This morning Maria Popova congratulated fifth birthday to TED Talks with a list of her five favorite TED talks. She adds Brene Brown as a bonus. I enjoyed all 20 minutes of it.
Have you always wanted a penguin drawing lesson from Oliver Jeffers? Guardian has it for you!

Rainy morning. I moved some books from prime spot to our reduced corner. Mostly some supplier’s mistakes (I order Frued and they ship Harry Potter), some of my mistakes (once paperback is out I reduce leftover hardcovers) and some misunderstandings, long forgotten special orders (bad karma). Once all the dusty work was over I took three pictures and hanged them on Flickr, so you can easily check what’s new. I hope the resolution is good enough to read the titles. Price inquires and reservations welcomed.
This trailer, I suppose, is old news. The film has already been shown in Germany but still awaits world-wide release. To me, the trailer itself is a poetic wonder. Stuff of stars rendered liquid for the dry summer days. It’s beautiful. The celebration of a true genius that was Pina. Enjoy!
This picture was taken in February by Joseph Vasta. It is the window display of Paris bookshop Un Regard Moderne. One of the best, the weirdest, the coolest, the smallest, the strangest bookshops on the old continent. Simply one of those real places. Wonderful mind at work. Piles of books. Silent mind revolutions. Castles fall apart. Bookselling at its best.
John Berger discusses his new book Bento’s Sketchbook with Gavin Esler for BBC Newsnight.
The seventeenth-century philosopher Baruch Spinoza carried with him a sketchbook. After his death, his friends rescued letters, manuscripts, notes.. but no drawings. For years, John Berger has imagined finding Bento’s sketchbook. When one day a friend gave Berger a beautiful, virgin sketchbook, John said “This is Bento’s!” and he began to draw, taking his inspiration from the philosopher’s vision. The result is Bento’s Sketchbook.
Dear readers, we have decided to celebrate the approaching Summer with the special reduced price for the newest, soon to be published George R. R. Martin’s book A Dance with Dragons.
This is the fifth volume of A Song of Ice and Fire. It is a thousand pages hardback and it is due to be published on the 12th of July. We offer it for 19.90 eur.
We expect it to arrive within five to eight working days after the publication date. Of course we’ll let everyone know as soon as we open the box. (And we’ll post on Facebook and Flickr, yap!)
If you would like to reserve your copy, please let us know. You may get in touch with us whenever you want for whatever reason you want, including placing your orders. We’ll be very glad. And here is a bit from George R. R. Martin’s blog (called Not a blog). (Wow, he really uses WordStar)
Recently published by independent Indian publisher Tara Books, I for Imagine is perhaps the most striking alphabet book around.
It journeys into the gaze of Marc Riboud, a contemporary French photographer best known for his extensive photographic reports on the East, as well as for being the author of one of the most celebrated anti-war pictures.

We learn the letters of the alphabet as children. We discover the technicalities of their mechanism. But we never cease to learn about the sounds of their clockwork, the action of words, their ways of shaping the world. We continually explore the world anew through the acquisition of fresh – I will borrow this word from Baudelaire – correspodences.

A satellite ride with legendary set designer Gerry Judah will take you over devastated landscapes of post-apocalyptic narratives.

This very short documentary is a couple of years old but it still works like a strange lullaby. Accept the empty architecture. Fill it with dreams.


