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The first chapter of my serial novel, Mr. Abernathy, is available for download today.

Now, I’d just like to say up front that I am terrible at self-promotion. It feels like sales to me, and I can’t stand salespeople.

Most of you likely already know about this book, but some of you may not. Either way, I’d really appreciate your help in promoting it if you enjoy the work, or know someone who would. I’m doing this project entirely on my own, strictly for fun as a one-off effort, with no paid or publisher-backed marketing or promotion of any kind. I’m depending exclusively on word-of-mouth buzz to spread it around, because it won’t be any fun for me to keep doing it if I don’t get a large enough reader base.

So I’m asking my current audience to pimp it out for me a bit. First of all, download and read the damn thing. If you like it, then mention it during your podcast, talk about it to your friends, throw a link my way from your blog or whatever site you have influence over. Tie a note on a helium balloon and launch it into the air. Write it in Sharpie on the forehead of a passed-out hobo. Whatever. I just need your help getting some critical mass around this project. You’re all amazingly talented people who I respect and admire (yes, even you), and with your help I think this could be a big success. I’ll even bake you cookies¹.

Now get out there and pimp my prose, peeps. I thank you for it from the bottom of my poor, abused keyboard.

The Beinecke Library has an interesting web exhibition about the American history of the Utopian dream, from the establishment of New Haven in 1638 to modern sustainable communes like Twin Oaks.

The exhibit has a comprehensive list of the most important “utopian” communities in the US¹, with manuscripts and documents from the library’s collections.

Also included are short lists of Utopian and Dystopian literature from the collection².  It’s a neat set of images and facts, if you’re interested in the subject and haven’t seen an overview of it presented in such a way.

Two nitpicks that I have, though: 1) The sentence “the goal of removal from the heart of civilization to the wilderness” in the intro text is misleading as a blanket statement - More’s original Utopia was one of social and political perfection, rather than one based on any pastoral or nature-based ideals; and 2) it would be nice if all the manuscript/ephemera page images enlarged into higher-res versions.

BibliOdyssey is displaying thirteen interesting engravings of late 16th century university life.

The trouble with the modern education system is that there is far too little attention paid to jousting and quarterstaff combat.

Agreed.  And I’m sure that somewhere in that set, you can see the varsity Footballe Teame giving a monster codpiece-wedgie to some poor freshman in tights.

Manuscript 416 at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is an amazing 13th/14th century example of the Speculum theologie genre - illustrations and diagrams of moral and theological subjects used by medieval educators.  Beinecke’s online exhibit of the manuscript features translations and essays about each of the diagrams.

All of the diagrams are beautiful, but my favorite is the Tower of Wisdom.

Gothic illuminated sketchbook, from 1494.  Makes your Moleskine doodlings look rather simple, no?

(via BibliOdyssey)