Damn, Brainpickings always has the coolest book stuff! If you missed last week’s vintage library ads, go look at them now. And then come back. Right back. Because you need to look at these, too. Brainpickings has collected images of the first ads for famous books, from The Great Gatsby to Slaughterhouse-Five to The Joy Of Sex.          One thing that strikes me about these ads is just how many WORDS there ... Read More

Joan Didion, author and journalist, grew up a military brat around the time of World War II. She went to college at Berkeley, and after graduation wrote a telling account of “flower children” in the book Slouching Towards Bethlehem. In the book, one of these hippies predicts that she'll be faced with “double death” in her life. At the time, no one could have imagined that this dark line would, in fact, prove true. ... Read More