crooked house

One Line a Day

Seeing this pretty and old-fashioned One Line a Day: A Five-Year Memory Book makes me wonder if anyone is using twitter to write one tweet at the end of each day summing it up. Just one tweet -- no more allowed. Facebook could work like that, too. One status update summing up each day, no more. But both twitter and facebook seem much more ephemeral than a journal. Are all your tweets and status updates saved? If so, for how long?

My mother-in-law kept a five-year diary before she died -- I believe she faithfully jotted just one line or two about each day before she went to bed. And I know my father-in-law does -- he often surprises me with a comment about what we were doing on this day two or three years ago. This is particularly of interest when you have small children who seem to change so fast.

I've often thought of using something like My Quotable Kid: A Parents' Journal of Unforgettable Quotes but I already record almost everything interesting or amusing my children say either here or on my facebook page, which I know drives a lot of people nuts. But I'm even a sucker for the funny things other people's children say, which makes me the perfect audience for sites like My Kid Is Gifted. 

Take A Look: A Selfish Giant Armchair, Sequels to Books Whose Authors Are Dead, The Insides of Security Envelopes, And The Dullest Horror Movies Ever

Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant" in the form of an armchair by artist Hannah Wilmot. Via.

Laurie Halse Anderson on how to write a picture book. Via.

Dracula, Winnie-the-Pooh, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all get new sequels by someone other than their (dead) original authors. I'm curious, at least about Return to the Hundred Acre Wood and And Another Thing..., but have not yet read anything like this that actually worked.

Pictorial Webster's: A Visual Dictionary of Curiosities (via) looks gorgeous. Bookmaker John M. Carrera restored engravings from 19th century Webster's dictionaries and compiled them in this book. Stamps and wall cards are available, too. It's like a professional version of one of William Davies King's odd hobbies. King, whose Collections of Nothing I read last weekend, has a number of collections of the kinds of things most people would throw out -- one of them is a notebook full of images like these that he cut out of second-hand dictionaries. He also has a collection of the beautiful insides of security envelopes. My only complaint about the book was that I wanted more pictures. And if not pictures, then the address of a website featuring some of his collections.

Speaking of the insides of security envelopes, Design Sponge has a great tutorial about how to turn those envelopes inside out.

I just added The Man Who Lost His Head, to our Christmas wishlist, thanks to Betsy. And Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America, thanks to CAAF. It sounds intriguing, despite the fact that the construction of that subtitle sounds like something FakeAPStylebook might mandate: " 'How the Relentless Promotion of ... Has Undermined America' is a little-used and useful subtitle."

And this morning's twitter fun? Dullest Horror Movies Ever. "Children with Corns," "The Exersaucer," "Benign Cyst," "The Potatoes Have Eyes," "The Curds," "Accountant on Elm Street," "A Lien," and "Resident Card" are some of mine. But my very favourite is fredricktoo's "The Blog."