor. See guidelines for details and payment.

Check back or subscribe for regular links to book-ish and writer-ish things. And if you come across something nifty, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Have you ever found a gem in a bookstore free box? What was your best free find?