Pi (π) is the symbol for the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Pi is celebrated every year by math and number enthusiasts around the world this coming Saturday, March 14th.
And what does π have to do with book arts or letterpress or type, you might ask? The first book I printed letterpress was a small artist’s book with Wislawa Szymborska‘s whimsical poem “Pi,” which juxtaposes the finite, impermanent world with the familiar never-ending sequence 3.1415926535… In my book the first 200 or so digits of Pi dance across the pages, starting on the cover and skating off the back.
In a toast to numbers and letterpress, I’m giving away a copy of my book. Just put a comment on this post by Sunday March 15th, and mention your favorite book with a number in the title or a number theme. I’ll pick a random name from the comments and announce the winner on Monday March 16th. My friend Richard, who suggested this question, told me his answers would be Life of Pi and A Tale of Two Cities.
You can read Szymborska’s poem, which begins “The admirable number pi: three point one four one.“, here. There’s an official (!) web site for Pi day with all sorts of fun facts and quotes and pointers to YouTube videos. And here’s a link to my book.
OK, so I’ll plug my little book! Published by the inimitable Carol Blinn at Warwick Press it’s called 24 Nests and it’s about my adventure making paper from 24 birds’ nests.
My husband would also vote the life of pi, I think mine would be 500 handmade books I pick it up all the time and admire all the fine work.
What a great giveaway! All the more as it made me take “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury off the shelf and read it again.
Three Junes is a particular favorite, although 500 Handmade Books is certainly a contender in the nonfiction category.
I have been coveting the Pi book for ages! My husband is a physicist and general science junkie so we look for anything that combines our two worlds (art and printing on my end).
For the book mention I’ll say “Ten Little Indians” by Agatha Christie. I’m sure if I go home and look at my bookshelf there’ll be others, but that one jumps to mind.
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is probably my favorite, but I also like Life of Pi and 500 Handmade Books.
Seven Little Australians by Ethel Turner was written in 1894 and is a classic australian story about a family with 7 children set in Sydney in the 1880s. A truly classic Aussie book. 🙂
I teach 5th grade math, and we’re counting down the days until pi day! Your book is by far the most beautiful and poetic treatment of pi I’ve seen. One of my favorite children’s books with a number theme is One Boy by Laura Vaccaro Seeger. Love the bold drawings, and the concept of the book in general. it’s hard to forget the bright red cover with the boy’s face peeking out of its little window in the center!
I would love to have this Pi book; I have a dear friend who is a math teacher. She would love it!
Thanks!
The Pi book is beautiful! What a fabulous giveaway! I covet pretty much everything in your store, truly works of art.
One of my most favorite books is Catch 22!
But ya, 500 Handmade Books is certainly worth another mention 🙂
I love Nickel and Dimed, by Barbara Ehrenreich in non fiction; for book lovers everywhere, 84 Charing Cross Road; and the new teen favorite (I teach high school): Thirteen Reasons Why. I saw and admired your work at the SFCB once. Thanks for the chance to win!
Stunning! A very generous act on your part! Surrounding myself with beautiful items and great people I love is my favorite pastime!
Great idea; it’s interesting to read everyone’s submissions of books with a number in the title.
My submission: And then there were none by Agatha Christie, renamed as Ten Little Indians.
I also love a “number” of the Lark 500 series: dolls, bracelets, baskets, necklaces, and animals in clay, besides 500 books.
I am going to look like I am copying Lynne, but I thought of this the moment I read the question, I swear! LOL! My fav is Ten Little Indians by Agatha Christie. Really it is! 🙂
My favourite book with a number in the title is Agatha Christie’s 4.15 from Paddington. It perfectly describes the England and people of the time. It also shows how the sinister and unexpected can emerge from the most ordinary and mundane of circumstances and from a group of friends and family who you think you know but don’t! Like Shakespeare it describes the universality of human passions!
What a generous giveaway! I would say Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” (Le deuxième sexe) or Heller’s “Catch 22″…I’m going to be thinking about this all day, I can just tell! Great question to get us thinking.
Would love a chance to win your book. Joan 🙂
Once I started thinking about it, I couldn’t stop coming up with titles! 1984, Life of Pi, Fahrenheit 451, Catch 22…love them all!
Pi Day is my wedding anniversary! That’s what happens when you tell your future husband that you don’t really care in what month of the year the wedding occurs. He also suggested that we wait until 2015 so that it would be more accurate. That didn’t go over well at all….
Favorite number book? hmmm, I just finished reading “Outwitting History: The Amazing Adventures of a Man Who Rescued a Million Yiddish Books” by Aaron Lansky. Its a really great book and I reccomend it highly!
My favorite book with a number in the title is A Thousand Spendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Well, it is my favorite this morning anyway. Your Pi book is wonderful.
I was a science major in college so pi was always a part of my formulas, so I’d love to win your book. I think the Two Towers from the Lord of the Rings series would be my vote for favorite book with a number in the title.
We’re celebrating Pi day at work today (as we won’t be at work on Saturday). It’s great working with math geeks!
Your book is gorgeous! My favorite book with a number in the title is 84, Charing Cross Road, by Helene Hanff.
My least favorite is Dow 36,000. Seems a little further off now.
“One Door Away from Heaven” by Dean Koontz
Lovely book – and the poem is great! I’d never heard of Pi Day before, but I think my favorite kind of pi…er, pie, that is…will be necessary to celebrate!
how about….Millions of Cats by Wanda Gag … or the 99 Steps Nancy Drew mystery, if my memory serves me correctly. Wanda Gag was a native Minnesotan whose illustrations I adore.
I am actually kind of obsessed with Heller’s Catch-22 right now. Back in high school I dragged a copy of Salinger’s Nine Stories with me everywhere. Although I really liked Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses, too. Too many good books with numbers in the title… 🙂 Happy Pi Day!
i’m always up for the classics, 1984, or Catch 22, but i think my favorite number-themed book isn’t even fiction. it’s 1066, and it’s a, well, i guess moderately fictionalized, account of that year from harold h’s and william’s perspectives, culminating in the battle of hastings and christmas of that year. it was really wonderfully told,very entertaining, but educational at the same time. the author – who’s name i really don’t remember at the moment – has great details about the world and the way it was at that time, too.
anyhow, that’s a super awesome book you’ve got there miss, i SUPER hope i win. (^_^)
Although I already have this book, which I got for my husband, I know someone else who would LOVE it. My book would have to be Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair”. Your work is so lovely, we’ve enjoyed all three of the Szymborska books so much.
I love your work. My book would be the excellent “The Man Who Loved Only Numbers.”
I’ll say “Around the World in Eighty Days” by Jules Verne. As an aside, I recently watched someone recite Pi to 100 digits without error!
I toss in gratefully A Thousand and One Nights…….
and find your website so inspiring.
Oh right. I suppose Algebra 2 doesn’t count (though that’s the last book the math geeks and I worked on).
How about Roman Numerals I to MM a lovely book in which pigs demonstrate how to count in roman numerals.
—Lisa
Life of Pi is a good one, just read that recently.
I think my favorite would go to:
Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen
Awesome book! As is yours 🙂
Yes, 500 Handmade Books is certainly a visual feast. My favorite book of all time is The Third Life of Grange Copeland by Alice Walker. It is even better than the work she is best known for (The Color Purple).
I thoroughly enjoyed the non-fiction Party of One: The Loner’s Manifesto by Anneli Rufus. It brought me validation for my solitude loving ways. I suspect a lot of artists have a similar need for lots of time alone….time for making books, and time for admiring lovely books such as Pi.
Pi day is our wedding anniversary – we couldn’t think of a more perfect date.
Your book is beautiful.
Jane Smiley’s A Thousand Acres would be my favorite book with a number in the title.
Your Szymborska books are lovely. I hope you’ll do more someday, her poems are well suited to the format. For my favorite book, I’d say Kenneth Rexroth’s One Hundred Poems from the Japanese and its three companion volumes — a total of two hundred Japanese poems and two hundred Chinese poems.