Why is F. Scott Fitzgerald Buried in a Strangely Unremarkable Place?

His novel is at the top of the Amazon bestsellers list, nearly 90 years later after it was written. He’s widely considered one of America’s greatest novelists and his work has inspired writers ever since he was published. So then why is F. Scott Fitzgerald, who is more famously associated with places such as Paris,…

Stop Everything and Check Out these Miniature Book Houses

So here’s something that absolutely needs a place in my cabinet of curiosities– book houses! Real books, “hollowed-out” and filled with a miniature vignette setting, complete with tiny scaled wallpaper and parquet flooring. They come from a little-known artist I found in the far corners of the net, Shannon Moore, who has been working with…

13 Things I Found on the Internet Today (Vol. CCXLVI)

1. Roald Dahl’s pocket-sized writing shed at the Roald Dahl’s museum in the UK Supposedly Roald Dahl‘s books continue to sell at the rate of 12 a minute every day of the year… Gipsy House in Great Missenden, England where the author lived from 1954 until his death in 1990 still remains in his family. So…

Celebrity Icons and their Favourite Summer Book

So you might have heard I wrote a little book called “Don’t be a Tourist in Paris” and I was in need of some early feedback, so I sent it out to just a few of my close contacts. As you can see, it looks like they all really seem to be enjoying it! I think it’s going…

To the Bookmobile! The Library on Wheels of Yesteryear

Long before Amazon was bringing books to your doorstep, there was the Bookmobile! A travelling library often used to provide books to villages and city suburbs that had no library buildings, the bookmobile went from a simple horse-drawn cart in the 19th century to large customised vehicles that became part of American culture and reached…

The Lost Desert Libraries of Chinguetti

The sands of the Sahara have all but swallowed Chinguetti, a near ghost town found at the end of a harsh desert road in Mauritania, West Africa. Its majority of abandoned houses are open to the elements, lost to the dunes of a desert aggressively expanding southward at a rate of 30 miles per year.…

After a Decade of Renovation, the National Library of France has Reopened

Last week we went to poke our heads inside the recently unveiled National Library of France, a 556 year-old collection in the heart of Paris that has been under wraps for a decade for renovation work. Take a quick tour with us below: In the early 2000s, the building had become too outdated for…

The Book Rescuers

I came upon a small collection of photos in the LIFE Archives that show the sheer awesomeness of librarians. Pictured in 1951 drying out state library books damaged by fighting the Lewis Cass State Office Building fire in Lansing, as you can see, it was quite the undertaking… The fire was started by a 19 year-old…

The Compendium of Awful Library Books, Made by Awesome Librarians

When we think of librarians, stereotypes have taught us to think of ladies wearing sinister pointy glasses who sit there and shush us when fits of uncontrollable giggles comes over oneself while reading up on the complete mind-numbing history of something or another. But today, I stumbled upon the secret world of the librarian in the…

An Epic Dinner at the Library

Make a toast to Tolstoy, order the chicken Kiev in honour Chekhov, let Stravinksy serenade you with every spoonful of caviar and Pushkin play host in his palatial library of gastronomic pleasures. For anyone who has a way with words or a weakness for a truly great story, it’s likely that the library is one of your…