Bibliophile: It Only Hurts When You Laugh at Carleton University

“Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.”
― Sir Francis Bacon 

This is Bibliophile.

Ever hit undo one time too many and erase an entire blog post? Well, I sure did. I had all my books selected, and then, with a few errant key strokes, lost it all. Ah, hubris. It's funny--I've officially turned 30 today, and I keep interpreting everything as this omen for how the next decade will be. Oh, the restaurant I wanted to go to is closed for renovations? Omen. The weather's nice today? Omen. Lost a Bibliophile post? Omen. It's going to be a long next thirty years if things keep appearing to be symbolic constructions referring to other entities the entire time.  Anyway, this week, Bibliophile takes a trip to Carleton University. We'll be looking at some of the new books it's accumulated in the next month, after the break.

Bibliophile: The Ol' Bait and Switch At Dalhousie

“A book without words is like love without a kiss; it's empty.”
― Andrew Wolfe

I'm not sure why anyone would write a book without words, and if love requires a kiss in all places, a lot of pet owners are performing acts that probably aren't legal, but whatever, it's a metaphor.

This is Bibliophile.

If you're new here, the idea is that I browse through the weekly new book list at my local University library, and note the new entries. Sometimes, though, the phrase "weekly" is a bit of a misomer, and the list fails to be updated, in which case I usually skip the week, or take another Canadian university to browse. This is one of  those latter weeks. So this week, we're looking at the new books at Dalhousie University. Books available at my own local university, good ol' University of Waterloo, will be marked by a bolded H.

Bibliophile: Gagaing on History, Vampires, and Porn at the University of Northern British Columbia

“It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.”
― Oscar Wilde
This is Bibliophile.

Welcome to my weekly segment where I take a Canadian university, and search its library catalogue for interesting new books to comment on. As always, a bold H following an entry denotes that the book is held in my local university library.
I've had a bit of an odd hurdle today; I'm having trouble finding an appropriate university library to plumb. Normally, I just take whatever comes next from Wikipedia's list of Canadian Universities. But with under 500 students, University Canada West doesn't so much have a library as it has a few shelves that happen to contain books on them.  And the next up, University of Fraser Valley, might have a very fine collection, but its library website has currently disappeared, so it's off the list too. So that brings us to door number 3, the University of Northern British Columbia.  It doesn't have a new book page, and you can search by year, but only if you specify a subject,title, author, or keyword.  Ah, so it's going to be one of THOSE.  The first twelve books that have been published in 2013, fit the keywords I randomly choose, and strike my eye as interesting, after the break.

Bibliophile: He Shoots, He Glowers! : The classic NHL gothic romance that never was, and some books that actually exist from University of BC

“Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.”
― Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can't Avoid

This is Bibliophile.

We're returning to University of British Columbia this week, the largest university in BC (apparently, population-wise; I would have assumed the biggest was Simon Fraser, so there you go). 

Movie Buff: Variety is the Spice of... this selection of movies

There will, sadly, be no Bibliophile this week; I was too busy doing other work. Sad, I know.  Unrelated note: I watched a lot of movies this weekend!  Brief commentary for Argo, Dredd, Offside, and a liiiiiittle bit of Pirate Radio, all after the break.

Bibliophile: New Media, Stalkers, Girl Power, and Games at SFU

I've been playing Don't Starve. Still trying to figure out the ideal Pig King gold/red meat exchange ratio.

 This is Bibliophile.

 After the break, we'll checking up on what's new at Simon Fraser University. We've been there before, but that was about half a year ago, so I think it's due a repeat performance.

Bibliophile: Idle Hands at Kwantlen Polytechnic University

“Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read.”
― Groucho Marx, The Essential Groucho: Writings For By And About Groucho Marx

We go over a university's new books, and pick out some highlights.  We are discerning and conscientious.  We are Bibliophile.

This week, we're looking at BC's Kwantlen Polytechnic University.  More after the break.

Bibliophile: Restoration Comedy and the Scottish Sci-Fi at Capilano U

I spit my truth as I say my rhyme,
Sit back, fool, it's book talking time.

I call people fools a lot.

This is Bibliophile.

This week, we're moving from Alberta to British Columbia, with Capilano University.  Talk on their library's new books, after the break.

Book Triad V: Ian Bogost, Magic Carpets, Serial Killers, and other Latour Litanies

Actually, that's the only Latour Litany here, really.  But it's a nice segue into our first book, and our list of books. This time in Book Triad, we'll be looking at:

Alien Phenomenology by Ian Bogost
The Secret of Ka by Christopher Pike
The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

Reviews and other ramblings after the break.

Book Review: Johanna Drucker's The Alphabetic Labyrinth

Yes, it's another book review. Someone recently mentioned to me that all I seem to do here these days is review books.  I don't know what to tell you; I spend most of my time writing and reading, so that's what comes out.  At any rate, it's my birthday on Saturday, so you can count on a personal statement around then, at least.
 
Drucker recounts the history of the alphabet, with a focus on the symbolic meaning people have afforded it over the century.  The book is divided into 10 chapters, which can roughly be thought of as two background chapters, and eight that correspond to various historical periods in Western culture, and how the alphabet was regarded in them.  Chapter 3 starts with the Greek and Roman period, with a focus on how the Greeks considered the alphabet as composed of the fundamental building blocks with which you could build up to a description of the universe. Chapter 4 covers the early Christian eras, in which the power of the written language--and the alphabet--was usually given divine attribution: "I am the alpha and the omega", for example, uses the beginning and end of alphabet as a metaphor for the entirety of existence. Other chapters cover the medieval period and the Church's appropriation of the written word, the Renaissance and the turn to rationalization, and the 18th century and their belief that writing was a necessary condition for the existence of civilization.  (There's a chapter on Kabbalah too.)  Chapter 9 covers the 19th century and the alphabet's role in the debate of creationism vs evolution (was written language divinely inspired, or did it come about naturally?)and the last chapter considers the alphabet in the digital age.

That's a very brief condensation (I've been working on shorter summaries), but it paints the basic picture. Drucker uses a lot of illustrations in the book, which is essential, I think, given the subject matter and the visual nature of the alphabet.  I kind of wish she did a bit more of an introduction, to give a more complete summation of her own stance on the use of the alphabet.  I can understand why she didn't; I think Drucker is really going for historical objectivity than pursuing her own argument, per se.  That said, if the book could be said to have an argument, I think it would be that accounts of the alphabet are always situated in a wider cultural and historical context.  There are plenty of cases, for example, where changes in alphabet are caused by changes in technology.  When we change to the printing press, handwriting becomes something specialized and unique, and writing manuals focus on aesthetic flourish.  But when mass production hits paper production, and industrialization scales up in general, there's a demand for a lot of people who can write notes by hand very quickly, and writing manuals become about getting a job.  There's power struggle embedded in font choice too--two overt examples would be Constantine created a font that was specifically not like previous Roman types, to distance his empire from the previous persecution of Christians, and when Louis XIV ordered the creation of a font that represented the dominating, transcendent nature of his reign.  Likewise, the scholarship about the alphabet had power discourses.  There was the obviously loaded question of what culture invented the first alphabet (the Nazis, for example, weren't very keen on the Semitic claim to that title) and more subtler ones that I mentioned above, such as the evolution vs. creationism issue, or the promotion of Europe's domination by claiming that civilizations needed an evolved written form.  We use and imbue the alphabet with power.

For me personally, the book was a trip down memory lane, as it reminded me in particular of other stuff I've read.  (That's right, we're not just talking about books, we're talking about books that the book reminds me of; maybe I do need a new topic.)  The mystic attributions of the alphabet remind me of Francis Yates' Art of Memory, in that she also covers a lot of the same mystic groups, who imbue similar magical attributes to the concept of the memory palace.  I wonder if there's a connection between alphabet and spatializing memory.  I suppose my off the cuff response would be that they're both about the reverence of knowledge, and preserving knowledge.  Anyway, the script history portion of the book could have been taken directly out of my old textual studies course.  I've complained about the course before, and I'll complain about it now (it was soooo boring), and with God as my witness, someday I'll complain again, but I also have to admit it comes in handy.  Because I was already familiar with uncials and Merovingian book script and so forth, I could follow along with what otherwise would be a very dry reading.  Finally, the book also had a lot of cross-over with Siegfried Zielinski's Deep Time.  First, there was a methodological similarity, as Drucker was interested in people who had the more radical interpretations of the alphabet (my favorite is Alfred Kallir, who argued that letters outlined the human sexual reproduction processes, and that as we spoke, we thus unconsciously reinforced our psyches).  But she's also talking about a lot of the same people--Athanasius Kircher, Giuseppe Balsamo, Raymond Llull.  It's an overlap that makes sense: Drucker discusses most of them in terms of mysticism, universal languages, and cryptography, all of which Zielinski is particularly interested in.  But I was struck by how much of this stuff I'd already come across in other ways.  Like the alphabet moved through power discussions, it moved in and out of European historical traditions.

Finally, though, there's the selfish question: what's in this for me?  As usual, what brought me to this text is the videogame studies, which means the image/text issue is what I'm interested in here.  Image text comparisons aren't really a direct concern with Drucker, but there's enough overlap here for me to find a lot of things useful.  The comparison does come out in full, for example, in the discussion of illuminated letters, which at one point got so complex that people started putting pictures of the book's content in the letters that started the story.  And naturally, some commentators complained, because the seductive images were taking away from the purity of the words' ideas.  That's something I can use; the notion that the alphabet, and by extension, words themselves, speak to some sort of purity of thought.  I can use the discussion on digital font more directly, obviously.  And in general, it'll serve me well to keep in mind that it's never just about the words.  Discussions about the alphabet were discussions situated in much broader discourses, and with text in games, it'll behoove me to keep that in mind.

Later Days.