blank books

(Click to enlarge)

I think I should print this out and put it on my craft fair booth by all my blank books...

book crafts

I am always looking for new book crafts, and recently I've been finding a lot of these book-altering projects.

Carved out book via Lean-In's Life.

Book turned picture frame via Delightful Distractions.

Book succulent garden via The Book Brook.

Book page cupcake toppers via Apple In My Heart.

Printing on a book page via Classy Little Lady.

I always feel conflicted about them: what if someone wanted to read those books? What if you have some grand plan to do something awesome with the pages torn from a book but then it turns out terribly and the book was destroyed for no reason? These are things that worry me every time I take a book apart for my own creative projects. Generally I try to use books that are going to be thrown away or are in very poor condition so I don't feel bad about taking them apart for my own purposes.

However, a few days ago my aunt Debra sent me a link to an article about these beautiful and anonymous book sculptures in Scotland gifted to various libraries and book centers around the country. All the books were left with notes that were addressed to the twitter accounts of these organizations, which I thought was an interesting and sort of insightful choice: it's a great joining of new and old technology (yes, books can be considered technology).

Here are a few of my favorite sculptures:

Left at the Scottish Poetry Library.
I like that it's a tree.
The note says:
It started with your name @byleaveswelive and became a tree.…
We know that a library is so much more than a building full of books…
a book is so much more than pages full of words.…
This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas…..
a gesture (poetic maybe?)

Left at the National Library of Scotland.
I love the variety of shapes of this one.
The gramophone and coffin were sculpted from a copy of Ian Rankin's Exit Music.
The tag read:
For @natlibscot -
A gift in support of libraries, books, words, ideas.....
(& against their exit)

Scottish Storytelling Center received this one.
I LOVE the great color of the egg and general nest-iness of it.
The tag says:
For @scotstorycenter -
A gift in support of libraries, books, works, ideas.....
Once upon a time there was a book
and in the book was a nest
and in the nest was an egg
and in the egg was a dragon
and in the dragon was a story.....

This one appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.
I love the tree silhouettes that are carved out of the cover!
It's tag was addressed to the UNESCO City of Literature.
To @edincityoflit
'A gift' LOST (albeit in a good book)
This is for you in support of libraries, books, words, ideas....
"No infant has the power of deciding.....
by what circumstances (they) shall be surrounded..
Robert Owen

Aren't they beautiful? Seeing these made me want to go out and make a book into a beautiful work of art myself. Possibly my favorite thing about the whole thing is that the books were anonymous. The article ends by saying "The Edinburgh Evening News claims to have discovered the identity of the sculptor. The general view is that We Don't Want To Know..."

I think I'd have to agree. I like the books being secret, beautiful gifts: I don't want cold hard facts to ruin the lovely fairy-tale-ness of it all.

the land of nod

I have been reading East of Eden for the little book group that our friend Gloria started this summer. First we read Life of Pi which was her pick. Braed picked up a beautiful hardback copy on sale at the university bookstore a while back and it had just been sitting on our shelf waiting to be enjoyed. It was great! It's one of those books that people seem to mention a lot but I had never read, so I was glad to finally have a reason to read it.

I read East of Eden for the first time last summer after seeing it quoted on a blog that I found linked on a friend of a friend of a friend's blog. You know, normal things. Surprising no one, I have not been able to find that original post. I do, however, still have my notebook I made while helping Esther teach a bookbinding class on Long Island that is filled with some beautiful quotations that jumped out at me during that first read. This second time through I've been more focused on plot, symbolism, character development, etc for our book group discussion, but for today I'll pleasure you with some of John Steinbeck's beautiful prose. If you haven't read this book already, I hope that this might inspire you to pick it up someday soon. But if my own words don't convince you, maybe John Steinbeck's will:

Before the inland sea the valley must have been a forest. And those things happened right under our feet. And it seemed to me that sometimes at night I could feel both the sea and the redwood forest before it.

***

 They called him a comical genius and carried his stories carefully home, and they wondered at how the stories spilled out on the way, for they never sounded the same repeated in their own kitchens.

***

 'The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in "Thou shalt," meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—"Thou mayest"—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. It says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if "Thou mayest"—it is also true that "Thou mayest not." Don't you see?' (Genesis 4:1-16)

iowa city book festival

Braed and I went to the Iowa City Book Festival today. The supposed heat wave was surprisingly unoppressive as we wandered around the various tents set up in Gibson Square. We were sort of unimpressed with the over-all atmosphere and booth content, until we found one in particular. There we had a great chat with Matthew Klane, who we know through Kendra Greene: they both headed up the University of Iowa's Anthology reading series this last year which we attended fairly regularly. We found out today that Matthew has his own press, flim forum press, which prints young writers (not in terms of young in age but in terms of published works: young=nothing or very few published works). As we chatted with him at his booth Braeden picked up what he thought was just a stack of paper but was in fact a small book Matthew letterpressed and bound himself. The front cover is just plain white, but the inside end pages are beautiful paintings (well, prints of a painting) by Chelsea Finch that peak out ever so slightly as the cover pops up. The book, entitled Isle of Wight/Israel, is a collection of poems letterpressed by Matthew and double pamphlet stitched by he and his wife. It is a beautiful book and Matthew said we were the first to touch it all day: we were so enamored with it that we had to buy it. (He even threw in one of the press's books, A Sing Economy, for free!)

As we chatted with Matthew it came up that I work in the University library doing restoration work. He asked me how it was, emotionally, doing that work. It was a question I had never gotten before and caught me a little off guard. I started saying something about the work itself, how it's a lot of mud scraping and flattening and separating, then paused and said, "But it's pretty amazing to see these books that are so dirty and falling apart and once you clean off the pages and slap a new cover on sometimes you can't even tell that they were flood damaged at all." Matthew said, "So the work you're doing is heroic. You're rescuing these books." It was honestly an adjective I'd never before thought about to describe what I do 9:30 am to 2 pm, Monday through Friday. Tedious, smelly, frustrating, dirty, mundane, endless, messy...but, heroic? I like that. It makes working for barely more than minimum wage just a little bit more bearable.

We also visited The Zine Machine, a vending machine in the library re-purposed to sell zines. I'd told Braeden about it but he had never seen it, so we stopped by today. We got some little zines for free (that's what the price was labeled at) and some science-themed ones for a buck. They were great! And they scratched at my already itchy, zine-desiring self. I have wanted to make a zine for years and years, ever since my punk rock days back in high school. I actually made one with some of my friends my freshman year of college, but our audience was only ourselves. But I want to make one that we could put in the zine machine. I got excited. We stopped at Blick on the way home to get some rubber to carve into stamps (I recently purchased a book about making your own rubber stamps) and I felt like wonderful things were about to be created.

However, as soon as we got home the malaise that has been plaguing me for-what-seems-like-ever set in and I was paralyzed by both indecision and lack of motivation. To clarify, by lack of motivation I mean literally, a lack of ability to motate myself. I want to be better than I am. I want to draw better, to write better, to sew better, to bind better, to visualize the end product better, to finish projects better and I know the only way to get better is to do, make, create! but when it comes down to it I just can't seem to get myself up off the couch. It's becoming an all-encompassing, ever present issue in my life.

so i work at a library

So I work at the university library. Doing book repair and conservation. In the fall I will officially start my Library Science and Book Arts graduate program so I can work in a library and maybe do book repair and conservation. So... yeah. Maybe after I have a master's degree they will have to actually pay me more than minimum wage: I've gotten 2 raises since I started and still only make $7.85 an hour. What. I'm pretty sure my more-older colleagues get more money than that. Probably a lot a lot more...

Anyway.

I've been doing almost exclusive work on books from the Cedar Rapids Czech and Slovak Museum that were damaged in the flooding a few years ago. That means I do things like clean crusty flood mud off pages; flatten the books by misting them, putting card stock between the pages, vacuum sealing them like food you want to preserve then putting them in a book press; also aqueously cleaning pages that have dirt that refuses to be removed with soot erasures or PVOH sponges. (If you don't know what most of those words mean, that's ok: I just learned some of them myself the other day.)

I also sometimes learn fun facts about the Czech Republic from the Prague Post newspapers (which are in English). Did you know that contact lenses were invented in Czechoslovakia and that the guy who invented them, under Czech law, was supposed to get 25% of the profits from their sale but when an American company bought the manufacturing rights and the Czech government realized that he would be a billionaire they changed the law so he got less than .5% and the government pocketed the rest and when asked about the change the inventor simply said, "I don't know what I would have done with all that money anyway."? Or that the tuba was invented in Czechoslovakia for the famous Wagner because he wanted a low instrument for his arrangements and the oldest manufactures of the tuba are still in business there? Well know you do know.

So.

Another of the (few) perks of this tedious job is that in the many books I clean I run across amazing pictures of the Czech people which I promptly photograph with my camera cellular device and then disperse via textual picture message to people (generally my husband, my youngest brother, and Harold Miller). However, lucky readers that you are, I have decided that they also need to be shared with the world. So here they are:

This guy looks like Harry Potter. Or at least his near relation. Maybe his father was really Czech and not British after all...

He has a knife between his teeth. A k-nife, I tell you!

Jitka Harazimova is a famous body builder. I don't get female body builders. Or male body builders, for that matter...

These guys are actually Finnish, but this picture was on the front of the entertainment section of the Prague Post one week: I just love their hair. Also, not pictured here, their boots.

I liked this guy's moustache and glasses combo style. His name is Jan Volf.

I was mostly enamored with this gentleman's jacket: check out those toggles! His name is Svatopluk Konicek. Of course it is.

This was a decoration that was at the end of various chapters in one book I was cleaning: I think it looks like a uterus.

I just liked this family portrait of children. The toddler perched uncomfortably on the ottoman, the forced height variation, and, most importantly, the jaunty young lad on the right with his hand on his hip and his foot crossed over the other. Sexy.

Here's a close up so you can also appreciate his stunning ears and come-hither stare. Amazing.

Check out this little Mamasita (or whatever the Czech equivalent of Mamasita is...) I love her dress, her attitude, and, most importantly, her mysterious hair...

This woman reminds me of Kirsten, the American Girl doll (who apparently doesn't exist anymore?! What the freak Mattel? ruining the rain forest and my childhood. Gosh.)

This guy has an AMAZING moustache. It is the photo that is on the front screen of my phone. Behind the clock. That one.

Well, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed yourselves. Also, the preponderance of amazing Czechs with style.

books: the future, not the past

Tonight as part of our date night (what, are we married already? date night? that's something that old, married people do...) Braeden and I went to the closing reception for the University of Iowa Center for the Book exhibit at the Main Library on campus.

I had been told about it by my supervisor at work, Kristin, and it sounded interesting: there were 4-5 presentations by UICB colleagues in the Pecha Kucha style. The final presentation was done by Matt Brown (the head of the Center for the Book with whom I exchanged a series of stressful emails over Christmas break so I could register for just one class this semester) and it was the perfect response to the seemingly ever-present question: what is the future of books in this technological age? His answer? First of all, people have been asking this question for at least the last 20 years, and guess what? Books still exist. Secondly (and this was my favorite part of the answer), people asked the same question about oil painting when the camera came along: what will happen to oil painting now that we have the camera here to record life for us instead? What happened was the popularization of photography freed up oil painting to do much greater things than just portraits and landscapes: Salvador Dalí? Pablo Picasso? Vincent Van Gogh? Claude Monet? Heard of these guys? Yeah, all of their work was done after the flash-bang of photography, an event that was supposed to make painting a quaint thing of the past.

It will be the same for books. Now that we have computers and the internet to take care of things like phone directories and encyclopedic references, it will be easier to make books into works of art, beautiful things to look upon and to touch and to experience in a totally new and artistic way, not simply a utilitarian day-to-day, hum-drum functionality.

My friends, we are not living on the precipice of the death of the book, we are living in the future.

electricity doesn't come from a socket

Today is Earth Day! I am feeling very much in the mood as I've been reading Twelve By Twelve: A one-room cabin off the grid & beyond the American Dream by William Powers. I picked it up at St. Mark's Bookshop Monday night when I stopped in to hound the consignment guy to get my Brownstones book on the shelves (due to its small size it had gotten lost in the consignment box). The title is pretty self-explanatory, but I have to say that the book is even better than I'd anticipated. One of my favorite passages so far is this one:

I remembered that electricity doesn't come from a socket; tomatoes don't come from the supermarket; water doesn't come from a pipe. Everything comes from the earth. It's fine to grasp this intellectually, but to once again touch, breathe, and eat this reality feels like reconciliation with a loved one after a long feud.

 I like how Powers points out that knowing something intellectually and actually recognizing the reality of it are different things. I've been trying a lot recently to try and live my life in a more eco-friendly way, but so far it's been mostly an intellectual realization. After I read No Impact Man by Colin Beavan I had this intense desire to walk or ride a bike everywhere, until I realized that living in the suburbs doesn't exactly make that possible. There are lots of streets—busy streets—that don't have sidewalks; long, winding hills that make riding a bike take much longer than simply hopping in the car; and a downtown that only has restaurants and fancy stores, but no stores that I would actually shop at. I realized that never again using a car would just not be possible, at least at this point in my life.

As I read the first part of The Omnivore's Dilemma and now 12x12, I'm starting to have a crisis of conscious about the food that I eat (How did this food get to me? Was it produced in a way that was not harmful to the environment or the people who harvested it?) and the clothes that I wear (sure they are good quality and I probably got them on sale, but is that really worth the lives of the children and adults half way around the world spending their lives in sweatshops working for pennies an hour?). It's becoming a problem.

One thing Powers says in his book is "Gandhi was incredibly clear: changing yourself is the key; no external achievements, however noble, can replace that." He's referencing how Gandhi gradually became the man that we all know him as. He didn't start out that way. First he educated himself about the state of the world around him, then he made decisions about what he thought was right and wrong, and only then did he alter his lifestyle so that it would be in accordance with that which he thought was right. The hardest part for me is the final step. I know that driving cars is bad for the environment, but I sometimes I have to drive one. I know that I should try and create less waste, but it's difficult when everything I normally buy is wrapped in excess packaging and/or creating specifically to be disposable. Also when I'm living at home, not on my own where these changes would be easier to make because I am in charge and just one person, not an entire household.

Today I did a lot of walking. I walked to my 8 am dermatologist appointment which made it about a 20 minute walk as opposed to a 5 minute drive (and also made me feel a bit like Jim Halpert when he decides to start biking to work, not realizing that it will make him really, really sweaty). After the appointment I walked to CVS to get my prescriptions filled. Then on a whim I stopped at the library on the way home and checked out some books I've been meaning to read for some time now (among them, Jack Kerouac's On The Road). As I walked home I seemed to be aware for the first time at how concealed the ground is in my neighborhood. I'd always thought of the east coast as lush and green and full of trees, things that I missed constantly as I attended University in the desert. However, the grass and trees that I remembered as being everywhere all of a sudden were crammed between concrete sidewalks and asphalt roads. Lawns are landscaped within inches of their lives, and all of it seemed somehow false. I still love trees: every time I see a particularly pretty or quirky or beautiful tree I unconsciously smile to myself (and think of Jen Porter). But today walking home in the brisk early Spring air, it seemed to be missing something...

The first Earth Day was celebrated on April 22, 1970. Prior to it celebration, Gladwin Hill (amazing name, right?) wrote an article for the New York Times where he said, "Rising concern about the 'environmental crisis' is sweeping the nation's campuses with an intensity that may be on its way to eclipsing student discontent over the war in Vietnam." Hopefully this Earth Day we can try to let concern for the environment and its inhabitants overpower our love of consumerism and instant gratification, just like Americans in the 70s let love of the earth trump love of war.

some things can be best & most freely spoken of only by woman to woman

Today I was commissioned to re-bind a book! How cool is that? The book is called Lydia E. Pinkham's Private Text-Book Upon Ailments Peculiar to Women. It's this funny little book about such "things can be best & most freely spoken of only by woman to woman." Shannon Adams, this woman in my church ward, asked me to re-cover it for a friend of her's as a fun little gift. I'm a little intimidated to do it because this friend is apparently an avid book collector and knows her way around a good binding.

BUT I'm also really excited! I have a lot of fun ideas that will hopefully all work out well. The book was originally stapled so, even though I removed the stapes, the pages themselves still have those staple holes in them, which is too bad. However, luckily the book was designed in folios, so the pages are folded in sections so I can sew them in the standard binding fashion for the new binding despite the staple holes. Shannon and I picked out cloth for the cover and this great paper for the end sheets that have just been sitting around my little craft room that I am really excited to finally use! I want to take the front cover and trim it, then inset it in the new book cover as the title. I think it will end up looking really nice. I just hope it will all come together as well as I see it coming together in my head!

the etsy revolution

I've done it. It's official. There's no going back. I officially started my etsy store today when I posted my first item, an envelope Valentine's book. The store is called A Book Full and can be found at abookfull.etsy.com. As of this moment that is the only item listed, and there is only one, but in reality I am working on a couple more variations of this same book, as well as other books entirely.

I wish I'd gotten the first book done and posted sooner because it's a really cute Valentine's Day gift, especially for new married couples and stuff, though I think the only reason I think that is because my group of friends is slowly but largely seeping slowly over into that other realm of married-ones. (Note: Guys this would be a great gift for your lovely wives...) I only posted the one book because I don't think enough people will see it/want it enough to order it in the next week or so before Valentine's Day to make it worth my time to make more (at least, this year) but if anyone knows for sure that they want one let me know and we can make it happen fo' sho'.

Yay for being a small business... owner? starter? crafter? ...person.

The book.

 

The inside of... the book.

etsy?

So for a while now I've been thinking about starting at Etsy account where I can sell some books and other things I've made, like jewelery or hats or cards or whatever. I've been toying around with the name Books & Things but I feel like that's maybe a little lame, though I am a fan of the ampersand. Any suggestions?

a tale of girl, dog, & their search for happiness

I recently read this phenomenal book called Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. Fun fact: she also wrote The Tale of Desperaux. So, this is a kids' book, but it also is not a kids' book. I read it for my literature and film class and we discussed this today. It has a kind of classic kids' story line: girl who is missing one of her parents finds a stray dog, gets to keep it, then has adventures with said dog, making new friends along the way. So, that is one way to read it. And it is completely legitimate. (Side note: why are the characters of children's books so often orphans, missing one of their parents, or do not have a good relationship with them? What is it about parents that stifle children heroes? Does it have to be that way? Has anyone written a successful children's book where the child is loved by both her parents and where she loves them back? Or does that happy family situation not lend itself to conflict and thus interesting action? Just something to think about...)

So, on the surface, this is just another kids' book with a juvenile story line. But there are deeper themes of the book that children won't necessarily pick up on, at least consciously. The theme of loneliness, for example, or sorrow, or forgiveness, or heartbreak. And that is what makes this book beautiful. I am not embarrassed to admit that I cried as I read it. I am slightly embarrassed to admit that I also cried during the movie (which was not as profound). Both times I saw it.

I am currently trying to write a song about the book as my final adaption project for this class. I'm having trouble making it sound legitimate though. Right now one of the the final lines is: "Just remember your friend Winn-Dixie who loves you till the end." Yeah... this is why I'm not a songwriter. 

success

No person is inherently superior to another. It is not birth that determines hierarchy, it is the work that an individual does that pulls them up or pushes them down on the ladder of success.

Granted, that is a vast over simplification of life. There are a plethora of other factors that influence an individual's success—family, socio-economic status, culture, age, etc. However, I think that it is true that "by their works ye shall know them." So then the issue becomes about the end product. Is a conference paper inherently superior to a handmade quilt? Is the CEO of a multi-million dollar company better than being a mother? I would argue, in both cases, no. Just because American society values scholarly intellect and financial success doesn't mean that those are the other things of value, the only goals worth pursuing.

Is being a literary scholar worth all the years and years of study? How does it make the world a better place? In fact, might it even make it a worse place by taking so much energy away from other pursuits. Perhaps I am just justifying my own ignorance by placing my interests in craft above the intellectual pursuits of others. But then again, perhaps I am not.

On a more cheerful note, I met John Edgar Wideman at the banquet tonight. We read his book Damballah in my African-American Lit class and so all the other students were too intimidated to talk to him, but I thought that was lame. I went up to him and we shook hands and chatted about my name (he told me that he liked it and he named a character in one of his books Cassandra... but then changed it to Miranda because his publisher at the time was named Cassandra). He was a really nice guy. Later all the other BYU students/professors took a picture with him. No big deal. I'll post it as soon as Jessica emails it to me.