I.S.B.N.

03/27/2012

This Spring, ISBN solicits your comments on John Steinbeck's East of Eden!

03/23/2012

Hey ISBNers! Be on the lookout for our Spring book choice, coming this weekend! The photo is a hint...

03/18/2012

ISBNer's: we hoped you enjoyed the winter choice: Daniel Woodrell's Winter's Bone! If you liked his writing, we recommend his most recent collection of twisted country noir short stories, entitled "The Outlaw Album".

12/22/2011

New Winter Post! Including BOOK CHOICE! http://informalsocietyofbooksandnotions.blogspot.com/2011/12/o-winter-bar-thine-adamantine-doors.html

12/06/2011

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/03/143053082/haiku-traffic-signs-bring-poetry-to-nyc-streets?sc=fb&cc=fp

New York City's Department of Transportation has taken an artful approach to safety: colorful traffic signs written in haiku. "Poetry has a lot of power," says artist John Morse. "The idea is to bring something to the streetscape that might catch someone's eye."

12/01/2011

“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.” - Virginia Woolf

11/15/2011

the world would definitely have been different...

The Original Titles Of 15 Classic Novels: The world probably would have been a much different place had some of these original titles ...

11/11/2011

I have perceived much beauty
In the hoarse oaths that kept our courage straight;
Heard music in the silentness of duty;
Found peace where shell-storms spouted reddest spate.

Nevertheless, except you share
With them in hell the sorrowful dark of hell,
Whose world is but a trembling of a flare
And heaven but a highway for a shell,

You shall not hear their mirth:
You shall not come to think them well content
By any jest of mine. These men are worth
Your tears: You are not worth their merriment.

- Wilfred Owen

11/11/2011

"Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man." - Dostoyevsky. Happy birthday to Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky! Stay tuned, ISBNers for a December extravaganza involving this great man and this books! You won't want to miss this.

10/26/2011

"Orshee, of course, is given his strange nickname because of his equally strange, and terribly annoying, habit of correcting everyone who accidentally uses exclusively male pronouns with a quick interjection of "Or she." His hilarious struggle for political correctness is made even more ridiculous by his equally passionate commitment to teaching anything but English in his classes. Trying to rescue all who might have been marginalized, he champions the sit-com over books. This, of course, clearly parallels his contradictory social concerns, in which he elevates the supposedly marginalized (be they professors or tv shows) despite their lack of qualifications, while simultaneously shunning any actual art, or actually qualified applicants." Read more at http://informalsocietyofbooksandnotions.blogspot.com

10/26/2011

Check out our new post on Russo's Straight Man!!

Orshee, of course, is given his strange nickname because of his equally strange, and terribly annoying, habit of correcting everyone who accidentally uses exclusively male pronouns with a quick interjection of "Or she." His hilarious struggle for political correctness is made even more ridiculous by...

10/14/2011

Trying out a new look on the blog! Tell us what you think!

Doesn't that sound like an oxymoron? Well, if you are in the midst of a tumultuous semester or, as I am, are studying for an exam that expects familiarity with the entire canon of English language literature, sometimes it can feel like reading is more of a chore than a pleasure.