People who've had a bottle of wine with me in the last year may be familiar with the following scenario: I put my head in my hands and moan "I don't want to live in a world where books don't exist. I just don't." The conversation frequently turns to the future of the book-as-fetish-object for weirdos like me, which I suppose is better than no books at all, but still is less than ideal. However, I will say that the book-as-fetish-object defense has brought about some beautiful things into this world. People send me links and pictures, probably to cheer me up from my apocalyptic nightmare visions. I think it's time to share them with you all and dance triumphantly in our still-intact heavenly, bookish world.
1. Caroline Hadilaksono and her Harry Potter travel advertisements.
2. The Scottish Library Phantom. A person snuck into various libraries and museums and placed tiny art objects made of books in places where people would find them. My favorite part of this story is that the Scottish public voted to never find out the identity of the person. I love you, Scotland.
3. Guy Laramee, who carves landscapes into encyclopedia sets and other old hardcovers.
4. Moby-Dick in Pictures by Tin House Books. One of my favorite books, turned into pictures, turned into a book, turned into a video.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNPt_Xb6W9k]
5. Out of Print Clothing. I bought the Moby Dick shirt a whole back at McNally Jackson's, and I'm saving it for a special occasion. If I hadn't spent all my money on actual books, I would only wear these clothes.
6. Cats! Puns! Book covers! I'm sort of embarrassed of how many people sent this to me.
7. My favorite thing ever published on McSweeney's.
8. Sherlock, the BBC adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's novels and stories. It's only six episodes long, but each one is ninety minutes, so basically the BBC just gave us the six best Sherlock Holmes movies ever made. I'm serious. It's on Netflix Instant now, so there's no reason you should not be watching this, unless you're reading. I know it's blasphemous to put something digital on this list, but honestly, I love it so much.
9. Would you like a Zora Neal Hurston finger puppet? Who wouldn't? I assume everyone knows about the Unemployed Philosopher's Guild by now, but that's probably because I spend enough time on their website for the whole human race.
10. Just go into Etsy and type in "books," "literary," or "literature." It gives me great hope. (This is a Shakespeare pendant.)
I think we're going to be fine, everybody. Turns out everybody loves books after all.