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Welcome to the New York city apartment of Graham Hill, a Canadian-born architect committed to bringing sustainability into the mainstream. His apartment does more with less. It has a footprint of only 420 square feet. Yet it’s elegantly-designed and completely functional. What initially looks like a simple studio unfolds into much more, a Soho apartment that features no less than eight rooms – a bedroom, guest room, kitchen, office and the rest. We’ll let Graham, the founder of treehugger.com, take you on the grand tour, and we’ll leave you to wonder what a designer could do with this Parisian apartment measuring only 17 square feet….

H/T Jason G. via Gizmodo

The Top 10 Most Difficult Books, according to Publishers Weekly. Find many in our Free eBooks collection.

Rare Nabokov Story — “Everything Plays” — Published in English for the First Time.

Bowling for Columbine. It’s on YouTube and Sadly Relevant for a Second Time in a Month.

World’s Oldest Surviving Photograph (1826) Goes on the Road.

William S. Burroughs Rips Truman Capote Upon the Publication of “In Cold Blood”.

‘Just Tell Me That You Want Me: A Tribute To Fleetwood Mac’. 17 Songs. Available Online.

Neil deGrasse Tyson is Officially a Rock Star

Restored Version of La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc by Carl Dreyer. Added to our Free Movie Collection.

David Remnick Talks About His Recent Piece on Bruce Springsteen. Listen.

Terry Gilliam’s 10 Lessons For Directors Today.

Patti Smith’s Early Poetry Readings & Rock Shows, 1971-74. Audio.

The Time Bob Dylan Got an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Princeton. 1970.

Library of Congress Presents Aesop’s Fables for iPad/iPhone.

A Portrait of Bertrand Russell by Norman Rockwell.

A Labyrinth of Books, Based on Borges’ Fingerprint.

David Lynch Designs Labels For Dom Pérignon.

Susan Sontag on Love: Illustrated Diary Excerpts.

Ayn Rand and L. Ron Hubbard Came Up With Their Big Ideas in the Sack….Together.

Evgeny Morozov: TED is “a place where ideas, regardless of their quality, go to seek celebrity.” 

Paul Auster Reads from his Upcoming Memoir, ‘Winter Journal’.

History of Western Social Theory, by Alan MacFarlane, Cambridge. Added to our list of 500 Free Online Courses.

“Marion the Librarian” from The Music Man

Shirley Jones as a hard-to-get librarian. Singing. Iowans. Adorable.

“I Love You” from Breakfast at Tiffany’s

Of course the “I Love You” scene in a movie based on a book happens in a library. Of course it does.

The Breakfast Club

The library as prison. Almost the whole movie takes place in this fairly non-descript suburban high school library. But man, those tables and that lighting are universal. (Side question: isn’t that modern-art sculpture in the center really strange? What public high school library has a budget for that?)

“Construction Complete” from The Shawshank Redemption

From library-as-prison to prison library (see what I did there?). Andy Dufresne’s decades-long library project comes together just as his own plan to escape comes together.

“Investigating at The Library of Congress” from All The President’s Men

This is probably the single coolest shot of a library in a movie, and I would love to see how they set it up. Here, Woodward and Bernstein are going through every book the Nixon White House requested by hand. Spoiler alert: they don’t find what they are looking for.

The Hogwarts Library from Every Harry Potter Movie

The library at Hogwarts always has what you are looking for, but apparently a really, really bad catalog system. If there were just Subject categories for “Nicholas Flammel,” “How to Breathe Underwater,” and “The Chamber of Secrets,” then this series could have been about half as long. Come to think of it, we never hear about any librarians. Maybe they were the victims of cutbacks. See what happens when you cut back on library staffing? You risk Voldemort taking over.

“The Fortress of Solitude” from Superman

Let’s go with another library that doesn’t exist. The Fortress of Solitude contains the sum total of the learning of the planet Krypton, in super-efficient crystal form. Labeling is a bit of a headache, as you apparently have to be able to remember the crystals by their size and cut. Is the stuff about General Zod on the flat-cut stumpy crystal or the wedge-cut fluted crystal? Damn it, Jor-El, how about throwing a label-maker in with my interstellar infant pod?

“The Jedi Archives” from Star Wars Episode II: The Attack of the Clones

A library with the sum total of a planet’s knowledge isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A library with the sum total of the whole galaxy’s knowledge. That’s cool.

“Following Joe Doe” from Se7en

You know what? There already is a great library scene involving Dante’s Inferno. Here, Freeman is looking into the books Kevin Spacey’s John Doe has been reading, and, well, let’s just say they aren’t My Little Pony boardbooks. This scene has the only genuinely creepy shots of making photocopies on film.

“Would You Be More Comfortable?” from Philadelphia

If Se7en has the eeriest library scene, Philadelphia has the most moving. When Joe Miller sits down to talk about legal precedents for Andrew Beckett’s AIDS discrimination case, he is conquering his prejudice in the name of empathy. I mean, you couldn’t set this in Starbucks, right?

“X Marks the Spot” from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The globe-trotting scavenger hunt for the cup of Christ comes to a head for the Jones boys at the library of Alexandretta. Hey, it’s not exactly subtle, but if you want subtle, go watch something with subtitles.

“In the Stacks” from Ghostbusters

Ask people to name a great library scene in a movie, and this is the one you are going to hear most often. And rightly so.

“Frozen” from The Day After Tomorrow

Here’s our third visit to the New York Public Library (Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Ghostbusters), and the silliest. Yes, this is a big, dumb movie. Yes they take the cringe-inducing step of burning books to stay warm. But dammit a library covered in ice is awesome.

“In the Library” from Clue

Did the trope of murders happening in the library start with the board game this movie is based on? Anyway, this movie is better than it has any right to be, which seems to be a recurring theme of movies with Tim Curry in the lead.  You do know that there were different endings of this movie, right? And that depending on the print your theater had, you would see a different one? I wish Avatar was like that, but instead of different endings, I wish there were just empty film canisters.

“The Beast’s Library” from Beauty and the Beast

Here’s how you can tell if a kid is going to grow up to be a life-long book nerd: they are more interested in the library in Beauty and the Beast than they are what happens with the rose and the sentient flatware.

“Tryst in the Library” from Atonement

You’re forgiven if you forgot that this scene happened in the library. You’d be forgiven if you forgot the meaning of the word “library” while watching this scene.

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Notting Hill (1999)

One of the power couple of bookstore movies (more on the other in a second). Notting Hill fulfills a number of bookstore fantasies: quirky staff, celebrity patrons, and attractive British booksellers.

You’ve Got Mail (1998)

Remember the days when chain bookstores were the Big Bad Wolf? Ah, the good old days.

The Ninth Gate (1999)

The only thing cooler than a movie-bookstore is a movie-bookstore that doubles as a gateway to hell.

Hugo (2011)

The bookstore in Hugo is the gold-standard in fantasy bookstores. Everything is just so enchantingly jumbled and leather-bound.

Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (2002)

I want to go to a bookstore that has a whole section on dragons. Do you think Flourish and Blott’s takes AmEx?

The Never Ending Story (1984)

The craziest book ever acquired in a movie has to be The Never Ending Story, which came from this fairly creepy hole-in-the wall shop. I mean, the villain in the book is….nothing. Sheer oblivion. I still have night terrors about it.

When Harry Met Sally (1989)

“Some is staring at you in ‘Personal Growth.’” I watched this movie dozens of times growing up in Kansas, and I though everyone ran into people they know at bookstores in New York. In reality, they just are there to go to the bathroom.

Before Sunset (2004)

As far as I know, this is the only cinematic appearance of the legendary Paris bookstore, Shakespeare and Company.  It’s fitting that a movie with extraordinary erudition and heart starts here.

Dan in Real Life (2004)

While Notting Hill has the canonical bookstore meet-cute, this one between Steve Carrell and Juliette Binoche is pretty great. Who doesn’t want to fall in love in a bookstore? No one I would want to fall in love with that’s for sure.

The Big Sleep (1946)

How about a couple of classic movies now? In The Big Sleep, Geiger’s Bookstore becomes key in figuring out…something (don’t want to get all spoilery here). But Bogart in a bookstore should be enough to get you interested without too much more info, no?

Funny Face  (1957)

Fred Astaire plays a photographer in search of models of who can think as good as they look and stumbles across Audrey Hepburn, one of the 20th Centuries great beauties, working in a bookstore. Of course banter and hijinks ensue. (Be warned: this is a musical. Just so you are prepared).

Desperado (1995)

At the beginning of this list, would you have believed that Salma Hayek is at best only the second most beautiful movie-bookstore owner? (Audrey takes the top spot, in my opinion).

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

I think the memory-wiping sequence here is the single coolest bookstore scene in the movies.

Manhattan (1979)

There are a couple of good bookstores scenes in Manhattan, but this one has Allen in tweed, so it gets the nod. On the other hand, the other scene has Meryl Streep. Toss-up.

Beauty and The Beast (1991)

Beauty and The Beast has a great library scene AND a great bookstore scene. So maybe this is less a romantic fairy-tale than it is the story of a bookworm who goes from mooching books from the store to having a private library worthy of British royalty. At least that’s what I got from it.

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