Great Bookends Friday (Part 2)

Following up on last week's post on great bookends, here are a few more ways to decorate your (already overcrowded) shelves...

I used to have much cooler HP bookends (still do, back at Mom's house!), but these were the only ones I could find still available. Oh well, they are still certainly very fun.
Available from Mookie Gifts, $49.99

The perfect way to keep your Beta Fish from seeing each other!
Available from Urban Outfitters, $58

Birds on branches. Like I said in my post on bookcovers, I just have a thing for birds.
Available from Barnes and Noble, $49.95

Love this little pup!
Available from Barnes and Noble, $39.95

Bacon beat iPad in Unofficial Polls

Some clever soul decided to purchase as many iPad-related domains as possible back when the iPad was announced... meaning that one lucky individual now owns a bunch of domains with little to nothing to put on them. What to do? What to do?

A BACON VS IPAD POLL!

As of this posting, bacon was overwhelming the iPad with a whopping 91% of votes. And people thought the iPad would kill the Kindle. Clearly bacon has been the unknown threat to e-readers the whole time.

Also, in unrelated news, today is 31-cent scoop night at Baskin Robbins... yep, just 31 cents a scoop (plus tax, of course).

Happy Wednesday!

Book Marc?

According to Forbes article last week, Marc Jacobs is a closet bookworm. Rumor has it he is now throwing his retail-savvy behind a new venture: a bookstore located in the West Village, across from Magnolia Bakery. Here's the picture Forbes featured of the potential-future storefront:


The official word from the Marc Jacobs company confirms and denies nothing useful; ""We are indeed opening a new store, but do not have details--even a name--to share at this time," a representative said. Still, it sounds like an interesting venture, and it will be neat to see how fashion-guru Jacobs merges his style sense with book sales.

Sadly, I won't be a resident of New York by the time it opens - but I'll definitely add it to my to-visit list when I return!

Some Changes & An Advance Apology

For those that haven't heard yet, I'm moving! My fiancé has accepted a position in Baltimore, so he and I are relocating out of NYC and into to the lovely suburbs of Maryland. I grew up in Annapolis - see my gushing post on Michener's Chesapeake for more Maryland love - so I'm thrilled, although sad to be leaving New York (and with it my friends and my job).

This means that in the next three months, I will be job hunting, car purchasing and house hunting... while planning an October wedding. So posts and reviews may start to peter off a bit, though I will certainly do my best. Apologies in advance for any slow weeks.

That's all for today (see, the craze has already begun), but I will be back this week with a review of The Lost Summer of Louisa May Alcott, some thoughts on the Wheel of Time (this re-read is taking up most of my reading efforts at the moment), and hopefully another review, this one of The Swan Thieves (audiobook).

Happy Monday!

The Heart and Core (Quote of the Day)

"For books are more than books, they are the life,
the very heart and core of ages past,
the reason why men lived and worked and died,
the essence and quintessence of their lives."

- Amy Lowell (American poet, posthumously awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1986)

Great Bookends Friday (Part 1)

I'm starting a new unintentional trend of Great Fridays. I can't help it... I love Fridays. Today I am featuring some really spectacular bookends (to decorate those really awesome bookshelves from Great Bookcase Friday Part 1 and Part 2). Personally, I rarely need bookends, as my shelves are crammed one end to the other with books (and often have slanty books propped atop those), but I love the idea of enough shelf space to warrant fancy bookends...

High five for books! Round of applause!
Available from Daily Planner, $27.50 (I've seen these elsewhere, too)

Quotation marks. What could be better to frame our favorite words?
Available from Barnes & Noble, $89.95

Rosie the Riveter Bookends. Girl Power!
Available from Uncommon Goods, $34.

Leaning men bookends. Holding each other up?
Available from Amazon, $27.

Does anyone else think it odd that the bookends are only shown with 2-3 titles in between? Wouldn't most people actually using bookends have more than that? I'd call that missing your target audience, myself...

Happy Earth Day! Celebrate with a book bike?

Happy Earth Day! Got any big tree-planting plans?

One article in today's Shelf Awareness caught my attention as a particularly earth-friendly (and book-friendly!) idea: a Book Bike! Gabriel Levinson is the proud owner of this crafty, custom-built transportation and book-sharing device, riding around public parks in the Chicago area. Levinson was also featured in a Shareable article earlier this week.

Here's three cheers to the Earth and creative ideas like this one!