Remember on April 1st when I said I would be taking a hiatus from Magpie Mondays until late May but that I would post some interesting bits in the meanwhile? Yeah, that all went down the drain. Not even a Video Friday last week! But I can see the light at the end of what has been a terribly long tunnel at work, and I’ll try to be better for the next couple weeks.

Today I offer a charming short film, The Last Bookshop. Here’s the official description from youtube (but also check out the website):

The Last Bookshop imagines a future where physical books have died out.

One day, a small boy’s holographic entertainment fails, so he heads out to explore the streets of abandoned shops outside. Down a forgotten alley he discovers the last ever bookshop. And inside, an ancient shopkeeper has been waiting over 25 years for a customer…

Produced by The Bakery in the South-East of England, filming took place in 2011, with post-production completed in 2012. The music was composed by Owen Hewson and performed by Arlet.

Veteran actor Alfred Hoffman stars alongside youthful co-star Joe Holgate.

It is written by Richard Dadd, who also co-directs alongside Dan Fryer.

We love bookshops. But we saw that many are going through tough times.

We wanted to contribute to the cultural debate with our own celebration in support of these glorious independents and their shelves of treasures. So with the help of some remarkable independent bookshops, and a lot of talented friends, we have been able to make our idea for The Last Bookshop into a reality. We hope you enjoy this film and share it with your friends…

So here I am, sharing it with my friends:

Here’s a real treat for you Whovians (or Wholigans, if you prefer). Recently, I posted the first Doctor Puppet short and now there’s a second. Presented together for your viewing pleasure:

Episode 1: The Red X

Episode 2: The Conjunction of Eleven

Need more of the good Doctor Puppet? Check out this tumblr!

Paintwork is a short film based on Tim Maughan’s short story of the same name (which you can read here). The technique, as you’ll read in the official description below, is pretty neat.

New Scientist’s Arc Magazine and science fiction author Tim Maughan are proud to announce the online debut of the low budget, experimental short film Paintwork. Set in near-future Bristol—the British city known internationally for spawning Banksy—it follows augmented reality graffiti artist 3Cube as she illegally transforms an all-too familiar advertising billboard into a work of high tech street art, and poses questions about the relationships between technology, advertising and the control of public spaces.

Heavily influenced by Chris Marker’s seminal 1962 film La Jetée, Paintwork blends still photography by Laurie Eagle and computer animation by Alan Tabrett with audio from two stalwarts of the Bristol music scene in the form of narration by renowned MC Koast and an exclusive soundtrack from influential dubstep producer Forsaken. Based on the title short story from Maughan’s critically acclaimed collection, Paintwork was premiered in an early form in February as part of the arts festival Sonic Acts in Amsterdam….

♦ In case you didn’t know, Japanese schoolgirls rock. Case in point: a new fad where the young ladies take photos of themselves imitating the Kamehameha, an energy attack seen in the anime Dragon Ball (and thus not to be confused with Kamehameha, the first king of the Hawaiian Islands). Blastr calls the trend “simultaneously funny and awesome,” though I would put more emphasis on the awesome. Click through to see more images in the Blastr gallery. Via.

♦ Turn the Page.

Kinuyu Tanaka reads

Feed, feed, feed your fiction-lovin’ mind:

Flax-golden tales: Deer by Erin Morgenstern

From The Guardian: Sea Story by A.S. Byatt

From Weird Fiction Review: The Love of Beauty by K.J. Bishop. My friend Adam Mills also interviewed Bishop forWFR.

From Tor.com: Running of the Bulls by Harry Turtledove

From Daily Science Fiction: Skipping Stones by Devin Miller, The Tying of Tongues by Kristi DeMeester (I thought DeMeester’s writing was particularly lovely), The Man and the River by Therese Pieczynski, Shadow Play by Liz Argall, and Foundering Fathers by Brian K. Lowe.

Need more? Flavorwire has 10 (more) wonderful short stories to read for free online, and these ten writers are indeed wonderful: George Saunders, E. Annie Proulx, Jorge Luis Borges, Amy Hempel, Vladimir Nabokov, Mary Gaitskill, Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Steven Millhauser, and Denis Johnson.

Need even more? How about poetry? Read the first poems of 10 famous poets: Marcel Proust, Shakespeare, e.e. cummings, Sylvia Plath, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

The Instagram of Dorian Gray (via) made me smile—click to embiggen:
♦ Viewers’ Paradise.

Everyone’s been a-buzz with the trailer for The Wolverine. Am I alone in thinking the plot feels a little Superman II-y, when Superman gives up his powers to disastrous consequences? Of course, The Wolverine has more literal and figurative claws than Superman II, but still.

AboveAverageNetwork’s new video, Boy Bandits: The Rise & Fall of Puberty’s Child, is kind of funny, but it features Martha Wash, whom I adore!

Is there anything cuter than The Doctor Puppet? I think not. Check out episode one, The Red X.

In further honor of Doctor Who, I also offer My Drunk Kitchen: Fish Sticks and Custard—ta da! Can I just say I think Hannah Hart and Chris Hardwick are about the cutest people ever? I want to hang out with them. Hannah even makes a “that’s what she said” joke! (Be warned: the language can be NSFW, so be wary if you’re easily offended.)

♦ The Book Nook.

From the delightful Share Your Shelf tumblr:

Talking Covers talks with Alix Ohlin about her books’ covers, including this minimalist stunner for her novel Inside.

Oh, I would definitely have a Read Nest if I could! Click through to see more pictures, and you’ll definitely want one, too.

The Read Nest, built by Dorte Mandrup, a Danish architect

If not a reading nest, how about a book bubble? Found at Book Mania!

Cocoon 1, created by Swiss designers at Micasa LAB

Book Mania! also featured this photograph of the 20-foot high bookshelf of Marcus Nispel (director of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). I swooned, I tell you!

BookRiot asks, Would you join a private library? And I would indeed if it looked like the General Society Library in New York City (pictured below). More images to be seen by clicking the link above or the image.

The Reading Room of The General Society Library in New York City

So many things are perfect about this photo from the book lovers never go to bed alone tumblr:

♦ Riensberg Cemetery in Bremen.

European Cemeteries, a wonderful blog of photographs by Martin Siegling, featured the above-mentioned Riensberg Cemetery. Below are two of my favorite photos, but I hope you’ll click the link (or either of the photos) to see more. Laura, I thought you might find this blog of particular interest.

♦ The Ninth Art.

I had lunch at Mojo’s Famous Burgers & More on Friday and so this mash-up from Super-Team Family had to be shared:

Tim Callahan rereads The Wake, “the tenth and final collection of the original Neil Gaiman Sandman run, [which] collects the four-part title story arc plus two other epilogues, respectively called ‘Exiles’ and ‘The Tempest.’ So it’s an epilogue and then another epilogue and a final epilogue.”

My First Valentine Was Doctor Who (yes, more Doctor Who!) is a magical short comic from Rebecca Mock, who drew it for the comic anthology My First Time Buying Condoms and Other Embarrassing Stories, compiled by Maritsa Patrinos. The first two panels are below, but do click the link above or the image itself to read the entire thing.

Another reason I love A Softer World:
The second part of The Strange World of Martin Kardec at The Secret Knots by Juan Santapau:
Wondermark #924: The Diagrammatical Dilemma:
♦ She Blinded Me … with Science!

Physiology: The science of goosebumps and music chills from AsapScience:

Sexology: Are men who pay for sex normal, or just weird?

Zoology: Luna, a baby polar bear cub at the Buffalo Zoo, plays in the snow. Via.

True Facts about the Naked Mole Rat by Ze Frank taught me a lot about the naked mole rat.

♦ The Writing Desk.

My dear friend Molly shared this link to An Open Letter to Canonical Authors by Daniel Wallace—funny stuff, folks!

For those of you writing a mystery: how to murder someone with bananas and bees.

I enjoyed these fascinating photos of famous authors as teenagers. That’s Ernest Hemingway below, but you can also see photos of teenaged Neil Gaiman, Flannery O’Connor, Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, Mark Twain, Mary Karr, Allen Ginsberg, Martin Amis, Sylvia Plath, J.D. Salinger, Virginia Woolf, Anaïs Nin, Maurice Sendak, Margaret Atwood, and a particularly serious Samuel Beckett.

Chuck Wendig knows 25 ways to be a happy writer (or, at least, happier).

Elizabeth Spann Craig on creative exploration.

Mary Robinette Kowal with another Debut Author lesson on the author photo.

♦ Time to report the sad news (for some): April is indeed going to be the cruelest month for me—if I said aloud how many students essays and stories I had to read and how many critiques I had to write this month, the baby Jesus would cry—so for a while I’m going to suspend Magpie Mondays. I’ll try and post some interesting bits every now and again, and sometime in May I’ll re-start Magpie Mondays, and maybe even have time for additional posts.

Image by Leonid Tishkov

Image by Leonid Tishkov (via).

Here’s some fun for your Good Friday morning: Tempo, a short film directed and co-written by Seth Worley, about “a scientist [who] must prevent a new, powerful technology from falling into the wrong hands.”

Via.

♦ The Art of Spring and Mythic March.

Spring officially hit the calendars last week, but I think many people would consider that idea  a bit ludicrous, given how cold it’s been recently. Me, I’m only happy when it rains, so the resurgence of rain and wind and cold temperatures doesn’t bother me. Still, in deference to those who need a bit more sun and warmth, I offer to you Irene Gallo’s re-post of Picturing Spring: An Equinox Celebration at Tor.com. Even if Spring is only my third favorite season (sometimes tied for second with Autumn), I love much of the artwork Gallo shares in that post, like J.C. Leyendecker’s ode to spring:

To put some more spring in your step, check out some other art I ran across last week, like Cecelia Paredes’s ornate camouflage wallpaper portraits. I love the attention to detail.

Cecilia Paredes

Or how about Mark Abouzeid’s re-imagined Renaissance portraits as realistic photos?

Mark Abouzeid

I’d neglected last week to mention Mythic March, an idea conceived by Grace of Domythic Bliss (who also writes a couple of my other favorite blogs, The Beautiful Necessity about “all things Pre-Raphaelite and Arts & Crafts,” and Catty-Corner Cottage, where she shares how she and her husband “paint up, fix, decorate, and otherwise learn how to be first time home owners”) and Lisa Stock who created the InByTheEye film company (her short films are really lovely). As Grace says,

The goal of [Mythic March] is to CREATE. Originally inspired by National Novel Writing Month, an event that encourages people to write the novel they always meant to every November, my friend Lisa Stock and I decided to try doing something similar in March, only with a twist.

My goal will be to write 30,000 words, and I might make that goal or I might not. But the point is, I’m going to try to CREATE this month … consciously set aside time each day to engage in the act of creation. And beyond that, my goal is to create in the genre of myth and imagination … to celebrate the community of Mythic Arts we so adore.

You can read more about Mythic March as a concept here at Domythic Bliss. At that blog, Grace has chosen Mondays as times for readers (and herself) to share what they’ve been making. You can catch up on March 4th, March 11th, and March 18th (today’s post comes out after I’ve put Magpie Monday to bed, I’m afraid). If you click on only one link, try March 18th, which features lots of projects. Like NaNoWriMo, I think Mythic March is a grand idea.

♦ CultureMass.

Check out the new website CultureMass, whose editor-in-chief is my friend Cameron Cook. Here’s the skinny:

CultureMass is a publication founded by talented writers who are profoundly interested in entertainment, culture, and the many ways that they intersect. We’re from all over the world, and we are connected only by our need to make sense of everything.

If you love Film, TV, Games, Science, or Literature [also Music, Graphic Novels, etc.], you’ll find something here that you like.

CultureMass has been created with one goal in mind: Discuss, review, and dissect popular culture constructively and creatively. We’re not out to write bad reviews. We’re not trying to impress our readers with our insults and barbs.

If we don’t like something, we show empathy. If we love something, we tell you why. That doesn’t mean everything here is positive, but that we will never bully, insult, or alienate those who are making their living producing creative work.

If any of this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, then you’d better get comfortable. You may be here awhile.

Several of my former or current students are writing for CultureMass, like Thomas Dempsey (music editor), Daniel Dye (TV editor), Caroline Whitney (columnist), and David Mruz (columnist). My colleague Terry Barr is also writing music reviews. Check it out!

♦ Viewers’ Paradise.

Super Punch, another favorite blog of mine, posted this clip from the great but too-early-canceled Carnivale, the entire run of which I watched recently (you may remember). If you can watch this scene and not wish that you had watched the entire series (because, oh boy, does this scene kill it), maybe we can’t be friends.

Speaking of dream sequences, check out the A.V. Club’s “What a Nightmare!”: 21 TV Episodes that Do Dream Sequences Right (including the one above). Some really great dreams. Via.

Gates McFadden keeps one of the most delightful tumblrs ever for the Ensemble Studio Theatre of Los Angeles where she’s the artistic director: she posts photographs of a 1/8 size Dr. Beverly Crusher action figure (the character, of course, McFadden played on Star Trek: The Next Generation) having all kinds of adventures. Here’s a sample but do click the link above for more. Via.

Downton Zombey is the inevitable mash-up of Downton Abbey and, well, zombies. It’s a fun little piece but it is full of spoilers for season 3 (which I haven’t seen yet, but I already know the big spoilers). Via.

The 12 best non-U.S. sitcoms of the past 30 years. I can certain attest to the hilarity of Absolutely Fabulous, The Office, The League of Gentlemen, and The Young Ones. But no love for That Mitchell and Webb Look?

Oh my goodness, I really want to see Top of the Lake, a mini-series co-written by Jane Campion. Go read this Flavorwire article about the show and see if you don’t want to watch it, too!

Elisabeth Moss in Top of the Lake

Film.com has a good article about Lynne Ramsay, and Why We Need to Talk about How We Talk about Female Directors. Via.

The greatest fantasy films you haven’t seen. I’ve seen The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, and I want to see several more films on the list.

I can’t help it: this teaser trailer for Riddick gave me a rush.

Not, perhaps, as much of a rush as seeing the trailer for Hummingbird, a new Jason Statham movie, though:

♦ The Writing Desk.

Several folks wrote about the writing life this week, or making a living as writer: Rachelle Gardner has two posts about making a living as a writer, part 1 and part 2. My former mentor James Patrick Kelly lays out SF Economics 101 (definitely read this post).

Zachary Jernigan has 7 questions for author Evan Dicken.

From Flavorwire: 10 illuminating fan letters from famous authors to famous authors (some are terribly charming) and Former students’ recollections of classes taught by famous authors (including a reminiscence of Allen Ginsberg by the poet Lesléa Newman, from whom I took a class or two at my MFA program).

Chuck Wendig shares 25 turns, pivots, and twists to complicate your story. I also really liked his post Do Not Misunderstand Kickstarter.

From LitReactor: 6 strategies to make your writing schedule sacred (something I need to work on) and New Yorker rejects its own previously published short story (I don’t think this experiment actually proves anything other than editorial tastes change, but I found the piece amusing).

Junot Díaz wins the world’s richest short story prize. He says in the article, “For me it’s a remarkable thing that there is a prize celebrating and honouring and making for a brief moment short fiction the centre of the literary universe. We get so many people saying short fiction is not economical, that it doesn’t sell; but there are so many of us enjoying writing it and reading it.” Hear, hear.

Washington Post‘s Outlook section avoids these words and phrases. Via.

Cathy Day on My students, my friends. I look forward to writing introductions about my own students.

Thanks to Kevin St. Jarre for posting on Facebook the link to Straight Through the Heart by Dean Bakopoulos. My approach to teaching literature is pretty much the same as his: I teach only works that I’m excited by or passionate about (except, of course, when I use an annual anthology, like Best American Short Stories, where I never know what I’m going to like or dislike).

♦ Someone’s in the Kitchen….

Make your own Easter basket treats, like Peeps, Cadbury Creme Eggs, chocolate bunnies, whoppers, and Pop Rocks (wait—who puts Pop Rocks in Easter baskets?).

I was really taken by SDPHOTO’s photograph of fruits I discovered on the Mothtales tumblr. The colors are so perfect! Check out SDPHOTO for more wonderful food photography.

SDPHOTO

This animal-skull wedding cake by Annabel de Vetten (the skulls were sculpted from white chocolate) really drives home “‘Til Death Do Us Part,” no? Still, I’d eat the hell out of that cake (surely it’s red velvet?).

Annabel de Vetten

How to bake an anatomical heart-bread.

The cuteness, the cuteness! Making Cake by CDTcrew is, like, the most adorable food video ever. Well, except for this kid, who defies all laws of physics in his adorability. Via.

♦ She Blinded Me … with Science!

Communication studies: The man who tried to invent a telegraph made out of telepathic snails.

Health: How drinking caffeine could save your life.

Neuroscience: Is there such a thing as photographic memory?

Ornithology: The science of swarming starlings will blow your mind.

Poultry science: I’ve never had fresh eggs—I mean, like straight from the chicken. I’m curious. If I ever have a little cottage in the woods, I might like to keep a couple of chickens to have eggs that fresh, and I might want to keep them in one of these 11 snazzy chicken coops for backyard poultry farmers.

Productivity: The Science of Productivity video came out in December but I just came across it recently. Good food for thought.

Psychology: Vladimir Nabokov talks synesthesia.

Somnology: Should you use the SNOOZE button? I have to admit that I hit the SNOOZE a lot in the morning, even though I know from experience doing so doesn’t make me feel any better. Now I know why!

Thanatology: Here are all the ways we died in the 20th century.

Zoology: Why don’t big dogs live as long as small dogs?; Scientists find 8 impossibly adorable new frogs in a single Sri Lankan forest; Dig the horns on these Hebridean sheep.

♦ The Horns of Elfland.

Has Justin Timberlake become the male Lana Del Rey? is an interesting article about the “multi-era mishmash aesthetic” that’s been popular lately. I like Timberlake’s earlier solo work, but I like his new single “Suit & Tie” (except for the prologue, which I find kind of baffling—what does “shit tie” mean? If anyone has an answer, let me know!), although I still think he’s channeling Robin Thicke here.

Check out these incredible infographics from Pop Chart Lab, Beatles fans. Below is Volume 1: 1963-1965 (click to embiggen).

♦ Turn the Page.

An awesome person reading: Queen Latifah, whose birthday was last Monday!

Peter Damien talks about the importance of endings at BookRiot, touching on Joe Hill’s sublime Locke & Key, Terry Pratchett, comic books, television, and the divine Erin Morgenstern. A fun, quick read.

Check out the complete Ariadne and the Science, an illustrated story by Warren Ellis and Molly Crabapple. Below is one of the illustrations, to whet your appetite.

Molly Crabapple

Gorge yourself on these gorgeously filling fictions:

From The Guardian UK: Down to a Sunless Sea by Neil Gaiman (“A rainy encounter in London on the banks of the Thames unlocks a tale of loss and grief”)

Flax-golden tales: Strange Tides by Erin Morgenstern

From Daily Science Fiction: Neighbours by Rob Butler, Linger by Ken Liu, Subject AT-171 by Melissa Mead, Jimmy Smith Has a Dinosaur by Gregg Chamberlain, and Pythian Games by Tom Doyle

From Weird Fiction Review: Selections from Nervous Tales by Carlos Díaz Dufoo (1861-1941), translated by Michael Cisco, who also wrote an introduction to Dufoo

From io9: Gods and Monsters: Unclean Spirits (excerpt) by Chuck Wendig

From Tor.com, novel excerpts: The World of the End by Ofir Touché Gafla, The Lives of Tao by Wesley Chu, Furious by Jill Wolfson (I’m all over anything with The Furies), You Know What You Have to Do by Bonnie Shimko, Stung by Bethany Wiggins, Protector by CJ Cherryh, and The Grail of the Summer Stars by Freda Warrington

If you need a good weep—and who doesn’t?—check out these 10 books guaranteed to make you cry. I can vouch for Where the Red Fern Grows, but none of the other books on the list I’ve read made me cry.

If you’re in the mood for more short fiction (perhaps after a stroll around the park to walk off the above gorging), check our Christopher Barzak‘s short-story collection Before and Afterlives, recently released by Lethe Press. If I hadn’t already bought my own copy, I’d go out and buy one based on Barzak’s description:

Before and Afterlives collects the majority of what I think of as my best and better stories from the last decade, the first decade of my life as a publishing writer. They are mainly stories of the supernatural, or contemporary fantasies (the word fantasy writers and publishers used to use for what is often now called urban fantasy, which is a term I think is too limiting in terms of setting). But there are several speculative fiction/scifi-ish stories included in the collection as well. In many ways, it’s the kind of mixed genre collection I used to enjoy as a young reader: in one story you’ll encounter a beached mermaid who is taken in by a woman whose daughter has disappeared, in another you’ll witness a haunted house destroy the lives of several different families over a century, and in yet another you’ll come across a young man whose lover has been stolen away from him someone who just might be an alien. There’s a girl who can call ghosts to her, and a man trying to survive the end of the world. There’s a contagion that causes people to vanish, little by little, and there’s a young man who makes his living by allowing other people to kill him for a fee, and to let them witness his remarkable ability to resurrect.

♦ The Ninth Art.

Wondermark #923; In which Anne misses Brunch just cracked me up:
Check out these previews: Sword of Sorcery (featuring Amethyst) #6 by Christy Marx, Marc Andreyko, Aaron Lopresti, and Andrei Bressan; Birds of Prey #18 by Christy Marx, Romano Molenaar, and Vicente Cifuentes; and Wonder Woman #18 by Brian Azzarello, Goran Sudzuka, Tony Akins, and Cliff Chiang. Another preview: The Titular Hero by M.K. Reed and Jonathan Hill.

Tim Callahan’s reflection on The Kindly Ones, the penultimate story arc of The Sandman, made me want to go back and reread it myself.

Oh, you lucky people: a new installment of The Secret Knots by Juan Santapau has arrived! Go check out part one of The Strange World of Martin Kardec.

Juan Santapau

You are doubly lucky because the awesome Kate Beaton also has a new cartoon up, Anne of Cleves Gables, which I just adored.

The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe REDUXE Edition had two fine new entries last week, Cloak re-imagined by Roderick Constance and Galactus as seen by Andrew Belanger. I like how Constance toned down Cloak, muting the color of his cloak and making the interior a pure black. Belanger’s Galactus made me smile—the fast food is very clever. Click the links above or the images below to see larger versions of the images.

Cloak by Roderick Constance

Galactus by Andrew Belanger

I’ve really been getting a kick out of A Softer World by Emily Horne and Joey Comeau (I recently bought a copy of Comeau’s book The Complete Lockpick Pornography, so they must be doing something right) and am enamored of their technique of dividing a single image into thirds. I enjoyed these two strips particularly last week:

10 famous novelists who have dabbled in comics.

This mash-up of Hellboy and Scooby-Doo made me happy! (Via)

Guess whose birthday is March 22nd? Wonder Woman’s! Check out some great party decor and lots of Wonder Woman cakes over at DC Women Kicking Ass (the one below might be my favorite).

Also, check out this fantastic Wonder Woman-inspired dress by TheBird-TheBee at DeviantArt. Via.

Wonder Woman dress by TheBird-TheBee

♦ The Book Nook.

What do you do when you’re short on space but large on books? Build a book tower, of course. Click over to BookRiot to see more pictures of this “dramatic staircase [that incorporates] staggered shelves culminating [in] a top floor office space and library.”

Book tower designed by Platform 5

20 embarrassingly bad book covers for classic novels. So bad are some of these that I can’t even bring myself to share them.

I swoon, mes amis—the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University is mouth-gapingly beautiful. According to Book Mania!, the library has “over 50 miles of shelves and the capacity to hold over three million volumes.”

The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, flagship library of Harvard University

Hubba hubba! Check out this beautiful bookcase that comes with a ladder over at Bookshelf Porn! Even more pictures at the link, so click on through.

Bespoke Oak Bookcase and Ladder near Nantyderry

♦ I saved this for the end because it’s gonna make you cry. Indeed, I defy you not to cry.

Moon Dust, directed by Ezequiel Romero, is a pretty cool short film:

A pilot crash his landing pod from the Moon in the middle of a forest. He carries a secret with him that could cost him his life…

I certainly wanted to know more after finishing it.

Via.

♦ Dreaming of Paris.

The trip to Paris was absolutely wonderful, thanks to the fine planning of my colleagues Molly and Patrick and to a terrific group of students—so wonderful, in fact, that I didn’t want to come home. Ah, well. I suppose what this means is that I mustn’t take too long to go abroad again.

I had three favorite things on the trip: the visit to Musée d’Orsay, our Baguettes to Bistro: Culinary Traditions of Paris food tour with Alisa Morov, and the reading by John Baxter at Shakespeare and Co. I hadn’t been to the Musée d’Orsay before, but I think it must be my favorite museum in Paris (yes, even more so than the Louvre). Their gallery of marble statues was just breathtaking, like Vierge au lys (1878) by Eugène Delaplanche, at left, which just enchanted me. I was also quite taken with The Angel of the Odd: Dark Romanticism from Goya to Max Ernst exhibition, which our friend and art historian extraordinaire Laura had alerted Molly to, and we actually saw it on the day after it opened (how fortuitous for us!). The exhibition had a bit of everything: paintings, sculptures, films.

Katherine Langrish wrote a blog post called The Wild Hunt Rides over Paris wherein she examines a painting by Adolphe Willette called Parce Domine (she also references in the post the origin of the word “bistro,” which I learned about on the food tour mentioned above). Her connecting the wild hunt to this painting seems apt to me—a very Parisian wild hunt, but still! Ah, Montmartre! Click to embiggen!

Parce Domine by Alfred Willette

In honor of the Paris Metro, I offer my favorite Berlin song, “Metro.” No, the Metro looks nothing like the stylized depiction in the video, but I love this song:

Not the Paris subway, but the entrance to the Bockenheimer Warte subway station in Frankfurt is pretty darn cool. Via.

Also, this:

Maybe I should have done a section on subways? Here’s a very cool idea I discovered at BookRiot: a subway library designed by Miami Ad School students wherein “posters with book titles and scannable barcodes are placed in subway cars where riders scan a book they are interested in (using Near Field Communication) and immediately get a ten-page preview. At the end of the preview, readers are prompted with the location of the closest library where the book is available.” More images here. Via.

♦ Viewers’ Paradise.

I’m pretty excited about the upcoming season of Mad Men, and the season 6 poster has enticed me (click to see it larger). Don Draper looking back at himself? The street signs “One Way” and “Stop”? Everything kind of tilted? Police in the background? Enticed, I tell you! Also, Flavorwire has fun over-analyzing the Mad Men Season 6 promo photos.

Lisa Stock wrote an Open Letter to Young Indie Female Directors.

Oh, I am happy indeed to hear that a new Jonathan Creek special is on the way!

Haters gonna hate, but I’m looking forward to Joss Whedon’s Much Ado About Nothing:

These Rollin’ Wild animated shorts from Filmakademie Baden will make you smile (I hope). Via.

♦ The Ninth Art.

In which an Exception is made:
Check out some previews! Katana #2 by Ann Nocenti, Alex Sanchez, and Claude St. Aubin; Hawkeye #9 by Matt Fraction and David Aja; Batwoman #18 by J.H. Williams III, W. Haden Blackman, and Trevor McCarthy; Ten Grand by J. Michael Straczynski and Ben Templesmith (art only, which is okay by me as I’m a huge Templesmith fan); and Palookaville #21 by Seth.

Will Sliney profiles Dani Moonstar of The Fearless Defenders.

Also, Jess Nevins has detailed annotations of the latest Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill League of Extraordinary Gentlemen graphic novel, Nemo: Heart of Ice. As always, Nevins’ annotations are highly recommended.

Tim Callahan’s Sandman reread continues with World’s End, the eighth volume and the third short-story collection in the Sandman oeuvre. And over at the Sequart blog, Stuart Warren explores “Collectors,” issue 14 of Sandman in Portrait of a Serial Murderer.

I’m not entirely thrilled by Kiel West‘s interpretation of Nightcrawler over at The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe REDUXE Edition (frankly, improving on Dave Cockrum is just plain difficult), but I do like West’s take on his costume (click to embiggen). Fara, fellow and favorite Nightcrawler aficionado, what do you think?

Nightcrawler by Kiel West

Here’s a slew of mash-up covers from Super-Team Family that I thought really rocked. First up is the Legion of Super-Heroes versus Dark Phoenix, which I think is a pretty perfect mashing.

I love these Wonder Woman mash-ups:

And I love how perfectly Spider-Man and Two-Face mashed up together:

Seen at The Mary Sue: Kevin Bolk‘s “tribute to cosplayers Jay Justice and Adya Moran.” What a great piece! Check out Jay’s tumblr for pictures of her (and Adya) in costume.

Wonder Women by Kevin Bolk

♦ The Horns of Elfland.

Have you heard of Little Boots? I’m not familiar with her, but I’m swooning over “Motorway,” the first track from her new album, Nocturnes.

My friend Andy has a new post up at Radio Free Other about Cary Hudson’s “Fiddler’s Green”—check it out!

By now, I’m sure everybody’s heard and seen the new single by David Bowie, “The Stars (Are Out Tonight),” but in case you haven’t, check it out. Tilda Swinton! I’m swooning all over again. The video is utter wonderful madness!

Indulging my Mad Men kick a little longer: the theme song to MM—”A Beautiful Mine” by RJD2—mashed up with the lyrics to “Nature Boy,” originally sung by Nat King Cole (whose birthday was yesterday). The song’s performed by Allison Williams (of Girls) and a micro-orchestra, and the video was shot in a single take (the 29th of the day) with “no cuts, dubbing, lip synching or auto-tuning.” I’m in love with the idea of a micro-orchestra, by the by. Via.

While I was checking out the youtube page for the above, I also ran across Ask A Grown Man with Jon Hamm, which I thought was too cute not to share.

I’ll spare you where I went from there. Youtube, like the interwebs, is a dangerous place…

♦  Disclaimer.

Related: Colleen Doran has a great post about making art: “How to make a point that everyone can and should make art if they want, while at the same time, making the point that creating art that is actually good, or of cultural value, or even salable, is not so simple.” Go check it out!

Also, a fox made its way into the Tudor and Georgian rooms of the National Portrait Gallery! Caught by surveillance cameras. More images at the link!

♦ The Book Nook.

Jonathan Lethem discusses his book covers in depth with Sean Manning of TalkingCovers—quite literally, as you’ll find audio files at the link!

I enjoyed this brief piece on bookbinder Paul Vogel, who works by hand and takes about 10 weeks to complete a binding. The photographs are wonderful, like the one below:

Israeli artist Ronit Bigal‘s series, Body Scripture II, combines photography, calligraphy, and floral ornamentation, turning the body into an abstract landscape. Read a little more here and here (all the links have additional images).

Image by Ronit Bigal

8 beautiful bookstores in residential spaces.

Look at this wonderful thing: Book Fractal: Complete by B_Zedan, described as “a book with a room inside it. And in that room is a book case, on which are books.” Via.

Book Fractal: Complete by B_Zedan

A new piece by Su Blackwell is always cause for joy:

The Raven, 2013, by Su Blackwell. From the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “The Raven”

Some lovelies from Bookshelf Porn:

Reading Den in Yucatan House by Isay Weinfeld, São Paulo, Brazil

Derby Square Book Store by Dave Delay

♦ Public Service Announcement

I feel so cool: this is how I date my computer files. Wait, does that make me cool, or does it just mean I’m not?

♦ The Writing Desk.

Asher Ellis, the author in 7 questions, at Zachary Jernigan’s blog. And Zack himself answers 10 questions about No Return at Chuck Wendig’s blog.

Also from Chuck Wendig: How to Karate Your Novel and Edit that Motherfucker Hard; 25 Things Writers Should Beware; and How Storytelling is Like Tantric Sex.

Elizabeth Spann Craig on voice recording as a writing tool, and she also has some thoughts on unreliable narrators.

5 writing tips from Blake Bailey, which are pretty good: Write about things that really interest you; be quiet and listen; action is character; be prepared; and if possible, be funny. What he says about each of these is worth reading.

Myke Cole writes about why he wants to meet China Miéville.

Chip Scanlan has six steps for managing your stories (again, good steps—go read them). Via.

Agent Douglas Stewart on why most publishing companies won’t even consider unagented submissions.

Molly Greene with ten steps to blogging success.

Ask the Writing Teacher: Novelists on First Drafts. Good stuff from Jennifer Egan, Ann Patchett, Emily St. John Mandel, Emma Straub, Ben Fountain, Ivy Pochoda, Ramona Ausubel, Margot Livesey, and Antoine Wilson. Via.

Elizabeth Perez’s design for Fahrenheit 451

Mary Robinette Kowal’s final Debut Author Lesson is Writing is no longer a hobby.

From LitReactor: The Only Question Every Story Must Answer, Why Write?, 8 Ways to Flesh Out a Character, and Writing the Grotesque.

A brief survey of famous authors’ unpublished books (Lucien, anyone?).

From Flavorwire: The Fascinating Self-Portraits of 20 Famous Authors; 25 Fascinating Photos of Famous Writers at Home; 20 Highly Sexy Photos of Highbrow Authors (some NSFW, perhaps); and Learn from the Best: 10 Course Syllabi by Famous Authors.

♦ Turn the Page.

Circe Invidiosa (1892) by J. W. Waterhouse

I’d meant to include this link back when it first came out a few weeks ago, but I thoroughly enjoyed Kirsty Stonell Walker’s post about Circe, Snowdrops, Swine, and Seductive Sorceresses. She looks at various 19th-century interpretations of my favorite Greek goddess-sorceress, including several of my favorites, like Circe Invidiosa, painted by J.W. Waterhouse in 1892, conveniently pictured to the left for you. I love how unnaturally long Circe’s legs are here and, of course, the “Oh, you’re well fucked now, you are” look on her face.

Flavorwire has a great list of the favorite poets of pop culture characters–the poets those characters “turned to for inspiration—which revealed the internal dialogue running rampant through their minds.” You should check out the link just to hear Jon Hamm as Don Draper reading Frank O’Hara.

Also, Flavorwire has a selection of playful spine poetry by Nina Katchadourian, part of her Sorted Books project (selections from the project were recently published by Chronicle Books). Below is a fun examples, but click through the links above to see more or buy the book.

Photo by Nina Katchadourian

Underground New York Public Library caught someone else reading Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita (the Michael Karpelson translation)! I am well pleased.

Photo by Ourit Ben-Haim

And now, for your ever-famished frenzied ocular jellies:

At Tor.com—The Hanging Game by Helen Marshall. Also, book extracts: A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar and Red Doc> by Anne Carson (Emily, are you reading this?). Part of Carson’s note for the excerpt: “To live past the end of your myth is a perilous thing.”

At Daily Science Fiction—Fidelity by Ben Heldt; Gullible Georgina Agravaine by Michael J. Greenhut; Doctor was Madman, Family Man by Paul Blonsky; To Maintain the Balance by Jamie Lackey; and Spirit Gum by Mike Resnick and Jordan Ellinger.

Waylines issue 2: magazine of speculative fiction and film (what a great combination—short fiction and short films), plus interviews. Each bi-monthly issue ofWaylines publishes three short stories and three short films.

Edward & Amelia vs. The Vampire King, Chapter Thirteen: The Great Barn by Russell Hinson.

Flax-golden tales by Erin Morgenstern: Order Here, In Gratitude to the Lions who Guard the Saints, and Well-Intentioned Snow Coercion.

Allow me to suggest some books by friends of mine out this month:

The first book in Laura Navarre‘s Tudor paranormal romance trilogy, Magick by Moonrise (which won the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Award for Romance in 2012), came out on March 11th. Rhiannon le Fay, a half-mortal/half-Fae princess, tries to make peace between the human and Faerie worlds before war ensues. Lord Beltran Nemestro hunts those who practice the dark arts, but when he meets Rhiannon he is torn between his attraction to her and his duty. Laura’s got the goods, folks–go read this.

Zachary Jernigan‘s debut novel, No Return, splashed onto the scene March 5th. James Patrick Kelly says of No Return, “Be careful picking this one up, because once you join with the adventurers in this strange and stunning debut novel, there will be no going back to the familiar precincts of heroic fantasy. Zachary Jernigan starts at the very edge of the map and plunges deep into uncharted territory. Mages in space, do-it-yourself gods, merciless killers in love and a mechanical warrior with a heart of bronze await your reading pleasure. For thinking readers who like swashbuckling with an edge, No Return delivers.” Are you still reading this? Shouldn’t you have bought the book?

On March 1st, Will Ludwigsen‘s second collection, In Search Of and Others, hit the shelves. This collection is top-notch, full of weirdness and strangeness and all kinds of perfects “-nesses.” All these stories hit me in just the right way. Last week, Will gave a reading at the College where I teach, and a lot of students told me later how much they enjoyed the stories (and Will). If college students are digging it, shouldn’t you?

♦ Melonball Bounce.

Some happy animation by the talented Amy Winfrey to start off your Monday right!

♦ A Month of Letters.

In just a few days, February will close and the 2013 Month of Letters Challenge will end. I’ve been very good, mailing something every day the mail runs, even if I did not diversify my recipients as much as I perhaps should have. I even received a few letters, which was quite a delight. For the last two days of the month, I want to write letters rather than postcards, so wish me luck in scraping out some time to compose some proper missives!

Are you familiar with Mail Me Art? I remember reading about it a few years ago, but the third round (“Short and Sweet”) just started, as I read on Chet Phillips’ blog. Here’s a description from the MMA website:

Mail Me Art is a fun little project that was created by Darren Di Lieto of The Little Chimp Society in late 2006. He was looking for a way to connect on a real world level with all of the brilliant and talented illustrators who had become part of his community and network. Mail Art was the perfect way to accomplish this task. The Mail Me Art project has held exhibitions up and down the UK, and was published as very nice book by HOW Books. It has also been featured or mentioned by Digital Arts, Computer Arts, Design Week and The Telegraph over the years. Mail Me Art is still going strong to this day and there seems to be no stopping it!

Here are two fine examples by Garry Milne and Dan May (I particularly love the address on May’s envelope, which is on the right):

And here’s Chet Phillips’ piece for this round of the MMA:

If you like the idea of receiving story-letters in the post, you might be interested in Sylvia Linsteadt’s The Gray Fox Epistles project:

 The Gray Fox Epistles is my story-via-letter project launched on Imbolc, February 2nd, 2013, in honor of all the newly stirring seeds, sap and milk of the wild world. Subscribers will receive one of my original tales every month, in their physical mailbox, printed, packaged and wax sealed beautifully and with scraps of woodland leaf or feather included. All stories will be at least 2,000 words in length, and previously unpublished.

They will all be retellings of deep old myths and fairytales, the kinds that have passed on through centuries, through many different wild landscapes. These retellings will be re-rooted in the wilds that I know– redwood forest, tule marsh, northern coastal scrub. They will be walks into the mythscapes & landscapes of the soul, and also very tangibly and vividly rooted in the wild cycles that I am always learning here, on the edge of the central coast of California, a state named for the legendary Amazon queen Calafia and her island of wild women and gold.

It is up to you to root these tales in your own heart and place. They have paws. They leave trails. Go, take them outside with you, see where they will lead you.

Via.

♦ Turn the Page.

You’re in for a treat, folks. As you may remember, my friend Will Ludwigsen has a short-story collection, In Search Of and Others, coming out next month. You can read one of the stories, “Remembrance Is Something Like a House,” over at Weird Fiction Review. I love this story for a number of reasons, one being that this is the very first Will Ludwigsen story I ever read–he submitted it for the first workshop we shared together at Stonecoast, and I thought it was pretty much perfect then. To add to that, my friend Adam Mills interviewed Will for WFR, which you should also check out, and another friend, Zachary Jernigan, interviewed Will in 7 questions. And over at his own blog, Will wrote about ghosts, his “favorite paranormal phenomenon.”

Also over at WFR, Desirina Bokovich profiled another one of my favorite writers, Caitlín R. Kiernan, over there.

My friend Paul Kirsch gives great review to Zachary Jernigan‘s impending debut novel, No Return. Why haven’t you bought your copy already?

Some wonderful wafer-thin delights to feed to your hungry eye-mouths:

Stories at Daily Science Fiction: For the People by Ronald D. Ferguson, The Needs of Hollow Men by K.A. Rundell, A Hairy Predicament by Melissa Mead, Maps by Beth Cato, and Five Minutes by Conor Powers-Smith.

Story at Fiddleblack: Hideous Interview with Brief Man by Nick Mamatas.

Stories at Tor.com: The Water that Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu.

Novel excerpts at Tor.com: Written in Red by Anne Bishop, The Shape Stealer by Lee Carroll, The Art of Wishing by Lindsay Ribar, The Nightmare Affair by Mindee Arnett, A Cactus Garden by Jo Bannister, Midnight Blue-Light Special by Seanan McGuire, and The Afrika Reich by Guy Saville.

Novel excerpt at io9: Wolfhound Century by Peter Higgins.

Flax-golden tales: Three Small Deaths on the Back Gate by Erin Morgenstern.

Poetry at Flavorwire: 12 beautiful poems for book lovers.

If you’re a socialist looking for some speculative fiction to read, check out China Miéville’s list of 50 Sci-Fi and Fantasy works every socialist should read (via).

Jo Walton asks (and answers), What’s Reading For?

Neil Gaiman completed A Calendar of Tales (a short piece for each month of the year, inspired by tweets from fans, and all the stories are quite fine) and you can download a free pdf of all the stories at BlackBerry. You can also listen to Gaiman reading the tales at SoundCloud. And now he’s looking for art (more information at the link above). Here’s the accompanying video for the second part of the project:

Poet Shane Koyczan‘s “To This Day” is a beautiful, heart-wrenching, spoken-word poem and the center of the To This Day Project, which “explore[s] the profound and lasting impact that bullying can have on an individual.” The video is a collaboration of over eighty animators and musicians. Many thanks to Cameron, who posted this video on his blog.

♦ The Ninth Art.

I had a good laugh at this Wondermark cartoon by David Malki !

Warren Ellis has started “a daily single-panel strip” on his website with Jason Howard titled Scatterlands, “A largely improvised comic strip that will run here Mondays to Fridays, one panel a day….  Just a bit of fun, as they say.” And it has been fun! The first panel is below, and here are the links for the second, third, fourth, and fifth.

If you can’t stop thinking about the current state of the CW’s Wonder Woman show, you’ll appreciate these two articles: 5 Ways Looking at Comics Can Help the CW’s Amazon and Will Wonder Woman Finally Make Her TV Comeback?

I remember the first appearances of both the first heroic Doctor Light (Kimiyo Hoshi) and the second Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) in the 1980s, so this mash-up from Super-Team Family was a real delight for me:

And I couldn’t resist sharing another of Super-Team Family’s mash-ups: Zatanna and Doctor Strange (Zatanna being one of top five favorite DC magicians and Doctor Strange being, of course, Doctor Strange):

Go read this piece over at Comics Alliance: Mutant Women of Earth: How Chris Claremont Reinvented the Female Superhero. A great read! Via.

Really fantastic piece by Alyson Macdonald on Young Avengers #1: Sex and the Female Gaze.

Oh, A Softer World, I get you.

Tim Callahan continues The Sandman Reread with Fables and Reflections.

A really fine interview with Gabriel Rodriguez, illustrator of the sublime Locke and Key (via).

xkcd just tickles me.

♦ The Book Nook.

Check out Veronica’s one-of-a-kind mandala bookshelf from Apartment Thearpy. Says Veronica from Venezuela, “My apartment is quite small and I am lawyer so I have to read a lot. I really enjoy it,and didn’t want to have the typical 50 inch tv on my living room wall… I needed a library but it had to be different, so I made one inspired by a mandala. I think the carpenter did a great job, exactly what I designed!” This is one beautiful bookshelf! Via.

Veronica’s one-of-a-kind mandala bookshelf

If you love pop-up books like I do, you’ll be charmed by Revolution (Life Cycle of a Drop of Water)—a film by Chris Turner, Helen Friel, and Jess Deacon–which “depicts the revolutionary nature of the life cycle of a droplet of water and its cyclical journey.” Via.

I love this picture from Book Lovers Never Go to Bed Alone, a blog I just found:

Check out these 20 bookish murals from around the world—how wonderful it would be to live in a city with one of these! I really dig the book stairs below:

I totally know how this kind of thing happens:

♦ Someone’s in the Kitchen….

Check out this little lovely: a Serenity cake accompanied by cupcake heads of the entire crew! Pink Bunny‘s attention to detail is a delight (like Jayne’s hat or Mal’s hair curl), and the best part is that the cake lights up (click through to That’s Nerdalicious to see). Via.

Pink Bunny’s Serenity cake

File under What the fudge? Ham and Bananas Hollandaise.

How red velvet cake got its name is an interesting read if, like me, you’re in love with red velvet cake. 3, 2, 1. Yep, now I want some red velvet cake.

Here is where I would stuff my face….

Cheeky paintings by Ben Frost of pop culture icons on junk food packaging, like this acrylic of Astro Boy on a Corn Pops package:

What You Made Me by Ben Frost (2013)

♦ Viewers’ Paradise.

Watch The Simpsons’ Oscar-nominated short film, Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare” (a wordless piece directed by David Silverman and scored by Hans Zimmer). Apologies the lack of an embedded clip, which hasn’t found its way onto youtube yet. The link above, however, has a watchable clip.

If you’re not sure you like anime, or if you think you don’t like it, check out Flavorwire’s list of anime films for people who hate anime.

The strange, secret evolution of Babylon 5 (I really need to rewatch that series….).

Angela Taratuta took several random screencaps from the “A Scandal in Belgravia” episode of the BBC’s Sherlock and then redrew them as cartoons. These made me smile, and I thought the Sherlockets—did I just make that up, or is it a thing?—who read the blog might enjoy them (one of my favorites is below, but check out the link above for more). Via.

Image by Angela Taratuta

TV critics explain what Nielsen’s new streaming ratings mean for our favorite shows.

Courtesy of the Film Doctor, From Shawshank to Skyfall, How Master Cinematographer Roger Deakins Got These Ten Shots, including the one below from Barton Fink.

This was fun: 5 real TV shows that feature great fake TV shows (via).

Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart sounds like my kind of movie, adapted by Mathias Malzieu from his novel, which sounds like my kind of book, and all I really know about it is the name and the image below, which you should click to embiggen (via). Okay, that’s not entirely true: I did do some research. In the novel, Jack is born on the coldest day ever, and his heart is frozen. He is saved by Dr. Madeleine, who places in his chest a cuckoo clock but warns him he must avoid strong emotion lest he die, and certainly he must never fall in love. But what happens when he does?

♦ The Writing Desk.

John Yeoman on five ways to handle stuff and other nonsense: the naive stranger, the helpful gossip, the “official” tour guide, the chance remark, and action.

Adam Rifkin on Tumblr compared with Facebook and blogging (via).

Cathy Day’s Literary Citizenship blog has some great tips on how to talk to writers: “A key principle of literary citizenship is that writers should build their community and expand their circles. Not ‘network.’ Not ‘schmooze.’”

Seven tips from Ernest Hemingway on how to write fiction (via).

Chuck Wendig tells us how to read like a writer.

Ask the Agent has a guide to word counts for novels (a good thing to know).

Rachelle Gardner on building a platform versus promoting a book. Related: Warren Ellis on download wristbands, or: how to give books away at parties (pretty cool for the tech-minded).

Aaron Hamburger offers infatuation: an exercise to build character.

Tor.com answers your publishing questions.

My friends Erin Underwood and Hannah Strom-Martin describe the Big Idea behind their new anthology, Futuredaze.

Elizabeth Hand and Ian Withrow both shared to this article on Facebook, and I think you’ll agree that the Helsinki Bus Station Theory will change your life (“The theory claims the secret to a creatively fulfilling career lies in understanding the operations of Helsinki’s main bus station“).

Elizabeth Spann Craig on writing as a worthwhile struggle.

Notes from the Drunken Editor: how to fail and why you should keep failing.

A brief history of the typewriter.

This piece by Nancy Fouts makes me want to write something (via):

Image by Nancy Fouts

♦ She Blinded Me … with Science!

Astronomy: Jupiter’s moon Europa may be the best place to search for life.

Entomology: Fruit flies bathe their young in alcohol to keep them healthy.

Futurism: Temporary tattoos could make electronic telepathy and telekinesis possible.

Oncology: Magical Realism: From Seizure to Surgery (via).

Parasitology: Your cat is literally making you crazy (people will still ooh and ahh at the pictures in the link, though).

Physics: An “alternative universe” will eventually destroy ours, says Higgs researcher; Marriage proposal in the form of a physics paper; What is the Universe? by Minute Physics.

Psychology: How to instill false memories (via); An illustrated guide to recognizing insane people from 1883.

♦ The Horns of Elfland.

My friend Cameron Cook shared the link to this video on Facebook, and I wanted to share it with you. Diva Plavalaguna’s aria (and intercut Leeloo vs. Mangalores fight) is my favorite scene from The Fifth Element, and Laura’s cover of the aria is pretty amazing.

I’m a big fan of Terri Windling’s Tunes for a Monday Morning series on her blog (and a big fan of Terri Windling’s in general), and I wanted to share one of the pieces she posted about last week, “Walk” by Ludovico Einaudi, an Italian pianist. I also recommend clicking through the link to watch the other Einaudi videos, which are equally fine.

♦ Smilla’s Sense of Snow.

Some exquisite shots of snowflakes by Nick Loven at Boing Boing, including the one below:

A Snowflake by Nick Loven

Some Secret History: Winston Chuchill’s plan to fight Nazis with massive aircraft carriers made from ice.

Some crows have fun in the snow! Via.

♦ A Brief Blog Vacation.

The blog will be quiet for the next couple weeks: I’ll be in Paris and won’t be able to scour the interwebs for interesting tidbits. Yes, I know, a trip to Paris, woe is me. Take care of yourselves while I’m away.

Via Francesca Ramos:

Here’s a real treat for those of you who like David Lynch and lithography (doesn’t everyone?): Lynch’s new short film, Idem Paris, about the fine-art printing studio of the same name in Montparnasse, Paris. Here’s Lynch’s introduction to his documentary (from the Idem Paris website):

Hervé Chandès from the Fondation Cartier brought me over to Idem and introduced me to Patrice Forest. I see this incredible place, and I get the opportunity to work there. And this was like a dream! It just opened up this brand-new world of the lithography and the magic of lithography, the magic of the stones. And it was a great, great thing! This thing of lithography, this channel of lithography opened up and a bunch of ideas came flowing out and it led to about a hundred lithographs. I will say that Idem printing studio has a unique, very special mood, and it is so conducive to creating. Patrice has the greatest attitude for all the artists and he creates this space of freedom and this joy of creating. It’s so beautiful! And I think the place is very important—in other words, the same stone could be moved to another place, and I think that the work that comes out would be different. It’s a combination of the stone, the place, the people, this mood, and out comes these certain ideas.

Via.