When Booksellers Speak

The BuzzFeed staff has assembled 21 witty bookstore signs like this one.
Booksellers SpeakSee all the others HERE
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What did they find in SubTropolis?
This story caught my eye because they delved deep under Kansas City, and I had to wonder — did they wake the dread thing that lies under the earth?
It would be a lesser Lord of the Rings fan than me who did not look upon this underground realm and not have this conversation instantly leap to the forefront of my mind:
“Ai! Ai!”wailed Legolas. A Balrog! A Balrog is come!”
Gimli stared with wide eyes. “Durin’s Bane!” he cried, and letting his axe fall, he covered his face.
“A Balrog,” muttered Gandalf. “Now I understand.”
For those of you not wholly versed in Tolkien lore, a little later Legolas elucidates:”It was a Balrog of Morgoth,” said Legolas, “of all elf-banes the most deadly, save the One who sits in the Dark Tower.”
If I should visit SubTropolis I would be looking over my shoulder constantly for the creature of shadow and fire with his deadly sword… for I have always been an Elf-friend, and the monster would smell their presence in me, and it would be a perilous place for me. But I digress…
Welcome to the SubTropolis of Kansas City
Patrick Clark writes at Boomberg.com about the hundreds of people who spend their workdays in an excavated mine the size of 140 football fields buried under Kansas City.
SubTropolisJourney to the center of the earth—or at least, to EarthWorks, a place where kids learn about the Midwest’s natural habitats. One of the many businesses in SubTropolis. Photographs by Connie Zhou/Bloomberg Business
The walls of SubTropolis are carved out of 270-million-year-old limestone deposits and help keep humidity low and temperatures at a constant 68 degrees, eliminating the need for air conditioning or heating.
Read the whole story HERE
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And THIS caught my attention because it is the stuff of fantasy novels.
Chiara Vigo: The last woman in the world who makes sea silk
Sea Silk 1Photographs by Andrea Pasquali
Sea Silk 2At the BBC, Max Paradiso Sardinia reports that while silk is usually made from the cocoons spun by silkworms, there is another, much rarer, cloth known as sea silk or byssus, which comes from a clam. Byssus is mentioned on the Rosetta stone and said to have been found in the tombs of pharaohs. Chiara Vigo is thought to be the only person left who can harvest it, spin it and make it shine like gold.
Read the whole story HERE
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13 Bookish Movies
“As book lovers, we tend to be skeptical about film adaptations,” Tolani Osan writes at Off the Shelf, “but we are fans of both the thirteen books on this list and their cinematic counterparts. Read the book, then stream the movie.”
One example:
One DayOne Day, by David Nicholls:
Emma and Dexter meet by chance the day they graduate from college. We meet them on the anniversary of that day for the next twenty years.
At its heart, this is a story about what we hope for and how our lives actually play out. David Nicholls wrote the novel and the script of the charming film.
 
 
 
 
See the other 12 books and flicks HERE
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Found in a Junk Shop: Secrets of an Undiscovered Visionary Artist
MessyNessy reports on the extraordinary story of Charles Dellschau, known in his lifetime only as the grouchy local butcher.
His story is one shrouded in mystery, almost lost forever, intertwined with secret societies, hidden codes, otherworldly theories and seemingly impossible inventions before his time. Unseen for decades and salvaged by a junk dealer in the 1960s from a trash heap outside a house in Texas, his entire body of work would later go on to marvel the intellectual world.
Charles Dellschau 2Charles Dellschau
He had arrived in the United States at 25 years old from Hamburg in 1853, MessyNessy reports, and worked as a butcher.
After his retirement in 1899, he took to filling his days by filling notebooks with a visual journal of his youth. He called the first three books, Recollections, and recounts a secret society of flight enthusiasts which met in California in the mid-19th century called the ‘Sonora Aero Club’.
 
Read the whole fascinating story HERE
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THIS ‘n THAT
Harvard researchers say light-emitting ebooks lead to next-day grogginess
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Orcs of New York Facebook Page Attracts Over 52,000 ‘Likes’
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Quote of the Day
Prince Books, Norfolk, Va.~~~~~
Alma Alexander       My books       Email me
 
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