Archive for the ‘love’ Category

Friday, February 14th, 2014

Staff Favorites: Literary Love Stories

In honor of this most love-ly of holidays, I asked the rest of the staff to help me with a roundup of our favorite love stories in literature.

» Go add your favorites to our list here!

And whatever you’re doing for Valentine’s Day, take some advice from Powell’s and Treat Your Shelf(1) to something nice.

Our Favorites

Benedick & Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing
KJ says: It’s the Ur-Romantic Comedy for a reason. Two grumps who detest the concept of Romance are manipulated into showing their feelings by their conspiring friends over a weekend wedding.

Bendrix & Sarah from The End of the Affair
Kate says: Is it in bad taste to pinpoint an affair as a prime example of love? Sorry not sorry.

Jamie & Claire from The Outlander Series
Abby says: It’s the story of an English woman in the 1940s who travels through time to 1740s Scotland—the books are historical fiction mixed with time travel, and of course, a great love story.

Daphnis & Chloe, the eponymous duo from the novel by Longus
Tim says: Sweet and unexpected. If you haven’t read an ancient novel, this is the one to start with.

Everyone from A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Matt says: Well, they all end up together at one point or another, really.

Marco & Celia from The Night Circus
Loranne says: A bit of a fairy tale, but very much an affair of the mind between the two characters. The addition of magic (no joke) makes the settings spectacular, too.

Jim & Doyle from At Swim, Two Boys
KJ says: The story of a romance between two boys living in Ireland in 1916, against the background of increasing political strife and the Easter Rebellion. The book is written in a stream-of-consciouness style, and interweaves a beautiful romance with grand tragedy.

Elizabeth Bennet & Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice
Abby says: You just can’t make this kind of list and leave off Elizabeth Bennet and Mr Darcy.

Florentino & Fermina from Love in the Time of Cholera
Loranne says: This one is right up there with Elizabeth and Darcy for me. The story spans decades, and every time I read it, I feel like I’ve spent that much time with them. In a good way.

Eleanor & Park from Eleanor and Park
Kate says: Duh.

Florizel & Perdita from The Winter’s Tale
Matt says: Such a funny and lovely exchange:
P: O, these I lack,
To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend,
To strew him o’er and o’er!
F: What, like a corpse?
P: No, like a bank for love to lie and play on;
Not like a corpse; or if, not to be buried,
But quick and in mine arms.

Polyphemus & Galatea from Metamorphoses
Tim says: Funny and poignant, and, since it’s Ovid, cleverer than you think.

Gen & Irene from The Queen’s Thief Series
KJ says: The romance in this series triumphs over a lot of politics and personal history which would have otherwise meant they shouldn’t be together. Also, the two of them banter sarcastically for most of the series with moments of simple companionship amid the political chaos around them.

Cecilia & Robbie from Atonement
Abby says: Oh, I weep.

Venus & Adonis from all over the place (but especially this one)
Matt says: In its many variations, particularly Shakespeare’s, and some lesser known Italian poets.

Laurie & Jo from Little Women
Kate says: THAT’S RIGHT. I SAID IT.

Honorable Mentions

Including, but not limited to, Holden Caulfield’s infatuation with himself.

1. For the uninitiated: Treat Yo’ Self from Parks & Recreation

Labels: holiday, lists, love, reading, recommendations

Thursday, February 14th, 2013

Let’s show our love for Longfellow Books!

During last weekend’s blizzard, our much-beloved independent bookstore here in Portland, Longfellow Books (see them on LibraryThing Local), suffered significant damage when a water line in the building’s sprinkler system froze and caused torrents of water to pour through the ceiling directly onto the books. Co-owner Chris Bowe told the local paper that as much as half of the stock was damaged by water: much of the rest was saved by the quick actions of the Portland fire department.

I’ve heard from several of you this week asking how we can help. For now, the single best thing we can do to show our love for Longfellow is to buy some books from them. They’re taking orders by phone (207-772-4045) and through their website, and they’ve printed up some limited edition Flood of 2013 Gift Certificates, which you can order online. It’s even International Book Giving Day, so what better time than the present? (Also, it’s Valentine’s Day, and books make great gifts for that special someone!).

The Longfellow staff have been working hard all week to try and get the store open in time for their Pussy Riot Valentine’s Day Benefit event tonight at 7 p.m., and once they get things back up and running they may have other/different ways we can volunteer and help out. We’ll be sure to pass those along to you all. For now, head on over to longfellowbooks.com and buy a book (or six) or a gift card. Let’s help show Longfellow how much we care!

[Update: Just after we posted this the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance also announced some other ways to help – check those out here].

Labels: bookstores, love, portland

Thursday, September 1st, 2011

Help libraries damaged by Hurricane Irene

Author Kate Messner posted yesterday about serious damage suffered by the Wells Memorial Library in Upper Jay, NY from Hurricane Irene’s floodwaters. Almost their entire childrens’ book collection was soaked beyond salvage, and they could use donations of money or books to replace the lost titles.

We’re sure there are other libraries out there in the same situation, so we want to help however we can. I’ve set up a wiki page to track needs and how to help, and I’ve contacted librarians at various libraries in the Bahamas and the U.S. reported to have suffered damage from Irene. I’ll be updating the wiki page as I get new information, but others should feel free to add to it, or to email me (jeremy@librarything.com) with updates.

I’ll be sending copies of some of my favorite childrens’ books, as well.

Come discuss on Talk.

Labels: altruism, libraries, love

Friday, September 18th, 2009

LibraryThing, IndieBound and love

As Tim blogged last night, we needed some help from members to link LibraryThing data on bookstores to IndieBound data. We connected 1,200 automatically, but that left 1,362 that had to be done manually—checking exact names, addresses, sometimes even creating a new “venue” on LibraryThing Local.

Tim posted the plea for help at about 5:30 pm last night. By 11 am this morning, it was entirely done. That’s right, in less than eighteen hours—most of which were in the middle of the night, in the US at least—LibraryThing members completed the task. That’s incredible. Insane. Fantastic.

As Tim tweeted, “IndieBound/LT demonstrates what I believe: Independent bookstores can win online if they engage the community. Love is powerful.” His sentiments were retweeted all over, and the IndieBound folks agreed. (See IndieBoundPaige, mattsupko, SarahABA on Twitter)

LibraryThing members are indeed an incredible community, and love indeed is powerful.* We’re going to add a new helper badge to recognize these folks. Thank you, thank you.

*Anyone who hasn’t seen Clay Shirky’s “The Internet Runs on Love” talk, should (blogged

Labels: bookstore integration, indiebound, love

Friday, February 15th, 2008

Take our files, raw.

Short. Here’s a page of our raw graphics files. If you find that fun, have some. If you make an interesting change, all the better.

Long. We believe in openness. But openness is a process. It’s not so much that openness is difficult or painful* it’s that openness is non-obvious. You don’t see each successive layer until you remove the one above it.

Since the site started, we’ve enjoyed kibitzing about how it should look. We’d talk about layout and design. We’d throw up an image and sit back for reactions. Occasionally a user would get inspired and post what they thought something should look like. We just concluded a great exchange about the new “Author” and “Legacy” badges. Members helped us refine the wording and the colors enormously.

Open, right? But wait! Why didn’t we post our raw images for members to play with, if they wanted? You can talk about a GIF, but that’s like asking people to have conversations about a prepared speech.

Frankly, until now, I never even thought of the idea. I’ve never heard of a company that did it. And although it happens on open source projects, it’s not universal. The Open Library project, for example, is a model of openness. You can download both code and data; but you won’t find any design files on the site.

So, why not? We don’t lose trademark or copyright by posting a raw Photoshop file, with layers and alternate versions, anymore than we lose them by posting GIFs and JPEGs. What is the potential downside? Just in case there’s any confusing, we’ve posted a notice about copyright and trademark, but also granted explicit permission to make changes and blog about them.

So, here’s a wiki page for us to post our raw graphics files, and users to view, edit and remix them. It’s a very selective list so far, mostly because I started with what was lying around my on my desktop.**

More, much deeper openness coming next week…

*Although maintaining the “What I did today?” page proved too much work, and it helps that I have very thick skin for most criticism.
**There’s a side-benefit to putting all the files up on the wiki. Last time I lost my hard drive I lost almost no work—it’s all up on the “cloud” these days—except for my Photoshop files.

Labels: love, member input, open data, openness