Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

Books in 3-D

Books can be amazing in a variety of different ways, as all you reading-focused people know. Some stories transport you to another historical era, or get you inside the head of someone whose life is completely different than yours. A few writers have a special gift for getting the dialogue just right, so it sounds completely natural and realistic. Some books are a treat for the eye, some feel good in your hand, some are excellent to read out loud – the list goes on.

For me, pop-up books are just about the apex of fabulousness. I love to read, sure, but how can you top a book so visually oriented that the images literally jump off the page? If you want to get a look at some amazing pop-up books in person, you're in luck – local gallery 23 Sandy is featuring an exhibition of pop-up books this month, to coincide with the Moveable Book Society's biennial conference, in Portland starting today. In honor of this local whirlwind of paper engineering, I'd like to share with you a few of my favorite books-about-moveable-books.

My first suggestion isn't a pop-up at all, and you could argue that it's not technically a "moveable book," either. Nick Bantock's Griffin and Sabine is the first in a series* of very short, epistolary novels about a London painter and a woman half-way around the world who can somehow see his work, while he's doing it. Their letters are in envelopes attached to each page – you must lift the flaps and draw out the letters to read them. The story is mysterious and engaging, but it's the physical trick requiring readers to handle each letter that really sucked me into the narrative.

If you want to make your own pop-ups (and really, why not?), I suggest taking a little tuition from Paul Jackson. His Pop-Up Book takes you through a course in paper engineering, with an emphasis on understanding how each element of folding and cutting affects the final pop-up. Jackson's illustrations and instructions are beautifully clear, and the projects he's chosen expose amateur paper workers to a nice range of forms.

The Penland Book of Handmade Books, edited by Jane LaFerla and Veronika Alice Gunter showcases ten master bookbinders. The book has ten chapters, each devoted to a single artist containing an essay in which the artist talks about their work, a short lesson on one of their favored techniques, and a miniature exhibition of book art selected by the artist. Even though the collection only features ten artists, there is a breathtakingly wide array of bookbinding techniques and styles presented here – folded pop-ups, pages with pockets, reduction linoleum cut prints, fore-edge clasps, and more. If you're not yet familiar with artists' books, or with contemporary bookbinding, this is a great introduction.

If you are deeply interested in handmade books, you should take the time to visit the John Wilson Special Collections at Central Library. It's an oasis of beautiful, odd, and fascinating materials, including a variety of lovely artists' and fine press books. (The John Wilson Special Collections has limited hours, and you can get to it by going up the stairs or elevator in the southeast corner of the Periodicals room.)

And, if you are inspired to learn even more about how to create your own books and paper crafts, I'd suggest leafing through the resources in the library's Bookbinding how-to booklist.

* The other books in the Griffin and Sabine series are: Sabine's Notebook and The Golden Mean.  These three are followed by a related trilogy: The Gryphon, Alexandria, and The Morning Star.

The Intersection of Ingenuity and Desperation

Customs authorities in Vancouver, B. C. made a grave discovery this week when they found nearly 57 kilograms of opium inside a hollow tombstone being shipped from Iran. The find is being called the province's biggest opium seizure ever. This type of criminal activity might be considered the intersection of ingenuity and desperation or perhaps optimism and immorality. In either case, these people and objects could tell an interesting tale.

Best known for his work as an award-winning writer for young adults, Jack Gantos tells the harrowing story of being drawn into a drug smuggling scheme and his ensuing arrest in Hole in My Life. As a teen living in the Virgin Islands fearing that his life was going nowhere with no chance getting away, Gantos was approached with an offer to transport a large quantity of hashish to New York City in return for free transport and money to start a new life. Hole in My Life documents the entanglements that slowly surround him as he realizes this adventure. Using a stark and direct style that eschews moralizing, Gantos captures an image of himself as a teen hungry for internal catharsis. Desperately looking outside himself for forces of change, Gantos ultimately finds an internal motivation  that drives him from wanting to write to actually writing during his incarceration. Our author finds that nurturing the creative impulse requires a self-discipline and self-care also essential to successfully surviving the harsh realities of life in prison.

Evidence of creativity out of desperation abounds in Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts. Collected here by Vladimir Arkhipov are ingenious examples of craft that put a hollow Iranian tombstone to shame. Leather cap made from an old punching bag? Check. Old Fanta cans turned into artful maracas? Check. Poet's flashlight for recording mid-slumber muse visits, built-from-scratch? Check. Home-Made is a testimony to the material expression of self-actualization that occurs when resources become bitterly scarce. Better yet, this is no simple picture book. Each example is grouped with insightful, and often entertainingly off-topic, comments from its creator. We learn that a hand fabricated motor scooter windshield was obtained by bartering medical alcohol and that the windshield's owner then attached a plastic visor himself, bending it to fit over an open fire. Our proud owner, Grigory Samorin, goes on to explain that the stickers of girls on the windshield are courtesy of his son who brought them back from Germany and that a similar trend has filled every kiosk in his town with porn.

Visceral yet hallucinatory, the images collected by Danzig Baldaev in the three volumes of the Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia are by turns inspiring and disturbing. Baldaev was the warden of "Kresty" an infamous prison in Leningrad. During his fifty-two years there (and in other reformatory settlements) he recorded hundreds of tattoos as they appeared on both men and women. Most of the tattoos here are presented as illustrations making Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia a flash book of sorts. Though translations are provided, only the most cursory explanation of the tattoos' meaning within the deep, complex subculture of Russian prisons is included. Still, the shocking power of these drawings speaks to a type of creative expression born out of a criminal subculture's tragic and autocatalytic need to define and enforce an articulated power structure. Plus, the drawings are cool looking.

Make It Yourself

So as you know, the economy is a bit dodgy right now. Money is tight and folks want to find ways to economize. At the same time, public concern for the well-being of our natural environment is rising, and many people are looking for ways to live lighter on the land. This combination of influences is encouraging people to spend more time and effort making things they once would have bought, repairing things they would once have paid to replace, and repurposing things they would once have thrown away.

Crafts! DIY! Homekeeping skills! I'm here to tell you, there are a lot of swell books, zines, and magazines about how to make, do, maintain, repair, and repurpose things! Here are just a few that I especially like:

If your chief interests in do-it-yourself are saving money, learning how things work, and making neat stuff, sometimes it's best to cast an eye back to the past. Practical Projects for the Handy Man is a reprint of a book originally published in 1913 by the editors of Popular Mechanics Press, and with it in hand, you can learn to make furniture, toys and household objects, how to build the apparatus for magic tricks and science projects, and a dizzying array of other tips and tricks. The how-tos are interesting and helpful, but part of the charm of the book is the way it reflects the energy and, dare I say it, vim of an idealized active boy of 100 years ago.  This imaginary boy is fun loving, nimble with tools, curious about science and the natural world, and above all interested in creating things that will make life more interesting and amusing, save laborious work, and build his skills.  Being something of an optimist, I think there's a little bit of that idealized boy in all of us, and Practical Projects might help set yours to work!

But modern-day crafters and creators are all about sharing their how-to's also. The Best of Instructables collects more than 100 super awesome projects from the web community of the same name, where people around the world share how-to instructions for everything from soup to nuts. With The Best of Instructables, you can learn how to: eat a banana like a monkey, build a teeny greenhouse inside a light bulb, take the case off of your flash drive and stick the guts into a Lego brick, or make a frighteningly realistic werewolf costume, among other things.

Enough with the amusements, bring on the ideas and instructions for serious work! Formulas, Methods, Tips and Data for Home and Workshop, by Kenneth M. Swezey and Robert Scharff is a compendium of information you might need if, for example,  you wanted to determine what color a particular species of wood will turn when weathered outdoors, figure out what materials you'll need to build a brick wall of a certain size, or find a recipe for making homemade hand lotion. The sheer quantity of data, recipes, explanations, and project instructions in this 600+ page book is amazing, but it's readable, clearly organized, and incredibly down-to-earth.

If you'd like to try a few projects that are a bit more unusual, try browsing through Making Stuff and Doing Things, edited by Kyle Bravo and Jenny LeBlanc. How-tos from dozens of zines are reprinted in facsimile form, which means you'll get all the pleasure of the cute little drawings and diagrams illustrating how to do and make whatever it is. Some of my favorites explain how to make your own soymilk, unstink your socks, re-use typewriter ribbons, and do basic electrical wiring.  The book also has a nice little essay on some of the philosophical underpinnings of the DIY ethic.

If these particular books don't make your inner do-it-yourselfer jump up and down with excitement, try taking a look at the books on specific kinds of projects. Whether you want to learn about knitting, woodwork or upholstery, do a little appliance repair, plan some garden crafts, study furniture making, fix your bike, learn how to bind a book, build a fence or brush up on your jewelry-making skills, I promise you the library can help you get started.

And if you don't spot what you're looking for right away, there's always someone to help you out. If you're in the library, stop by the reference desk and we can help you find books, magazine articles or websites about your project. Or, if it's not convenient for you to visit the library immediately, a friendly librarian is only an email or a phone call away!

Seriously, if you’re ready to make stuff, the library is a great place to start.

Romancing the Undead

The zombie is the monster of our times, according to Adam Cohen in a piece about the new book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. Cohen contrasts the sleek, investment banker-like vampire of the recent past with the more brutish and blunt zombies we now see shambling all over our movie screens and bookstore shelves. Jane Austen sequels, knockoffs, takeoffs, and remakes have flooded the market in the last few years as well. With the over-the-top conjunction of these two trends, I'm afraid they may have reached their apotheosis and that both zombies and Elizabeth Bennet will slowly fade from the front of our collective mind. Enjoy the mayhem and Regency manners while you can!

Memories of devouring Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid flooded back to me on seeing Lost In Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure by Emma Campbell Webster. A book that may polarize hardcore Austen fans into purists vs. non-traditionalists, it incorporates favorite characters from Jane Austen's novels and lets you decide on the steps you, as Elizabeth Bennet, will take on the path to matrimonial bliss--or disaster. The world of Pride and Prejudice opens up to Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. Part of the fun of this book will be figuring out who belongs to which book and enjoying how they're put together in novel ways.

If your hobbies tend towards handicrafts, like the Bennet sisters and the ladies of their day, but you need a little edge to your projects, try this: Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!. As a crocheter myself, I've experienced what I feel is a lack of crochet books with funky, fun projects compared to some of the knitting books I've looked at. Creepy Cute Crochet helps fill that gap. Using the popular Japanese Amigurumi style of crochet, Christen Haden provides patterns and instructions for a Corporate Zombie and a Cyber Zombie, as well as a panoply of monsters and their ilk. You can even make a crocheted Cleric to confront the Grim Reaper or to exorcise a crocheted Devil.

When you need to ready yourself for the inevitable rise of the undead, your indespensible companion will be The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead. This comprehensive guide to arming yourself, preparing your home for a long-term seige, and doing battle with the undead will keep you laughing through the apocalypse. Max Brooks' exhaustive guide includes a complete history of zombie uprisings dating from the dawn of human history and the details of the virus Solanum, which causes the infection that kills and then reanimates human beings. Don't read The Zombie Survival Guide if you're sensitive like I am. Its mock-serious tone could make you believe there really are zombies in your garden, hungry for your flesh.