Clipmarks | invictus's Books collection

Rare Book Room

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 14:19:20 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An awesome reference site with a good collection of scanned rare books.

Introduction

The "Rare Book Room" site has been constructed as an educational site intended to allow the visitor to examine and read some of the great books of the world.

Over the last ten years, a company called "Octavo" embarked on digitally photographing some of the world ’s great books from some of the greatest libraries. These books were photographed at very high resolution (in some cases at over 200 megabytes per page).

This site contains all of the books (about 400) that have been digitized to date. These range over a wide variety of topics and rarity. The books are presented so that the viewer can examine all the pages in medium to medium-high resolution.

Tags: books, rare books, reference

Chain Reading: Social Network for Bookworms

Sun, 13 Aug 2006 01:08:24 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: www.chainreading.com

Chain Reading

What is Chain Reading?

Chain Reading is designed to cater to those of us who have an addiction to reading.

Let people know what you are reading, planning on reading, and recommend.
Suggest books to your friends.
Browse books recommended by others.
Write book reviews to share your opinions.
Keep track of books that your friends suggest.

Chain Reading is completely free. If you do not have an account, you can create one.

Tags: internet, books, social networking, book reviews

Allegory of the Continents - Great illustrations

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 22:13:30 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: 16th century illustrations, depicting "the characteristics" of the continents. Awesome scans again, from BibliOdyssey.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

Tags: illustrations, art, culture, rare books, scans

Google Books Redesign

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:27:14 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Now it looks much better; like a real online library.

Clip Source: blogoscoped.com

The Google Book search homepage just received a redesign (some of you were able to spot this prototype before, but it just went live for all). It now looks more like book shelf than straight-forward search engine; instead of the typical Google logo + input box, you’ll be seeing a couple of pre-selected covers as images, making for a more explorative approach.

Tags: google, books, book search

Arthur C Clarke never lost his sense of wonder

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:27:06 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Saluting Sir Arthur... We lost one of the most inspiring figures of our time, clippers.

Clip Source: entertainment.timesonline.co.uk

His far-sightedness led him to write dozens of science fiction novels, of which perhaps the most famous is 2001: A Space Odyssey — made into a spectacular film by the late director Stanley Kubrick.

Clarke and Kubrick created a vision of outer space that was more than just technology but had a mythic quality that probed the philosophy of the universe.

The original story was a short novella dealing with the idea of Man’s evolution being inspired by the intervention of a distant god-like extra-terrestrial civilisation.

To the end of his life he never lost his sense of wonder, his sense of humour or his strong Somerset accent. While sorely disappointed with the failure of Man’s space flight to achieve the lofty goals that he had foreseen, he always retained an optimism about the Universe and Man’s place in it.

Tags: arthur c clarke, science fiction, science, universe, philosophy, literature

The Original Wizard of Oz

Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:42:01 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz", with William Wallace Denslow's awesome illustrations, published in 1900.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' was an innovative book not least because of the twenty four full colour plates and myriad monochromatic illustrations in which the colour changed according to the location in the story (Kansas = grey, Emerald City = green and so on). With the illustrative vignettes often encroaching on the text area, the type was cleverly printed over the top of the coloured images. Such elaborate printing techniques again required that Baum and Denslow fund the printing costs and the book was published by George M Hill and Company of Chicago and New York in 1900 for $1.50 per copy. It was apparently successful.

'The Wonderful Wizard of Oz' is online in its entirety at the Library of Congress [Rare Book and Special Collections Division].

'The Wizard of Oz - An American Fairy Tale' exhibition site at the Library of Congress.

Tags: wizard of oz, books, rare books, illustrations, page scans, william denslow

Kundalini, The Mother of the Universe

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 19:32:01 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An interesting book from Sacred-Texts.com. Especially those who are into yoga and Kundalini discipline would love to browse it.

Clip Source: www.sacred-texts.com

Kundalini, The Mother of the Universe

by Rishi Singh Gherwal

Contents Start Reading Page Index Text [Zipped]

This little self-published work could be most charitably described as an anthology of material on Kundalini Yoga. Very little of this book was actually written by Gherwal; the majority of the material here consists of long quotes from other authors, notably Arthur Avalon.

Tags: hinduism, kundalini, goddess, yoga, culture, india

Aztec Mexico: Page Scans From Ancient Manuscript

Wed, 11 Jul 2007 22:41:44 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Awesome prints from centuries old manuscripts: Aztec calendar, rituals and culture. Another gem from BibliOdyssey. I recommend visiting the source.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

Aztec Mexico

This is an absolutely outstanding collection, with more than 4000 images of 'books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825'. I am amazed I had never, to my recall, seen this InsightBrowser site before. I've only had a very modest perusal of their holdings so far, but I will definitely return in the near future. It's great to see any material relating to the Caribbean and the Guyanas, but there is so much more in here. The extent of the background notes is commendable too.

Tags: books, rare books, manuscripts, aztecs, ancient, history, illustrations

Sites for bookworms: News, reviews, sharing

Mon, 16 Oct 2006 16:22:37 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: ReadySteadyBook, Book Fetish and Shelfari. Three sites for book worms. The first two are full of fresh book reviews and news. The latter is similar to Library Thing.

Clip Source: www.readysteadybook.com

ReadySteadyBook - a literary site

Latest Book Reviews

Latest Articles & Interviews

October's Books of the Month

	Everything Passes Gabriel Josipovici
	Auschwitz Report Primo Levi

-- View archive

Clip Source: www.bookfetish.org

From frightful fun to just plain frightful, the staff of Book Fetish has gathered a collection of old and new for this season of thrills and chills. We'll be updating this list throughout the month of October, so check back often.

The Cellar: Richard Laymon
10.13.06
My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding: Edited by P.N. Elrod
10.06.06
Monsters: A Celebration of the Classics from Universal Studios
10.02.06
Happy Hour at Casa Dracula: Marta Acosta
08.14.06
I'm the Vampire, That's Why: Michele Bardsley
08.10.06
Live Girls: Ray Garton
07.31.06
Off Season: Jack Ketchum
07.07.06
A House Divided: Deborah Leblanc
06.12.06

Clip Source: www.shelfari.com

The problem with our large bookshelves is that they are buried in our home where only a subset of people can see what we have read. Now with Shelfari you can show off that book collection to your friends and the world!

Tags: books, reading, reviews, collections, news, social network, web2.0

Happiness wins science book prize

Mon, 28 May 2007 14:32:19 GMT

clipped by: invictus

Clip Source: news.bbc.co.uk

Happiness wins science book prize

Daniel Gilbert beat five other shortlisted titles

A scientific exploration of the various ways people attempt to make themselves happy has won the annual Royal Society Prize for Science Books.

Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness had been tipped as the favourite to win the prestigious £10,000 award.

It beat five other titles including Henry Nicholl's Lonesome George, an account of the last known individual of a subspecies of Galapagos tortoise.

Tags: books, daniel gilbert, happiness, royal society prize

Jamieson Celestial Atlas

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 23:01:12 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: Excellent scans from a 1822 edition Celestial Atlas. A vintage from BibliOdyysey. (Check the source - many page scans.)

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

Jamieson Celestial Atlas

The most important contributors in the history of printed celestial cartography were Bayer (1603), Hevelius (1690), Flamsteed (1729) and Bode (1801). They each produced renowned star atlases that combined the latest contemporary scientific knowledge with outstanding artistic craftsmanship.

Johann Elert Bode's 'Uranographia' (b & w; colour) provided the model for the 1822 publication by amateur British astronomer, Alexander Jamieson: 'A Celestial Atlas Comprising a Systematic Display of the Heavens in a Series of Thirty Maps' which is available in high resolution format at the US Naval Observatory (or click on the above images for a medium enlargement). Jamieson was of course insistent that his atlas improved upon Bode's work.

Tags: books, atlas, vintage, astronomy, celestial, constellations, jamieson

Notes on a Sick Planet

Sat, 13 Oct 2007 17:45:06 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

The authors may reach a bit when they try to sound less square, likening the buying of compact fluorescent light bulbs to “an upgrade on your iTunes software.” But they make the science relevant and enjoyable with abundant visuals and conclude with some meaty ways for kids to make a difference. The old standbys are all there (switch light bulbs, recycle, use canvas bags at the grocery store). But I smiled on noticing something new: the authors suggest some “sustainable careers” kids can consider, like meteorologist and “glacial geologist.”

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

There’s no use avoiding it: our kids need to know about the global environmental crisis — climate change, deforestation, species extinction. And as long as we’re teaching them about all that, we may as well teach them some science at the same time. Learning about evaporation can be as boring as watching a pot boil, but if it’s part of a habitat-destroying, polar-bear-killing, actually-somewhat-interesting environmental disaster, maybe that’s something kids could enjoy reading.

Here are two new books that don’t shy away from the complexity of the science or the gravity of our environmental situation, but which also don’t forget their audience. Never before have so many serious ecological ideas been mixed so heavily with flatulence jokes and sad pictures of cute animals. The details of global warming boggle some of the world’s finest minds, but Laurie David and Cambria Gordon’s “Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming” actually makes it easy to understand.

Tags: environment, books, kids, learning, education, earth, book review, science

The World Before The Deluge

Wed, 02 May 2007 23:24:15 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: An awesome feature again, from BibliOdyssey. Illustrations from a 1872 edition book, depicting the prehistoric world.

Clip Source: bibliodyssey.blogspot.com

"The object of "The World before the Deluge" is to trace the progressive steps by which the earth has reached its present state, from that condition of chaos when it "was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the the deep," and to describe the various convulsions and transformations through which it has successively passed."

'The World Before the Deluge' by Louis Figuier (1872 revision of the 1862 text) is online at 19th century science.

Tags: books, rare books, illustrations, prehistory, art, earth, deluge

"Are We Rome?" - Book Review

Fri, 18 May 2007 16:38:07 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks:

"Are We Rome?" is an essay in polemic, not scholarship, and Mr. Murphy does not set out to analyze the deep structural forces of Roman or American history. Instead, he makes a tour of contemporary American politics, and speculates about Roman parallels to very upto-the-minute problems. In many ways, Mr. Murphy's argument is less about America in general than about the Bush administration in particular. Thus he worries about the transfer of government functions to private contractors like Halliburton, seeing an analogy to the Roman system of patronage.

Clip Source: www.nysun.com

The short answer to the question Cullen Murphy asks in "Are We Rome?" ( Houghton Mifflin, 262 pages, $24) is no. "Press it too far," Mr. Murphy himself confesses near the end of his pithy, provocative book, "or invoke it too literally, and the Rome-and-America analogy breaks down in strategic places." Still, it is no surprise that we are still looking to Rome for omens of our national destiny. The Founding Fathers started the tradition, frequently imagining the new American Republic in terms of the vigilant, virtuous Roman Republic.

This kind of allusion came as naturally as breathing to Hamilton, writing at a time when every educated man knew his Livy as well as he knew his Bible. You only have to visit Washington, D.C., with its monumental imitations of Roman temples, to see how strongly Rome continued to grip the American imagination of power.

Tags: books, cullen murphy, america, rome, history, politics

Superman tales from 1930's - online archive

Tue, 11 Jul 2006 23:14:43 GMT

clipped by: invictus
clipper's remarks: A great online Superman comics archive. Scanned pages from issues beginning with 1930's to 21st century - full stories.

Clip Source: superman.ws


	*ONLINE COMICS! [next->] SUPERMAN in the...* 1930s \| 1940s Part 1 \| 1940s Part 2 \| 1950s Part 1 \| 1950s Part 2 1960s Part 1 \| 1960s Part 2 \| 1960s Part 3 \| 1960s Part 4 \| 1960s Part 5 1970s Part 1 \| 1970s Part 2 \| 1970s Part 3 \| 1970s Part 4 1980s Part 1 \| 1980s Part 2 \| 1980s Part 3 \| 1980s Part 4 \| 1980s Part 5 1990s Part 1 \| 1990s Part 2 \| \| 1990s Part 3 \| 21st Century
	"Super Adventures" \| "Untold Tales of Krypton" \| "Operation Super-Sons" Fan Fiction \| Batman Part 1 \| Batman Part 2 \| Links
	Metropolis Mailbag \| "The Origins of Superman" About the Comics

Tags: superman, comics, vintage, online comics, sci-fi, entertainment