.If you were wondering what to listen to in your car as you travel between Cut Bank, Montana, and McNab, Alberta (about a 105 minute drive, depending on traffic at the border), how about downloading Lewis Carroll’s mathematics book The Game of Logic, read as an audio book and free on iTunes?
This work is a part of the Lit2Go collection, a collaboration between the Florida Department of Education and the University of South Florida College of Education. Lit2Go is dedicated to supporting literacy teaching and learning by providing access to historically and culturally significant literature in K-12 schools.
They also have a complete audio book of Symbolic Logic, if you’re planning a longer drive. If you’d prefer to read The Game of Logic as a digital book or online, here it is free in many formats at Project Gutenberg.
COLOURS FOR -------------
COUNTERS |5 | 6|
___ | x |
| | |
See the Sun is overhead, |--y-------y'-|
Shining on us, FULL and | | |
RED! | x' |
|7 | 8|
Now the Sun is gone away, -------------
And the EMPTY sky is
GREY!
___
The Publisher’s Weekly blog PWxyz ranked The 5 Books that Inspire the Most Tattoos, finding Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in the top 5. Their online research seems to be thorough, even if the methods aren’t scientific: “We spent an untold number of hours combing the Internet’s two most extensive literary tattoo sites: Contrariwise: Literary Tattoos and The Word Made Flesh, then cross-checking the most frequently occurring tattoos with Google searches and Google image searches, all to get to the bottom of what books inspire the most tattoos and why.” Lewis Carroll’s book was beat out only by… Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, only because of the popularity of the phrase “So it goes.” So it goes.
2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Alice has inspired the most varied collection of tattoos of any book. Its wide cast of characters, quotes and images are all represented: the Cheshire Cat, the Dodo, the White Rabbit, and the Caterpillar all have fans out there. Out of the quotes, “We’re all mad here” was the most commonly occurring. Credit Alice‘s popularity among the tattooed to the fully-realized world Carroll created, and for tone specific to its story. More than any other book on this list, you’d be likely to get an Alice tattoo because it simply looks great and is hyper-intricate. Tim, who has an image of the Cheshire Cat on his shoulder blade, said on Contrariwise: “The Cheshire Cat is the only creature in Wonderland who uses logic. Though his words often seem mocking and bizarre, his process is always logical. To me the Cheshire Cat symbolizes the fragility of the border between genius and insanity.”
Alice in Wonderland is increasingly popular as a wedding theme on reality television and in life (one “credit crunch” bride has even described it as recession-defying). As ever, some couples go further than others. This week many blogs have been reposting these pictures of newlyweds Erin and Matt – a couple with a vision, to be sure. You can see many more pictures at BitRebels.
Screen Shot of Level 6 from The Hunting of the Snark kids game from Hairy Games
This free kids’ game was added last week at the so-called bestonlinekidsgames.com. We were hoping for an action-packed hunting game on open oceans and strange islands or a shoot-em-up video game in the style of Deer Hunter. (Actually, when you think about it, The Hunting of the Snark has many scenarios that would translate excellently into a video game. Anyone care to join the Beaver hunting the Jubjub in an increasingly narrow valley?) However, this game from Hairy Games seems to be mostly a fork poking at pictures of Snark characters and getting its prongs bent. “The Hunting of the Snark is combination of mazes, jigsaw and hidden objects puzzles games. This game is crated [sic] of famous story of mysterious creature, Snark who lived in a lonely island and the quest of some brave explorers to find it, by Lewis Caroll [sic sic sic].” The game was designed by Long Leaf’s Friends, and the pretty cool art is by B. Rybacki.
Back in Issue 83 of the Knight Letter we mentioned the incredible underwater photographs of Elena Kalis, but I wonder how many of you have actually had a chance to see them? Elena’s images are copyrighted but she is happy for people to share them on blogs like this. Three of my favorites are below and you can find many more on her website. The series is called “Alice in Waterland” and the model is Elena’s daughter Alexandra, who seems to be uncommonly good at opening her eyes underwater.
Elena Kalis
Elena Kalis
Elena Kalis
You can purchase the images as a calendar from Red Bubble.
It is a little challenging to blog about a computer game you have never played, but here goes… There was once a game called The Sims. The point of the game was to create virtual characters and then control their lives. It became the best-selling PC franchise in PC history. Then, last year, the makers launched Sims Social, a version of the game that can be played on Facebook. Now, to get to the point, screen shots from the latest release hint strongly (very strongly) that it will be Wonderland-inspired. Hooray!
Perhaps it would be more helpful just to show you a picture?
Sims Social
Another sneak peak screen shot, and some excited speculation can be found on Games Blog.
When we are told something is “Alice in Wonderland inspired,” we all know it can mean many things. In the case of restaurants, for example, it may simply mean that the china doesn’t match. In the case of tennis dresses it can mean anything at all. Spotting the Alice in the “Alice-inspired” can sometimes be a tea-time riddle in itself.
Take the new WordPress website theme called Alice designed by Raygun (single site license $25) – what’s in the name? The design feels neatly combed and dressed, much like our very proper Victorian friend, and the sample color-scheme could definitely be described as “tea party” (with an emphasis on “cupcakes”*). The prominence of gallery and slide-show features in the demo shows that thought has been given to the proper balancing of conversation and pictures – very important, as we know – and Alice is surely an appropriate source of inspiration whenever anything needs to be both “flexible-width” and “responsive,” as the tag line highlights. But is the overall effect “Alice”? Who’s to say? The Caterpillar would probably have an opinion.
Alice WordPress theme by Raygun
A clearer case is made by Lith, a new typeface by Stefan Huebsch. Whenever we see the bold pairing of teapots and rabbit faces we know we are either in the inspirational realm of Alice in Wonderland or Beatrix Potter, but the addition of a single chess piece swings the dial. To be true, the Alice muse at work is strangely furry, and almost certainly mediated by Tim Burton, nevertheless Lith is a typeface that will say “Alice,” whatever else it might be saying at the time.
Lith, Copyright Typocalypse
*Not very Victorian, I’ll admit, but very Alice Moderne.
…So when I learned about What Middletown Read, a database that tracks the borrowing records of the Muncie Public Library between 1891 and 1902, I had some of the same feelings physicists probably have when new subatomic particles show up in their cloud chambers. Could you see how many times a particular book had been taken out? Could you find out when? And by whom? Yes, yes, and yes. You could also find out who those patrons were: their age, race, gender, occupation (and whether that made them blue or white collar, skilled, semi-skilled, or unskilled), and their names and how they signed them.
John Plotz at Slate.com explains the What Middletown Read database, the labor of Ball State University English Professor Frank Felsenstein. We at the LCSNA were naturally immediately curious about how often Lewis Carroll books were checked out, and the result is mysteriously bare: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, the only Carroll book that the Muncie Public Library owned, wasn’t acquired until 1900, and then only checked out ten times in an eight month period. Unless we’re missing something, that’s it. Perhaps it wasn’t popular in the midwest until later, or perhaps it was a common book in private collections therefore unnecessary in the public library? Or maybe the local pick-a-little-talk-a-littles thought it was a “dirty book,” like BALZAC. If anyone has any theories, please comment.
…So when I learned about