[image by Brian]

Goal for June: Read a book a day. Follow my reading list here.

Sometimes books are not for reading but for looking at.

Green reading tip: Make books into pieces of visual art.

So this tip’s not particularly green, except that turning books into sculptures of sorts means a reusing of books — and reusing’s always eco…. Some ideas juxtaposed with some recent books I’ve read:

My Life had stood — a Loaded Gun -: Sculpted, cut-up, shaped, and lamp-ed books of art. (via 3quarksdaily)

Paul Valery’s Monsieur Teste is a book cut-up — a book composed of fragments, or maybe more accurately, a book as evidence of the fragmentary nature of experience.

In fact while Valery published a slim volume titled Monsieur Teste in 1896, Valery kept scribbling about this Teste figure in his notebooks, using him as a sort of philosophical alter-ego throughout his life: “The systematic use of Me as He.” Or, “I confess that I have made an idol of my mind, but I have found no other.”

The Princeton UP edition I read begins with the original publication, followed notes and fragments the translator collected together.

and I added, repeating what all rather simple-minded people think: “So, what am I doing here?”
“Well…,” said Monsieur Teste, “you are wondering what you are doing here….”

Book spine poetry: Books juxtaposed to reveal new strange meanings. (via 3qd; image from Nina Katchadourian)

Juxtaposing a girl’s coming-of-age story with biblical allusions and dreamlike new myths, Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit tells the semi-autobiographical story of a gal raised by Pentecostal evangelists who slowly discovers her own beliefs and lesbian desires — and gets kicked out of her church and home pretty fast.

Odd thing is, in the end, Jeanette comes back to town to visit her religion-crazed mother. Oranges is in large part a story of family, forgiveness, and redemption — these terms defined very differently, of course, from Jeanette’s original upbringing.

Objectified artists’ books. Book as coffin-shaped love poems to a vampire. Book that pops up. Book as a book of matches. Book as perfume. Book as an illustration of rare flowers.

Eudora Welty’s The Ponder Heart is not an artists’ book — I just happened to’ve read it right before writing this post. The Ponder Heart tells the humorous story of Daniel Ponder, a Southern guy with a rather maniacal tendency to give everything he owns away — and also to marry on a whim. I rate this book mildly amusing.

Books read:
Paul Valery, Monsieur Teste
Jeanette Winterson, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Eudora Welty, The Ponder Heart

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