book-corner

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Book Corner: the end of dog-ears?

There was an interesting piece in The Economist a couple weeks back about digitized books. As you probably know, Google has been scanning books and putting them on this corner of their site. But what you probably didn't know is that they're doing this at a rate of something approaching 3000 books a day or 10 million a year. Apparently there are approximately 65 million books in the universe right now, which means the whole job might be done before the icebergs melt completely and... READ ON

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Book Corner: The Yale Book of Quotations

Yale University Press puts out damn good books. You probably know this already as I'm sure some of you are the proud owners of Eugene O'Neill's, Long Day's Journey into Night, or Nicholas Murray's fresh biography of Kafka, or The Yale Pelican History of Art. Well, they've gone and done it again with The Yale Book of Quotations, edited by Fred R. Shapiro. With more than 12,000 well-known quotations, this 1000-page tome is a snappy, welcome addition to any... READ ON

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Book Corner: What They Didn't Say

There's a new book coming out that seems right up our alley and it's all about how some of the more famous one-liners are actually erroneous. Written by Oxford Dictionary of Quotations editor, Elizabeth Knowles, What They Didn't Say is due out next month from Oxford University Press. You've heard the old "To fresh fields and pastures new"? But did you know the original lyric, from Milton's poem of 1637, "Lycidas" is actually "To-morrow to fresh... READ ON

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Book Corner: What We Believe But Cannot Prove

We spend so much time plugging our own smart books here at mental_floss (did you get a copy of our latest yet?), sometimes we neglect to tell you about some others you might want to wrap your eyes around. So here's one that sounds like it has something for everyone called, What We Believe But Cannot Prove, put together by Edge.org editor, John Brockman. It started as a post up on his website, a challenge to intellectuals to confess personal theories they couldn't demonstrate with... READ ON