I am slowly making my way through Dante’s Inferno. It’s the first time I’ve read the book all the way through and I am struck by how incredibly visual it is. I have to wonder a bit about the mind of a man who can think of so many horrible scenarios, but it’s a great read, very eerie and disturbing.

But now everyone can delve into the Inferno without having to pick up the book. EA games has apparently made a video game called Dante’s Inferno.

At first I thought this was a good idea. At the end of Doom 3, you descend into hell and it’s cool and scary, so why not make a whole game based on hell? Inferno, being very visual and having–literally–different levels (nine of them to be exact) is a good choice.

But these trailers aren’t doing it for me. For one thing, they have diminished the role of Virgil, Dante’s guide, to almost nothing. Now Dante is some sort of warrior who descends into hell and has to fight the dead souls there.

Okay, I can see that. I know it’s boring to have Dante walk through the different circles of hell and ask everyone who they are. But the book is so eerie and creepy, and this is so violent and, well, video game-ish, that I find it disappointing.

However, I might forgive all that if it weren’t for this:

“Cackle cackle! You’re never get the girl, Dante!”

That is a giant Cleopatra, by the way.

Yeah…

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

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 …)

Here’s a stop-motion ad made out of a book. It is promoting books and the New Zealand Book Council.

Happy Thanksgiving!

“Yes little Bobby and Suzy, when Grandma was 18 years old, there was this series of books called Twilight about a sparkly vampire who falls in love with a teenager. No one reads these books anymore but they were quite a to-do in my time, let me tell you. What? No, he was sparkly because his skin shown like diamonds in the sun. I don’t know why. Anyway, children, that is why I show you this tattoo. Take it as a cautionary tale of why you should not get a tattoo at a young age. I mean, did you read this thing? It’s not even punctuated properly. What was I thinking?”

More here.

I never know whether to believe British newspapers, because they vary in quality. But the Telegraph says a computer program that is supposed to grade A level English papers (which I think is end of high school?) gives poor marks to Winston Churchill and Ernest Hemingway.

[Churchill’s ] reference to the “might of the German army” lost him marks because the computer assumed that Churchill had intended to say “might have”, instead of using “might” as a noun.

Graham Herbert, deputy head of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors, said: “The computer was limited in its scope. It couldn’t cope with metaphor and didn’t understand the purpose of the speech.

“We also tried a passage from Hemingway. It couldn’t understand the fact that he had a very spartan style and [it] said he should write with more care and detail. He was also rated less than average.”

Are UK schools (and American schools, according to the article) actually using this program? Possibly. I get such a kick out of these kinds of stories. Every once in a while someone thinks a computer can have reading comprehension or write. Considering how few humans seem able to do either, I find that highly amusing.

Link

Happy Halloween, Word Pirates! Here’s Poe reading his poem “Annabel Lee” to get you in the mood:

Annabel Lee
by Edgar Allan Poe

It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,
In this kingdom by the sea:
But we loved with a love that was more than love -
I and my Annabel Lee;
With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven
Coveted her and me.

And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee;
So that her high-born kinsmen came
And bore her away from me,
To shut her up in a sepulchre
In this kingdom by the sea.

The angels, not half so happy in heaven,
Went envying her and me -
Yes! that was the reason (as all men know,
In this kingdom by the sea)
That the wind came out of the cloud one night,
Chilling and killing my Annabel Lee.

But our love it was stronger by far than the love
Of those who were older than we -
Of many far wiser than we -
And neither the angels in heaven above,
Nor the demons down under the sea,
Can ever dissever my soul from the soul
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;

For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes
Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
Of my darling -my darling -my life and my bride,
In the sepulchre there by the sea -
In her tomb by the sounding sea.

A good one from The Onion:

Privileged Little Artiste Writing Something Oh-So-Precious Into His Moleskine Notebook

SAN FRANCISCO—After gently unfastening the elastic strap keeping his dearest musings safe from prying eyes, little literary artiste Evan Stansky penned a few more darling thoughts into his clothbound Moleskine notebook Wednesday. “These are much higher quality than the notebooks you find at CVS,” lilted the auteur, who couldn’t be bothered to use—dare it be said—a journal of lesser craftsmanship or pedigree, or one not famously used by such legendary artists as van Gogh and Hemingway. “They’re a little more expensive, but I try to write on both sides so I don’t go through them as quickly.” At press time, the princely scribe was seen finishing his apricot jasmine tea, asking a mere mortal sitting nearby to watch his literary accoutrements, and then prancing off to the Starbucks powder room, light as a feather.

(Via Bookninja)

Literary Review gives the “bad sex” award “with the aim of gently dissuading authors and publishers from including unconvincing, perfunctory, embarrassing or redundant passages of a sexual nature in otherwise sound literary novels”.

Sex is really hard to write! I don’t normally go for “bad” awards. But these are otherwise good writers (usually) confronting a real writing problem: how do you write sex that isn’t silly, too-graphic, icky, confusing … the list of adjectives goes on. It’s kind of helpful to see what they did wrong (or what they did to rub this one literary journal the wrong way)…

This year’s nominees:
James Buchan for The Gate of Air
Simon Montefiore for Sashenka
John Updike for The Widows of Eastwick
Kathy Lette for To Love, Honour and Betray
Alastair Campbell for All in the Mind
Rachel Johnson for Shire Hell
Isabel Fonseca for Attachment
Ann Allestree for Triptych of a Young Wolf
Russell Banks for The Reserve
Paulo Coelho for Brida

Nominated passage from Allestree’s novel:

“He raised himself to his knees and bent to roll his tongue around her weeping orifice. He was bringing her to a pitch of ecstasy when she heard Madame Veuve, on the landing, put down the supper tray. Whiffs of onion soup strayed over them as he engulfed her. ‘Don’t stop,’ she clamoured; she was nearly there, it was in the bag.”

via Guardian UK

-marcia

The book “Can We Have Our Balls Back, Please” asserts that the British invented baseball, and cites the opening pages of Jane Austen’s “Northanger Abbey” as proof.

On the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert did a great riff on what Austen baseball would be like. Here is an excerpt: (The video is also below, with the Austen bit as the second segment)

“Austen wasn’t writing about American baseball. It was a Jane Austen version, where the ball is not hurled about rudely, but introduced to the bat through proper channels at a society function. And one does not steal bases like a commoner; one sends word ahead to the next base by messenger, requesting permission to approach at the base’s leisure. Of course, what the bat cannot reveal is that though he loves the ball desperately, he has sworn an oath of loyalty to the glove to whom the ball was promised. So the bat must pretend he hates the ball, swatting at it, though he wishes nothing more than to profess his undying affection, but he can’t, he mustn’t, he shan’t! And so, the bat must retreat to the gardens of his estate and… pine.”