With all those technology types talking about carrying around all our books in one little piece of plastic, it’s kind of refreshing to the contrarian in me to see this enormous book that takes six people just to lift it.The 350-year-old Klencke, the world’s largest book, will be on display in the British Library this summer.

It is almost absurdly huge – 1.75 metres (5ft) tall and 1.9 metres (6ft) wide – and was given to the king by Dutch merchants and placed in his cabinet of curiosities.

“It is going to be quite a spectacle,” said Tom Harper, head of antiquarian maps. “Even standing beside it is quite unnerving.”

As a contrast, one of the smallest maps in the world, a fingernail-sized German coin from 1773 showing a bird’s eye view of Nuremberg, will be exhibited close by.

Link – Guardian UK

Yes. Hilarious. True.

Novelist Meg Cabot has an interview with Laini Taylor, whose YA novel Lips Touch was recently a National Book Award Finalist.

In it, Laini talks about her background in both writing and art–she majored in English but also went to art school:

Laini: Writing was my first love. When I look back now, I can see that my whole art journey was really an elaborate procrastination from writing. I’ve always wanted to be a writer, and in college I majored in English and took writing workshops, planning (in the vaguest possible way) to take the publishing world by storm after graduation.

Laini: Well. There was one small problem. I didn’t actually write very much. Minor detail! I thought about writing a lot, but actual words on the page? Not so much. Writing was really hard, so, out of avoidance, I began to do art instead. It started as a hobby, but I got obsessed, and within a couple of years I was applying to art schools. It was years before I got back to writing seriously, and I can’t help but imagine all the books I might have written in that time. Still, I’m glad my life took that path. Art has been a great second career AND I met my husband in art school!

She also talks about her heroes, including Lady Oscar from a Japanese cartoon she watched as a kid (“She was Marie Antoinette’s kick-ass female bodyguard and she dressed and fought like a man but she was beautiful and had a great love story.”), and how she deal with rejection as a writer.

But. I have another way of dealing with rejection that’s much more fun: make enemies. Really. I have a secret nemesis, a writer who snubbed me at a convention once (no, I won’t say who!). Since then, I’ve only ever said his/her name in the way Seinfeld says “Newman!”

A great interview. Read it here.

I’m not sure which is a bigger expression of ego: to believe that your creative work is an expression of genius or to believe that creativity is a receptor of something special God sends just to you, and therefore by extension your work is an expression of God. (That is the logical end to her thinking here, right?) Nevertheless, Elizabeth Gilbert has some interesting thoughts about creativity and how to keep from being emotionally squashed by your own work. Plus she’s just so darn likable.

There’s that old stereotype that women only write about small domestic issues–sewing, pregnancy, raising kids–and men write about big “important” issues–war, the fate of mankind, etc. I asked the Word Pirates the other night if they think this still goes on. Are there still women’s subjects and men’s subjects in writing?

My guess is yes, these stereotypes still linger, although not officially. Women aren’t confined to writing about society and family like they used to be, but they still do it. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we need both genders writing about all subjects. And frankly, men tend to dip into the women’s subjects more than the other way around–you are more likely to find a male writer writing about family than you are to find a female writer writing about war.

Anyway, we came up with a list of stereotypical Male subjects and Female subjects, and it rather amused me. Here is it:

Subjects Regularly Covered By Female Writers:

Family
Children/Pregnancy
Emotional strife
Romance
Jane Austen
Vampires being romantic
Fashion/shopping
Death from cancer/car accidents
The emotional ramifications of sex

Subjects Regularly Covered By Male Writers:

The condition of mankind
The end of the world
Sports
War
Physical strife
Science
Vampire being violent
Death from terrorism
Politics
The sex act itself and the ramifications of women having emotional reactions to it
Cowboys

This is, of course, tongue-in-cheek. Still, I think there’s some truth to it.

A publishing trend that I think is dying is the snarky, single-topic blog being turned into a book. I plan to dance on the grave of this trend. I don’t know how it started, if it actually made any money, or who decided it was a good idea. And I don’t care. I only care that it dies a horrible death.Books with bad photos and no editorial concept beyond a one-note joke … you’re time is over!

Now there is a site mocking these mockeries: Look At This Idea For A Blog-to-Book Deal

Of course, perhaps they hope to actually publish a book of stuff from their Tumblr blog  mocking people trying to turn their Tumblr blog into a book. I’ve decided to ignore that Ouroboros. (Read on …)

I’m reading The Journals of Joyce Carol Oates right now. After a bad review for one of her books, she wrote the following:

If younger writers could anticipate what lies ahead after their years of arduous labor and their hopes and fantasies and sacrifices (if anyone still “sacrifices” anything for their art) … would they believe the effort was worth it? If it weren’t for the satisfaction of writing as an end in itself, apart even from the money involved, I wouldn’t advise anyone to write. Not at all. Therefore I’m at a loss about advising writers who are modestly gifted but who find writing very hard work, not really enjoyable. I really don’t know what to say. I look at them and think, But why do you want to writer if, in fact, you suffer so …? The rewards won’t compensate for the suffering. The “rewards” are so mixed, so ironic. Why do you want to write if you really don’t want to write?

This strikes me as true. Publishing is hard. Always has been, always will be. So the act of writing has to be important and enjoyable to the writer to make it worth it. I have seen other writers struggle like she is describing and I often wonder why they are forcing it. Why write if it is such a struggle? There are a lot of easier pursuits out there, that’s for sure.

Hmm if this were true, I think all writers would be in trouble.

French novelist Camille Laurens is claiming that “fellow author Marie Darrieussecq committed “psychological plagiarism” with her 2007 book Tom is Dead. She says that Darrieussecq’s book is the retelling of the death of her newborn child, which she wrote about in her own 1995 book Philippe.

“Reading Tom Is Dead,” Laurens said, “I had the feeling that it had been written in my bedroom, that she (Darrieussecq) had sat on my chair, lain in my bed.”

Darrieussecq responded that retelling a story is not plagiarism. And she’s right. Plagiarism is to “present as new and original a product derived from an existing source,” (Merriam-Webster) i.e. stealing their words and passing them off as your own. What Darrieussecq has allegedly done is steal ideas. Ideas, the real commodity of writing, are not protected in the same way, nor should they be.

I have some advice for everyone: Never tell a writer a story if you aren’t comfortable with her writing about it. It’s a well-known fact that writers mine from life. They are always on the lookout for new stories and emotional material. If they are interested in your story, there’s a good chance some part of their mind is considering writing about it. And they just might do it.

Which doesn’t mean that Darrieussecq’s behavior is okay here. The person I know who has the best stories (Marcia) also happens to be another writer, and because of this I would not write about anything she tells me. That’s her material. Likewise I would not write about my close friends and family because that is disloyal. I want the people I love to trust me.

But that’s morality, that’s not legality. The fact is, there are many writers who have made a career out of stealing the ideas that they turn into part of their work. Some of it is okay, even wonderful. Some of it is morally icky. Either way, it’s a fact of the writing life. That’s why Lauren looks like a bit of a baby for complaining about it, especially since her own book was published 15 years ago. While it’s never fun to have another writer steal your ideas, it’s also a sign of a lesser creative mind. People steal what they do not have.

Word Pirate Morgan Elliott has a new website up featuring his illustrated novel Guilt World. You can browse the first two chapters as well as his illustrations. Great job, Morgan.