Weekly Bookish Quote

Best Book Covers: Part 1

It's always nice to be holding a good book in your hands. Like Catcher in the Rye. But it's even nicer if the book has a great cover as, in my opinion, it adds so much to the experience of reading!

So I decided to start tracing best book covers that are out there - from that that are just 'cool' to those that are considered iconic at this point.

I'll start with my first list of the most famous book covers of all times. And indeed, I can't argues with that - without ever having any of the following editions, I easily recognize them.

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. The cover was designed for the book's first edition in 1951 by E. Michael Mitchell, an illustrator and Salinger's friend. It is one of the most recognized book covers. The first edition with the author's autograph is considered to be the rarest bibliophilic artifact. 

A Farewell to Arms by E. Hemingway. This is the first edition, 1929. The design was made on a jacket and the book itself looked way simpler.   

Another novel by E. Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, also known as Fiesta. This is the cover for the first edition (1926). As you can see, both covers were design in the style of art nouveau.

Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland. This book is famous for its creative covers and also for having billions and billions of them. This particular one is from 1900-1901, but I personally like this by H. Altemus Company (1895) more.

A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. The design of the cover was made by a famous illustrator Paul Hogarth who worked a lot with Pinguin. This interpretation of his of a classical shakespearean comedy is considered quite rare. 

The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. Penguin always has awesome ideas for book covers (this one is from Signet Classics Series), and sometimes, they say, they steal those ideas. Or other steal from them, who knows. Look at this edition of The Great Gatsby from Compact Books (a British publishing house), and compare the two covers yourself.

Reading Good Literature Makes You A Better Person

Theory of Mind (or ToM) is a basic principle of the human mind. It requires an ability to feel empathy, which is believed to have kickstarted the evolutionary development of the human intellect. In this light, good literary fiction can greatly enhance ToM as it serves as some kind of a training device where people can perfect their empathetic skills. According to the research, carried out by David Kidd and Emanuele Castano from the New School for Social Research in New York (now known as simply the New School), reading challenging, high-quality fiction enhances a set of skills and thought processes that are fundamental to complex social relationships, i.e. the functional societies.

The main hypothesis that Kidd and Castano based their experiments on was that characters in high-quality literature are of a very complex and diverse nature - it is, therefore, not easy to decipher their motifs, understand what stands behind their choices, feelings, actions, etc. In order to do it, the reader needs to apply certain psychological skills that would allow to get into that character's shoes. Meanwhile, the schematic nature of characters from second-rate literature does not offer this possibility. Therefore, reading good books develops the important skill of empathy, which is that that cultivates humanity and brings us to a higher level of evolution (not labour, as we all thought - sorry, Engels).

In order to prove this hypothesis, Kidd and Castano performed five tests to measure the effect of reading literature fiction on participants' ToM. 

Initially, the participants had to undergo Author Recognition Test that allowed to evaluate their level of erudition regarding literature. Then every participant received one of six texts chosen for the experiment. Three of those were high-quality literary texts (excerpts from prize-winning books or celebrated stories of world-renown authors (e.g., A Chameleon by Checkov)), while the rest were those of non-fiction, sci-fi, second-rate romance novels, etc. Then, after participants completed the reading part, their ToM capabilities were tested, using several well-established measures. One of those measures, for example, was the "Reading the Mind in the Eyes" test, which asked participants to look at black-and-white photographs of actors' eyes and indicate the emotion expressed by that actor. Across experiements, it was found that participats who were assigned to read literary fiction performed significantly better on all of the five ToM tests.

The tests' results on understanding others' mentals states after reading different texts. Literary ficion = hight-quality literature, popular fiction = bestsellers, no reading = no texts (participants from control group). RMET - Reading the Mind in the Eyes, DANVA - Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy (identified emotions from photographs). 

The results indicated that high-quality literature was favoured less than excerpts from popular fiction. Nevertheless, at the same time participants recognized it as more 'artistic' and generally better in literary light. Also, it appeared that participants had a higher level of emotional involvement when reading high-quality texts. Most importantly, however, the study showed that not just any fiction was effective in fostering ToM, rather the literary quality was the determining factor. 

Such research suggests that the reason for literary fiction's impact on ToM is a direct result of the ways in which it involves the reader. Unlike popular fiction, literary fiction requires intellectual engagement and creative thought from its readers. "Features of the modern literary novel set it apart from most bestselling thrillers and romances. Through the use of [...] stylistic devices, literary fiction defamiliarizes its readers," wrote Kidd and Castano. "Just as in real life, the worlds life literary fiction are replete with complicated indiviaduals whose inner lives are rarely easily discerned but warrant exploration."

Reading good literature develops the ability to understand, empathize and better co-exist in functional community, and therefore makes you a better person. Not a bad thing.

Vintage Photos: Hemingway

A photo of little Hemingway fishing.

Hemingway was an inveterate fisherman, what one can guess from The Old Man and the Sea since his works are so autobiographical. 

Weekly Bookish Quote

World's Most Beautiful Libraries: Part 1

When it comes to reading, there are two important things: the book itself and the place where you read it. Anthony Throllope famously said that nothing can be more luxurious than merely a sofa and a cup of coffee to accompany a good book. But for some, with a more extravagant taste, this is not enough.

So oh how happy are those living in Europe since there are libraries of the most beautiful interior - and the most beautiful books - in the world.

In this post series, I will be making up a list of the most stunning libraries that are definitely worth checking out if you are a book worm with a luxurious taste.

1. Wiblingen Abbey Library in Ulm, Germany
Situated in a former Benedict Abbey (in the North wing of it), the library was completed in 1744. Its facade was modelled on the Austrian National Library, or Imperial Court Library, as it was called before, in order to demostrate the attachment to the imperial house.
The library is constructed in the airy and whimsical Rococo syle, and is considered to be on of its finest examples. The library has exquisite ornamental features, long galleries supported by numerous columns, countless statues, and most gorgeous ceiling fresco that makes library be perceived as a place preserving "treasures of wisdom and science", as originally intended by the architect.



2. Klementinum in Prague, Czech Republic
Klementinum is the largest and most historic building complex in Prague's Old Town. It includes Mirror Chapel, famous Library Hall, Astronomical Tower, and two churches - St. Salvator and St. Clement. The Library Hall, designed in stunning baroque, is a home to 20 000 books that date as far as the 16th century. Built in 1722, it hasn't changed its foundation since and maintained all its frescos, paintings on the cupola, and famous large globes. Interestingly, the Library Hall of Klementinum was mentioned in The Secret Miracle, a short story by Jorge Luis Borges. There, the librarians of Klementinum were looking for God in the books of the library. (It will be my next read.)

3. Marfa Palace Library in Marfa, Portugal
Marfa National Palace, 28 km from Lisbon, is a palace-monastery designed in Baroque and Neoclassicism. It is mostly famous for its major library that is 88 metres and is the longest Rococo monastic library in the world. It includes 35 000 rare, leather-bound books, and they say that bats live in this library and at night eat insects that would feast on the book pages.

4. Bodleian Library in Oxford, United Kingdom
The main research library of Oxford University is also known as 'Bodley' or simply 'the Bod'. It was the first time for the English to shelve books along the walls, instead of putting them in bays or lecterns protruding from the walls. This is one of the oldest libraries in Europe and contains over 11 million books in print. One of the most famous books Bodleian Library has are  Shakespeare's First folio (1623), Gutenberg Bible (1455), and Bay Psalm Book (1640). The latter two are one of the only surviving copies in the world - 21 and 11 accordingly.
Also, Borleian Library serves as a location for many films and TV series. I was quite excited to find out that the Hogwarts library from the Harry Potter series was actually filmed there.

5. The Escorial Library in San Lorenzo de El Escorial in Spain
Located at 49 km from Madrid, the library is a part of a building complex that includes a monastery, a royal palace, a school, a basilica, a museum, two pantheons, an art gallery, and lovely gardens. The library, completed in 1585, established the template of using books to decorate the walls, which has been used ever since. Almost 45 000 printed works from the 15th and 16th centuries, as well as around 5 000 manuscripts, have found home in the Escorial Library, also famous for its ceiling frescos that depict all seven liberal arts: Rhetoric, Dialectic, Music, Grammar, Arithmetic, Geometry, and Astronomy.

Book Review: The 4-Hour Work Week by Timothy Ferris

What it is about:

The 4-Hour Work Week is a 3 in 1 book: a non-fiction, a self-help, and a how-to. Amazon describes it as a 'step-by-step guide to luxury lifestyle design'. Forget working from 9 to 5 and life in an office cubicle, and transform your life into becoming a New Rich who is able to own a business without running it, costantly take 6-month vacations from work, and travel all around the world without spending much money.

What I think about it:
I heard about this book years ago while I was still living in Latvia. It was hard not to notice the books since even in the post-soviet side of the world everybody went nuts about it. In a good way? Not really. If in the U.S. Timothy Gerris managed to become a NYT betselling author and keep this title for 4 years, on the other side of the Atlantic he was constantly accused of being a bragged and a douchebag who detests middle class and those unable to escape from its clucthes. The reason for such difference in opinions doesn't require to dig too deep: Ferris simply aimed for too large of a target, without realizing that socio-economical models are different (sometimes like day and night) depending on every region. Think about it.

Start-up model that works in the U.S. will under no circumstances work in Ukraine or Belarus. You can never make a business selling yoga for climbers DVDs in Russia, because in Russia the pirate version of it will appear on the web within the first few hours. You will never be able to become a New Rich somewhere in South America by re-selling sailor T-shirts from France at $100 each, because people are generally way poorer and can't form a decent market. It's the U.S. where people are so spoilt with the luxury of choices - in way too many other countries the situation is completely different.

So a lot of people displeased with the book actually have a great point.

At the same time, I don't believe that Ferris really intented to write a universal guideline of how to succeed with little effort. What he, on the other hand, suggests is plenty of practical advice on time management, work efficiencty, priority-listing, automation, and, most important, on being more creative, on thinking outside the box, acquiring views on life that allow more perspectives and bigger possibilities. Stop being afraid to take more from life and reach out, is what I hear him saying. Tim Ferris is a greedy man - you can feel it from his constant self-advertising and bragging with his living-on-a-beach, travelling-with-ease life-style. But he is greedy for life, and this energetic enthusiasm is - at least for me - a contageous thing.

So I do recommend reading - but only between the lines.

PS. The book is loaded with quotations, real life stories, extracts from various articles, useful web links, etc. The latter can be found on Timothy Ferris' blog that is saturated with useful info of very different kind: http://fourhourworkweek.com/4-hour-workweek-tools/