Rambling Rambler Press

The Face of Another (2003)  

“Like an elegantly chilling postscript to The Metamorphosis, this classic of postwar Japanese literature describes a bizarre physical transformation that exposes the duplicities of an entire world. The narrator is a scientist hideously deformed in a laboratory accident–a man who has lost his face and, with it, his connection to other people. Even his wife is now repulsed by him.

His only entry back into the world is to create a mask so perfect as to be undetectable. But soon he finds that such a mask is more than a disguise: it is an alternate self–a self that is capable of anything. A remorseless meditation on nature, identity and the social contract, The Face of Another is an intellectual horror story of the highest order.”

by Kobo Abe 

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Kōbō Abe, pseudonym of Kimifusa Abe, was a Japanese writer, playwright, photographer and inventor.

He was the son of a doctor and studied medicine at Tokyo University. He never practised however, giving it up to join a literary group that aimed to apply surrealist techniques to Marxist ideology.

Abe has been often compared to Franz Kafka and Alberto Moravia for his surreal, often nightmarish explorations of individuals in contemporary society and his modernist sensibilities.

Monster: A Graphic Novel

“A stunning black-and-white graphic novel adaptation of Walter Dean Myers’s Michael L. Printz Award winner and New York Times bestseller Monster, adapted by Guy Sims and illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile.

Monster is a multi-award-winning, provocative coming-of-age story about Steve Harmon, a teenager awaiting trial for a murder and robbery. As Steve acclimates to juvenile detention and goes to trial, he envisions the ordeal as a movie. Monster was the first-ever Michael L. Printz Award recipient, an ALA Best Book, a Coretta Scott King Honor selection, and a National Book Award finalist.”

Story: Walter Dean Myers, Guy A. Sims, art: Dawud Anyabwile 

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Pablo’s Inferno  (2004)     

Pablo’s Inferno is a five-issue indie comic limited series created and produced by Rhode Montijo. The comic owes its title to the first cantica of Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia.   

The comic follows the story of Pablo, a young boy whose life is ended in an unfortunate hit-and-run accident, ends up in hell and has to traverse the underworld in search of answers. Along the way he meets several colorful characters such as Quetzal, an ancient Aztec god, and El Calambre, the ghost of a once-famous masked wrestler.

by Rhode Montijo 

Get more Rhode Montijo  books here

Monotype create Noto for Google: An open-source typeface family for all the world’s languages

With a goal of encompassing every written language, Monotype and Google have released Noto as an open-source typeface for everyone to use.

Noto is one of the largest typographic projects ever undertaken; more than five years in the making, covering over 800 languages with over 100 writing scripts (some never digitised before), each with a harmonious look and feel.

Tofo is the nickname used to describe the blank boxes that appear when a computer or site lacks font support for a particular character. The ambitious brief from Google to Monotype of “no more tofu” which gave rise to the type family’s name. 

“Our goal for Noto has been to create fonts for our devices, but we’re also very interested in keeping information alive,” he adds. “When it comes to some of the lesser-used languages, or even the purely academic or dead languages, we think it’s really important to preserve them.” Bob Jung, Google internationalization expert.  

Intense Research

Rising to this enormous challenge Monotype coordinated an intense research effort, partnering with researchers, designers, linguists, cultural experts and project managers around the world. 

The more obscure scripts required significant research to ensure the scripts adhered to their traditions and rules. Experts were consulted and direct feedback was sought from communities using the scripts. 

For the Tibetan face, Monotype conducted in-depth research into a vast library of writings and then enlisted the help of Buddhist monks to critique the font and make adjustments to the design.

Sketches for Adlam (left) and Tibetan (right)

Using Noto

Not only will the breadth of languages covered by Noto expand the availability of information to more readers and preserve rare writing systems, the typeface is also “a digital workhorse”. It powers the text shown across Android and Chrome devices and importantly because it has been released as a suite of open source fonts it can be used any where.  

B.R.U.H.: Black Renditions of Universal Heroes (2016)

“The following pages lend insight and inspiration into this philosophy, as these illustrations break down exactly what BRUH means: Black Renditions of Universal Heroes. 

You’ll probably notice that all of them are women. I could’ve said heroine and you may ask why I don’t use this word, but then I’d have some questions for you.”

By Markus Prime

Get it  now here and leave a review if you can.

Markus Prime challenges the norm of illustrations often seen, by filling the disparity of black characters. His characters are constructed in a hyper reality setting and utilizes present day narratives from black culture. Born in Warren, Ohio and the son of military parents, Prime moved regularly to different areas within the United States and overseas. During each stay he would connect with those through his love for art and music. 

Social media provided Markus a localized medium to visually communicate and remain connected with those he met on and offline. His expert use with markers and infectious personality has made his social handles a meeting place for art and culture lovers. 

Redemption in Indigo: a novel  (2010)

“Paama’s husband is a fool and a glutton. Bad enough that he followed her to her parents’ home in the village of Makendha, now he’s disgraced himself by murdering livestock and stealing corn. When Paama leaves him for good, she attracts the attention of the undying ones–the djombi–who present her with a gift: the Chaos Stick, which allows her to manipulate the subtle forces of the world. Unfortunately, a wrathful djombi with indigo skin believes this power should be his and his alone.

Bursting with humor and rich in fantastic detail, Redemption in Indigo is a clever, contemporary fairy tale that introduces readers to a dynamic new voice in Caribbean literature. Lord’s world of spider tricksters and indigo immortals, inspired in part by a Senegalese folk tale, will feel instantly familiar–but Paama’s adventures are fresh, surprising, and utterly original.“

by Karen Lord

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Barbadian author, editor and research consultant Karen Lord is known for her debut novel Redemption in Indigo, which won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award, the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature and the 2012 Kitschies Golden Tentacle (Best Debut), and was longlisted for the 2011 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature and nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. 

Her second novel The Best of All Possible Worlds won the 2009 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2013 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Awards for Best Science Fiction Novel, and was a finalist for the 2014 Locus Awards. Its sequel, The Galaxy Game, was published in January 2015. She is the editor of the 2016 anthology New Worlds, Old Ways: Speculative Tales from the Caribbean. 

October 10 is Electronic Records Day. 

Electronic records and their preservation are a special challenge for archivists.

Our staff realized this as early as the 1960s, when Meyer Fishbein asked the Census Bureau what they did with the magnetic tapes that they were using for data. The Bureau replied they erased the tapes and reused them (thus saving $12.50 per tape—a hefty sum in those days).

Fishbein immediately recognized the need to retain the tapes and similar mediums–and the National Archives began to officially tackle the problem of machine-readable records—what we now call electronic records

Image: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Department of Energy) bubble chamber measuring projector which reduced bubble chamber film to machine-readable data, January 18, 1960. (National Archives Identifier 22123348)

Citizen: An American Lyric (2014)

“A provocative meditation on race, Claudia Rankine’s long-awaited follow up to her groundbreaking book Don’t Let Me Be Lonely: An American Lyric.

Claudia Rankine’s bold new book recounts mounting racial aggressions in ongoing encounters in twenty-first-century daily life and in the media. Some of these encounters are slights, seeming slips of the tongue, and some are intentional offensives in the classroom, at the supermarket, at home, on the tennis court with Serena Williams and the soccer field with Zinedine Zidane, online, on TV-everywhere, all the time. 

The accumulative stresses come to bear on a person’s ability to speak, perform, and stay alive. Our addressability is tied to the state of our belonging, Rankine argues, as are our assumptions and expectations of citizenship. In essay, image, and poetry, Citizen is a powerful testament to the individual and collective effects of racism in our contemporary, often named “post-race” society.”

by Claudia Rankine

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Claudia Rankine is a poet, essayist, playwright and the editor of several anthologies. She is the author of five volumes of poetry, two plays and various essays. Rankine is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and the Iseman Professor of Poetry, Yale University.

Her most recent work, the book-length poem, Citizen: An American Lyric, won the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Award, the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry (the first book in the award’s history to be nominated in both poetry and criticism), the 2015 Forward Prize for Best Collection, the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Poetry, the 2015 NAACP Image Award in poetry, the 2015 PEN Open Book Award, the 2015 PEN American Center USA Literary Award, the 2015 PEN Oakland-Josephine Miles Literary Award and the 2015 VIDA Literary Award. Citizen holds the distinction of being the only poetry book to be a New York Times bestseller in the nonfiction category.

Her numerous awards and honors include the 2014 Morton Dauwen Zabel Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the 2014 Jackson Poetry Prize, as well as a 2014 Lannan Foundation Literary Award. In 2005, Rankine was awarded the Academy Fellowship for distinguished poetic achievement by the Academy of American Poets. Rankine’s work often blends genres and explores the subject matter of race and the imagination.

Library arts collection manager Dermot​ McCaul​, said in the last five years the vinyl collection has doubled, surpassing 60,000 items after the ABC donated 32,000 popular singles and 6000 albums.

Twenty-years ago the library was “a bit high and mighty”, preferring classical music, but has changed its tune, “retrospectively purchasing quite a bit of Australian popular vinyl over the last few years”.

In the collection today are landmark albums such as Men At Work’s Business as Usual and Australian Crawl’s Sirocco, but also obscure or forgotten booty, such as early albums by Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Peter Allen and Olivia Newton-John.

Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present ( 2002 )

“Reflections in Black, the first comprehensive history of black photographers, is a groundbreaking pictorial collection of African American life. Featuring the work of undisputed masters such as James VanDerZee, Gordon Parks, and Carrie Mae Weems among dozens of others, this book is a refutation of the gross caricature of black life that many mainstream photographers have manifested by continually emphasizing poverty over family, despair over hope. 

Nearly 600 images offer rich, moving glimpses of everyday black life, from slavery to the Great Migration to contemporary suburban life, including rare antebellum daguerrotypes, photojournalism of the civil rights era, and multimedia portraits of middle-class families. 

A work so significant that it has the power to reconfigure our conception of American history itself, Reflections in Black demands to be included in every American family’s library as an essential part of our heritage. A Los Angeles Times and Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2000, and a Good Morning, America best gift book of 2000. 600 duotone photographs, 32 pages of color.”

by Deborah Willis

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Photographer and curator Deborah Willis has essentially spent her career examining the visual representation of African Americans. After being awarded a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2000 for her “investigation and recovery of the legacy of African-American photography,” she published “Reflections in Black: A History of Black Photographers 1840 to the Present.” The 2002 book was the inspiration for the documentary “Through a Lens Darkly: Black Photographers and the Emergence of a People,” which is screening at the Film Forum in New York through Sept. 16. Willis, chair of the Department of Photography & Imaging at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, is a co-producer of the film.

The Norton Anthology of African American Literature (2014)    

“The much-anticipated Third Edition brings together the work of 140 writers from 1746 to the present writing in all genres, as well as performers of vernacular forms—from spirituals and sermons to jazz and hip hop. Fresh scholarship, new visuals and media, and new selections—with an emphasis on contemporary writers—combine to make The Norton Anthology of African American Literature an even better teaching tool for instructors and an unmatched value for students.

The Third Edition continues to provide “a course in a book,” with 13 complete longer selections, including 7 new works such as Toni Morrison’s Sula, Suzan-Lori Parks’s Topdog/Underdog, and Nella Larsen’s Passing. In addition, the Third Edition adds 7 new contemporary writers: Barack Obama, Suzan-Lori Parks, Edward P. Jones, Elizabeth Alexander, Natasha Trethewey, Kevin Young, and Tracy K. Smith.  ”

Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. , Valerie Smith, William L. Andrews, Kimberly Benston, Brent Hayes Edwards, Frances Smith Foster, Deborah E. McDowell, Robert G. O'Meally, Hortense Spillers, Cheryl A. Wall.

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Today would have been Roald Dahl’s 100th birthday. To mark the centenary of the great storyteller’s birth, we’re paying tribute to one of Dahl’s lesser-known, yet still utterly phizz-whizzing characters: the one and only Mrs Phelps.  

As many of you committed Dahl fans will know, Mrs. Phelps features in Matilda as the lovely librarian who encourages the young Wormwood’s passion for reading. At odds with her TV-loving parents, Matilda cherishes her time spent in the library, and with the help of Mrs Phelps, discovers a whole world of literary pleasure.

Before long, Matilda is working her way through the likes of Great Expectations, Tess of D’Urbervilles, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, all at the recommendation of her librarian. The books “gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.”

ALA Members Say it Best

Members share how ALA supports them now — developing skills and advancing in their profession, and in using those skills to change the world for the better through libraries.

Cause, it’s generally agreed: Hades was a pretty chill dude. He was rich and powerful and grim and kind of a moody manic sometimes, but generally, as long as you stayed on your side of the styx and didn’t much up with him he was content to leave you be. And even if you come crashing down into his realm being a jackass, he was still fair and just, if annoyed. (The story where Heracles bails out one of the guys he had punished for being rude psycho jackasses basically amounts to “leave the lead jackass to rot, but if it means that much take the other brats”)

He’s a very Lawful Neutral figure: The guy behind the desk of the great tax collector in the ancient world. The Greeks had a healthy respect and fear for him, but as long as you followed the rules and paid the ferry man there wasn’t anything to fear- and really he wasn’t the one responsible for the system…Just the guy enforcing it.

But Persephone.

Persephone.

There was someone you didn’t not want to piss off. There is a reason Hades name is just “The Rich One” and her’s is “The Iron Queen”. She took her job as queen of the underworld very very seriously and she had a mean streak a mile wide. When Orpheus came down to fetch his wife Hades was all for letting them go he was so moved by the man’s music, but Persephone is the one that set the trial knowing that Orpheus couldn’t resist looking- in some versions of the myth after he’s ripped apart by nymphs she seats him in their court to be their musician and it’s implied that was her plan all along- to not only keep one soul but to gain another- capable of great music to please her husband. When the whole thing with Adonis went down, she threatened the stability of all the world to tip the scales in her favor. According to Homer when men wanted to call curses down on the souls of the departed they invoked her name.

The Greeks where terrified of her. Aside from her priests no one was allowed to speak her name legally (with Hades and the others it was just social tabbo) for fear of drawing her attention. To them- she was the Goddess of Life AND Death, Summer and Winter. She command power over men’s lives and their deaths. You did not mess with her.