Another Tantalizing Tuesday

Lots of good stuff to report, some from the tech world, some from music, and some from art. How typical of me, wouldn't you say?

Wired Magazine's list of top 8 online mix tape distribution sites.





Article detailing St. Louis and their Complete Street Project. Finally, urban planning that de-emphasizes auto-centric streets.





New York Times article examining the state of conceptual art and the welcoming of former rebels like Jeffery Koons into the establishment.

Google Android is making a grab at the Ipod Touch market with their Archos 5. It looks incredible.

French illustrator over at Nesk.

Ever get tired of pie charts and PowerPoint presentations? Let David McCandless' new book, The Visual Miscellaneum show you information in a colorful new way.


As per the A.V. Club, Tegan and Sara's new album is awesome to the max. Also, Midlake and Los Campesinos! are coming out with new albums in 2010. Oh Huzzah!

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

Tatsuro Kiuchi

For those who don't remember, "P.J." stands for Philip Johnson. I picked him as my imaginary blogging buddy mostly because I've always enjoyed his trademark glasses and have respect for him as an architect. How can you not like a guy who hung out with Andy Warhol? As it so happens, I've been getting to know P.J. a little better thanks in part to my recent acquisition of The Philip Johnson Tapes. The book is a transcription of interviews with Johnson done in 1985 by Robert A.M. Stern. I have just started the book, but so far it's a very enlightening read. He really doesn't pull any punches when it comes to his opinions about anything. I anticipate a lively interview all the way through.

In other reading news, I just finished Nicholson Baker's, The Mezzanine. Though only 130 pages, it takes a while to go through in part because of Nicholson's extensive use of footnotes. I admit it got a little tiresome after a while, but his sustained concentration on minutiae is amazing. Most of the book revolved around the main character trying to figure out why both his shoelaces broke within a day of each other. He thinks about the different places of stress; at the knot, at the shoes' eye holes, along the toe, etc. in excruciating detail, but rarely do his thoughts become boring. He forces the reader to examine the everyday in a new light, often reexamining the mundane and finding something wondrous about it. How often do you read an author who cares deeply about paper towels vs. air dry hand dryers in public bathrooms? I enjoyed the book, but it is not for everyone. It takes a certain patience, one I admittedly didn't always have.

During breaks in my reading of Baker, I read a short story collection by Jim Shepard called, Like You'd Understand, Anyway. It is one of the most consistent short story collections I've read recently. Normally, a collection has a few gems, a lot of decent, but not great stories, and a couple that are just bad. Shepard held a tight grip on his material and never let it falter, even as he skipped around through history tackling such time periods as Chernobyl era Ukraine, Hadrian's Wall era Roman Empire, and the French Revolution. Shepard's stories, which largely revolve around father/son/brother relationships, always stay emotionally grounded. He never lets the historical period take control of the story. It doesn't matter what year the story takes place, relationships between men are always they same and, in Shepard's worlds, always failing. Definitely a book worth checking out, even if you aren't a big lit reader. It's very straightforward and lacks any kind of tricky post-modern elements. It's just a solid read. Period.


Last weekend Treasure Island, in the San Francisco Bay, held its second annual music festival. The island was originally built in 1939 for a World's Fair and fell into disuse shortly after World War II. There was been a lot of argument over the years about what to do with the man made island. Current plans call for a small sustainable city to be built. San Francisco always seems to be the most progressive West Coast city when it comes to social policy. Some message board posters have criticized the city for concentrating too much on environmental issue while ignoring larger concerns such as crime and safety. While I certainly don't want crime, I think that's something I'd rather put up with than cancer induced by chemical/pollutant exposure.

Forgot how I found the site, but The Projectivist is a great blog about art and graphic design.

Tatsuro Kiuchi is a Japanese illustrator of immense talent. In addition to his portfolio site, he also has a blog. Check it out, yo!

The Metro Library and Archive has an online database of Los Angeles maps, each detailing proposed public transit routes over the years. It gets depressing when you realize L.A. could have had its "Subway to the Sea" way back in the 1970's.

Syllabus for the Net Generation via McSweeney's.

San Francisco's plastic bag ban has worked and might be extended to include banning paper bags, some residents pissed.

Barnes & Noble is taking dead aim at Amazon's Kindle with their new e-reader device, Nook.

When was the last time you talked to your cousin, Frodo?

"Good Magazine" Associate Editor and all around swell guy Patrick James has a Twitter. Read it before it reads you.

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks: Monday Edition

I finished Michael Chabon's Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing Along the Borderlands over the weekend. Not the most interesting book in the world. The first essay,"Trickster in a Suit of Light , starts the book on a high note as it explains Chabon's stance on so-called "genre fiction" and "literature." The premise of the essay was that entertainment has gotten a bad rap over the years because we have limited its definition. Entertainment has come to mean mindless action movies and formulaic sitcoms. That isn't all entertainment is and can be, that's just what we've let it become. Writing, Chabon contents, is also entertainment and that giving writing such a label isn't derogatory, but merely a description of its basic function. He says, "I'd like to believe that, because I read for entertainment, and I write to entertain. Period."

He goes on to define entertainment in its broader sense and finds it quite apropos when applied to writing.

"The original sense of the word "entertainment" is a lovely one of mutual support through intertwining, like a pair of trees grown together, interwoven, each sustaining and bearing up the other. It suggests a kind of mid-air transfer of strenght, contact across a void...I can't think of a better approximation between reader and writer."

The above quote is more or less the thesis for the entire collection of essays, though I felt it wasn't always supported all that well. A couple of the essays were only five or six pages long including, "Landsman of the Lost" which was about American comic strip writer Ben Katchor. The essay gives a brief account of how and why Chabon is interested in the man and then talks about what he did for the essay's remaining four or five pages. This essay, like many in the collection, felt cursory, more recollections than analysis. Chabon often talks of his childhood and liking comics and having various religious and identity crises, but none of it felt all that personal. I never felt that I was getting to know him better as a writer. The essays felt like facts, I was getting a list of things Chabon likes without really understanding their relationship to him or his writing.

The most compelling essay, "Imaginary Homelands," deals with Chabon's Jewish identity as awriter, how that informs his writing, and how an essay he wrote about a Yiddish dictionary angered a lot of scholarly Jews. It was the first time I felt Chabon was intimately discussing something that was important to him and how personal aspects of his life affected his public output as a writer. Plus, it dealt with etymology and language, which is always a point of interest to me. I wouldn't say this essay alone is worth the cost of the book, but it does finally reveal something about the author, which I had been waiting 157 pages for. I have not given up on Chabon as a fiction author. I've read his short story collection A Model World and hope to pick up Wonder Boys sometime soon. In the meantime, I'll stick to other more convincing essayist fare.



LINKS:

Good Magazine has several good articles, one of which claiming that 2009 is one of the best years for the novel we've seen in a while. Pynchon's new novel, Inherent Vice, is proof enough. For a list of must-read novels from 2009, none of which I've read (for shame!), click here.

The lucky bastards in Belgium have not only a kick ass train system, but a new central terminal decigned by Santiago Calatrava.

A new study has found that Mother Earth has tapped out and it's all because we put her in a choke hold. Now we're all going to die. Good going, citizens of Earth.

826 National, in addition to offering outstanding free tutoring services to children around the country, also has an unbeatable line of products including antimatter, robot emotions, and existentialist wine. To celebrate the organization's amazing products and its design/development team, 826 has put out a book entitled, Essentially Odd. It can be purchased at the 826 National website.

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

My reading streak continues at a rapid clip. This week's schedule includes Denis Johnson's Jesus' Son, Nicholson Baker's The Mezzanine and Michael Chabon's, Maps and Legends. I've found that reading three books simultaneously isn't nearly as distracting or disorienting as I had previously found it to be. I think it helps that one book is a short story collection and the other essays, making it easier to keep track of the information. I find switching between books at a whim makes their respective writing styles richer and more distinct. Each book's style helps set off the next. Plus, it allows me a break if the reading gets too intense. While entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable, sometimes the minutiae obsessed Baker can get a little taxing, so I switch over to the more direct prose of Johnson. Anyway I slice it, I feel my reading is worthwhile both in entertainment value and as templates for my own writing.

In Nor Cal news, the new Bay Bridge is rushing toward completion which means the old Bay Bridge is nearing its end. Fear not concerned citizens, the entire bridge is not being torn down, just the eastern span that stretches from Oakland to Yerba Buena Island. The stretch from Yerba Buena to San Francisco is staying intact save for some seismic retrofitting. The new eastern span is being dubbed a Skyway because it lacks the caged support system of the current bridge and affords uninterrupted views of the Bay.

The official Bay Bridge construction website has all the details, including the eventual dismantling of the eastern span. However, as Newton's Third Law of Motion states, "for every action there is an opposite and equal reaction." What is the reaction you ask? Well, many forward thinking city planners are proposing to keep the old eastern span of the bridge and turn it into a hanging city of sorts, similar to that of New York's High Line. There is also some historical precedence to the idea which is outlined quite extensively in both Streetsblog San Francisco and BldgBlog.

I'm unsure of how practical it would be to build a city on a structure deemed unsafe to drive across, let alone live on. There are lots of kinks to work out, obviously, but it's a forward thinking plan that promotes reuse rather than outright destruction which works on both an economic and historic preservation level. I highly doubt that plan will ever happen, but it can only help in the ongoing fight against waste.

Last year I went to D.C. and spent a lot of time looking through the various Smithsonian museums as well as all the usual touristy places. A museum i failed to go to only because I didn't know existed until late last week was the National Building Museum. How cool is that? I feel all giddy and geeky just thinking about it. le sigh. le swoon. Perhaps if I had explored ArchiAtlas earlier I might have known.

Bonus Link:
Grain Edit is a graphic design fetish site that focuses on work from the 1950's through the 1970's. Most excellent.

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

There's a lot of talk among music critics about scenes. There was the grunge scene in Seattle, the hardcore scene in D.C., the punk scene in London, the new Pac Northwest scene that includes Death Cab for Cutie and the Decemberists. Every city seems to have had a "scene" at some point within music history. Omaha, of all places, has a scene thanks to Conor Oberst and Saddle Creek Records. Los Angeles never seems to make any of these scene lists, at least to my knowledge. The closest thing I can think of is the East Coast/West Coast rap battles of the 90's, which cooled down considerably after the murders of Biggie and Tupac as well as the incarceration of Suge Knight.


It's surprising to me that L.A. is void of a scene especially since it's described as being such a small town, socially speaking. This has a lot to do with Hollywood and the massive networking that goes within the entertainment industry. With all these people working together, how can some sort of scene or movement not exist in L.A? I think one does exist and has been around for a while. It's difficult for me to know whether this scene is currently emerging or I just think it is because I'm becoming cognizant of it.

Take, for example, Largo. (I think you will find that after a while, this article will be nothing more than a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon like scenario which, incidentally, can be played here.) Largo is a sit down theater that is host to many actors, musicians and comedians. A quick look through their schedule shows performances by comedian Patton Oswalt and musician Jon Brion. Both work with director Paul Thomas Anderson whose movie "Magnolia" featured songs written by Aimee Mann who also performs at Largo along with Fiona Apple, who dated Paul Thomas Anderson.

If we expand the circle out a little wider, Zack Galafinakis also performs at Largo. He is friends with Patton Oswalt, who has done stand up for 826LA. 826LA is part of 826, a non-profit organization started by author Dave Eggers who wrote a movie, Away We Go, starring John Krazinski and Maya Rudolph. Maya Rudolph is going out with Paul Thomas Anderson. And this list could go on forever, circling outward into a vast orgy of Hollywood incest. All this is done to prove, however, that L.A. does a very credible arts scene that, at least according to my knowledge, has been developing since the 90's.

Much of the artistic movement of today has a lot to do with the so-called hipsters, particularly around the Echo Park and Silver Lake areas of Los Angeles. There has been a backlash against hipsterdom for a while now, primarily because of their alleged love of anything obscure, cerebral or pretentious. They're the new wave of art school prepsters pretending to barely get by on their boho chic lifestyle. Say what you will about their fashion, attitude, or gentrification of various cities, but at least they have a vested interest in the city's cultural life. I asked a friend how she liked living in Austin. She said there was a lot of plaid, so it was a pretty cool place. Plaid is shorthand for hipster fashion along with skinny jeans and funky colored sunglasses and there's plenty of that around L.A. I can only imagine what the crowd will look like at the FYF this weekend.

And what are the hipstesr listening to, what art are they promoting? They listen to, among other things, No Age, a stripped down indie outfit that often play at Family Bookstore on Fairfax. Family Bookstore, along with Stories in Echo Park and Origami Vinyl are all in the business of promoting local musicians, artists, and writers. Both Family and Stories are collaborating with 826LA on various events. For a mini documentary on Family Bookstore, check out the We Love You Blog all about Spike Jonze's new movie, Where the Wild Things Are. Oh, did I neglect to mention Spike is also a friend of 826LA? Small word, huh? No Age, in addition to playing Family Bookstore also play at a venue called The Smell. Need more like-minded, L.A. based non-profit organizations? Look no further than Machine Project, Ooga Booga, and the Silver Lake Conservatory of Music.

What makes all these people an organizations more than just businesses? The difference is that they are integrally related to the neighborhoods in which they stand. They don't just sell things to the community, but welcome the people in to be participants in conversation. Not just literal conversation, but to be a dynamic force both in the L.A. art world and the immediate neighborhood. There is a reciprocal relationship between the establishments and residents. And not only do the businesses provide workshops, classes, music, art, books, meeting spaces to their customers, but to other business as well. They work together for the betterment of everyone. As mentioned above, 826LA has worked with both Stories and Family Bookstores. It has worked with Maya Rudolph and Spike Jonze and Patton Oswalt and Largo. There are artists, musicians, and actors in Los Angeles who, without trying to, are part of a burgeoning group of people keeping the interest and promotion of art alive in Los Angeles. And that's more than can be said for LACMA who just recently had to cancel its weekend film series. And UCLA narrowly escaped having to close down its arts library. With major artistic institutions falling by the economic wayside, it's comforting to find people willing to make a scene. An L.A. scene at that.


Random Links:

L.A. FreeBee

Sartorialist

Look Book

NPR Story about the comedy scene in L.A. during the 1970's.

Two Martin Short interviews on Letterman that, although about 15 years apart, are eerily similar and equally hilarious.

Interview I
Interview II

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

Friday Night Links/ P.J.'s Picks:


I'm one essay away from finishing Consider the Lobster and I just picked up George Saunders' CivilWarLand in Bad Decline and Sarah Vowell's Assassination Vacation. Reading wise, things are going pretty well. And for those who don't read, well, you're probably not reading this either so nevermind...I've been pretty hungry this past week and have been relying heavily on cold cereal for sustenance. Never underestimate the power of shredded wheat. When not eating nine bowls a day I look to a couple L.A. food blogs for restaurant tips:

Eater L.A.

Eating L.A.

The sites are pretty similar in their content; restaurant reviews, events, and gossip, but I always find myself looking at both. They help fill in the gaps of the other. They both have a slight crackberry.com feel in that they both giddily slip out rumors and discuss the possibilities of soon to open restaurants. Gossip includes the hiring of new chefs, changes in menus, the addition/removal of valet service, and new desserts rumored to be in the works. Both sites also keep track of restaurants that have a BYOB policy, which is always an enjoyable find.

L.A. Weekly's Jonathan Gold recently released his 99 Essential L.A. Restaurants. Did your favorite hot spots make the list? There's only one way to find out.


If you're a lover of local newscasts like I am you'll be thrilled to know that long time Fox 11 news anchor John Beard, who has been off the air due to Fox's decision not to renew his contract, is alive and well and (like everyone else in the world) has a Twitter. If you're tired of getting news feeds from The Man and would prefer getting your news from a man, follow his Twitter. For those of you who don't know who John Beard is, I really shouldn't be talking to your because your ignorance saddens me. However, I will tell you he is semi-famous outside of the L.A. region due to several cameos on Arrested Development.


Pitchfork is known for giving practically every album a rating of four or lower. It's like they're not even aware that there are numbers higher than five. Sometimes they come off elitist and unabashed lovers of all things obscure/indie. Haven't heard of Florence and the Machine, Mungolian Jet Set, or Nisennenmondai? Too bad. Pitchfork has and they love them more than a new pair of skinny jeans.

Those who bash Pitchfork never seem to mention that it's more than just a site for album reviews. It's full name is Pitchfork Media. As such, they have lots of exclusive video footage, interviews and cultural essays. A few of the more enlightening articles include:
The Social History of the Mp3
The Decade in Pop
Twee as Fuck: The History of Indie Pop


For the burgeoning writers of L.A., I present to you UCLA's annual Writer's Faire. It takes place on August 30 from 11-3. The full schedule can be found here and a UCLA campus map here.


And, if you enjoy vintage diners but not the high cholesterol meals they serve, come on out to DRKRM Gallery, which is hosting a photo exhibit of lost L.A. diners. It's a Googie lovers dream come true with half the fat and none of the guilt!

Carver's Beginnings

Later this month a new Raymond Carver collection will be published and will include unedited versions of the stories from What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. The compilation has been in the works for several years with much of the spearheading done by Carver's widow, Tess Gallagher. Her belief, which is shared by others, is that Carver's editor, Gordon Lish, trimmed the stories down almost to the point of suffocating them and changed their meaning entirely.

Carver: Collected Stories is intended to show Carver without the restraints of his editor and how his earlier work was just as detailed and nuanced as his late period stories such as the ones found in Cathedral. Lish, in Gallagher's eyes, did not sculpt her late husband's work so much as distort it into something entirely different. These new unedited stories are titled Beginners and are the original drafts of what became Carver's breakthrough collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. As a London Times article notes, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love consists of 103 pages, while Carver's original manuscript was 204. Nearly half of the stories' contents were cut; on average it was about 70% per story.

Such judicious editing and reshaping of work begs the question of who was really behind the genius of Carver's writing. Which set of stories is the "real" Carver? Knopf, Carver's original publishers and part of the group who initially resisted the publication of the new stories, argues that,

What We Talk About requires no explanation. It is what it is – it is not standing in for some other “pure” text unsullied by messy editorial fingerprints. Every notable book...is the product of a collaboration between author and publisher, and while What We Talk About may exist at the extreme edge of editing, it is not unique.

This posthumous publishing of an author's work is nothing new. Also released this year, Hemingway's unfinished novel, A Moveable Feast, Nabakov's incomplete novella The Original of Laura, and Graham Greene's series of stories, The Empty Chair. Other unpublished works or personal documents made public include the journals and letters of Sylvia Plath, the letters of John Keats, the letters of Truman Capote etc. etc. The list goes on and on. What ends up happening, though, is these fabled pieces of work get published and then, inevitably, get reviewed as being mediocre at best and not nearly as revelatory as they had been hyped to be. Such is the nature of unpublished work. It wasn't published for a reason; because it wasn't very good.

Are Carver's unedited stories, "lesser works"? Some of that depends on one's aesthetic taste. Some prefer the stripped down style of Carver's debut collection, Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? while others prefer the more robust stories of Cathedral. Is one style more "real" than the other? Not in my mind. I agree with Carver's publishers. A published book is a collaborative effort between author and editor, between author and friends, between the author and the world in which he lives. Authors are a product of their environment and circumstance and so is their writing. Take away any single element from any author's life and their writing will change. Writers also frequently change their style. Just look at Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey and compare it to Sense and Sensibility. The self-consciousness concerning the novel as artifice present in Northanger Abbey is completely absent from her other work. Carver, like Austen, and many other authors, changed his style as time progressed and no longer desired the minimalist writing championed by Lish.

To publish a collection of stories for the purpose of vindicating an author's talent is harmful to both the author's original work and his legacy. In the case of Carver, I think Gallagher is trying too hard to portray her husband as a victim and a gifted writer stunted by his editor. That's not to say the stories shouldn't be published, I just don't think they should be published under the pretense of revisionism. Gallegher's goal seems to be to redefine people's opinion of Carver.

Instead of reshaping opinion, the collection should be used to broaden our understanding of the author and his collaborative writing process. Story drafts are much like artist's sketches in that they provide insight into the creative process that leads to the final product. Carver's story drafts are not the master key that will allow the reader to unlock his genuis, but rather one more piece of the puzzle. Carver's legacy, like Kafka and Dickinson before him, is being controlled without his consent. Thankfully, also like Kafka and Dickinson, his work is strong enough to withstand the meddling of outsider's hands and outlast even those who outlasted him.

Friday Night Links

Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks

I've been trying to read more lately and that has lead me to finishing The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao in about three weeks. My pace is pathetic, but it is faster and more consistent than it used to be. Thank goodness for small favors.

I didn't like the book at first, finding the narrator's voice to be excessively flashy and verbose. Later, I came to see its purpose and found the style to be quite affecting. I ended up liking the novel a lot, but wouldn't rate it among my favorites. It won a Pulitzer, which I guess it deserved. I don't know which other books were contenders, so I can't really say.

Also on my reading stack is David Foster Wallace's, Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. Before this book the only other work of his I'd read was his short story collection, Girl with Curious Hair. I still rate the collection's final story, "Westward the Course of Empire Takes Its Way" as among my favorites. Brief Interviews is a less straightforward read, interspersing "interviews" with more traditional short stories. The interviews slow me down a lot because the fictional subjects tend to be men who are deeply neurotic, self-deprecating, and obsessive. Who knew a story about how annoying a baby could be would last for 25 pages? I find most of the stories rewarding and am continually amazed at how Wallace can transform seemingly pointless and neurotic obsession into something profound and illuminating. His writing takes patience, but I find the struggle worthwhile. His mix of heavy intellectualism, emotional self-flagellation, and humor, make for a very unique and awe-inspiring read. I hope to continue my DFW reading trend with Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Funny Thing I'll Never Do Again.

I just started Italo Calvino's Cosmicomics and am enjoying it immensely. The man can do no wrong. I'm not sure what I want to read next, though I am leaning toward something by Lydia Davis.


P.J. has been trying to get me to join Twitter, but I have held strong against him. I am willing to concede that there are some cool people to follow including, Aziz Ansari, John Hodgman, Eugene Mirman, Jim Gaffigan, and Michael Ian Black. I chose these guys specifically because they are funny comedians and they retain that humor on Twitter. As you may have noticed, Michael Ian Black is up there, but his Stella brethren, Michael Showalter and David Wain are not. As much as I love the other two guys, I found their Tweets to be more pedestrian (i.e. "I have to confess that even though it's in Los Angeles, Langers Delicatessen has by far the best pastrami in the world. I had it today!" ) Thank, David Wain! Although, in his defense he also said, "Redoing my bathroom as one huge urinal, so you can just open the door and pee anywhere. Cost me a fortune but how awesome is that?" I found it funny. Maybe it's 'cause I'm a guy with the mind of a 12 year old.

In other, slightly more important news, I stumbled upon a few cool sites dealing with print design and art.

Velhetica

PSFK

Design Observer

If you feel hungry after all that interwebs browsing, try a recipe from Sam the Cooking Guy.

Least, but certainly not last, the official homepage of professional Canadian and all around cool guy, Mr. Logan Esdale.

Friday Night Links

P.J. and I had a week full of suck and it's all because DirecTV pulled the bonus channels we were receiving like VH1 Classic and Ovation. It was to be expected and something we should have seen coming. As every kid in high school econ learns, "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." DirecTV surely wasn't going to let us enjoy premium channels for free. No sir. Instead they just titillated us with their artsy channel peep show and then pulled the plug just when we were getting comfortable. We will no longer be watching documentaries on bands like Pink Floyd or the Sex Pistols, nor will we get to decide whether a painting is art or not. So, thanks a lot DirecTV. Now P.J. and I have to make due with A Baby Story mini-marathons, True Life: I'm a College Baller, and the wacky antics of Bam Margera. It's like a pop culture smoothie where the only ingredients are lard, apathy, and a fat scoop of shame.

After being burned so badly by technology, P.J. and I decided to go the old school route and devote this week's links to something decidedly non-digital: BOOKS. And don't get me started on the Kindle (shakes fist).



Friday Night Links/P.J.'s Picks:

I've always had a fascination with bookplates. I'm not sure why. Probably because it's a really bad ass personalized sticker and who doesn't like stickers?

I'm not sure how legit and official the organization is, but this site claims to be the home of the American Society of Bookplate Collectors and Designers.


Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie has hundreds of fine examples of the art, some of which are quite elaborate and enviable.

Found Beloved is a site dedicated to children's books found at garage sales and second hand stores. At least I think that's what the site is about. Also somehow affiliated with Marzipan Press.

And for those interested in the design and making of books I give you:

Biblio Odyssey which focuses on antiquarian book art

Amassblog which covers book design through the ages

and for the font enthusiast...

Typographica