Books

Thirty years since Cosmo Kramer spruiked his coffee table book of coffee tables, a new companion tome has arrived, and it's become quite a hit. It's the coffee table book dedicated to coffee. (Sadly, though, it doesn't also turn into a coffee table.)

X+Living has made a real splash producing fantastical bookstores throughout China, and has now revealed another example in Huai'an that features an incredible interior design made up of complex cosmic forms.

A magnificent new bookstore has swung its doors open in China, featuring a massive spiraling staircase laid down sideways as both a functional bookshelf and art installation inviting visitors to take a one-of-a-kind walk through space and time.

One of the most valuable scientific documents in history changed hands this week, when an autographed Isaac Newton manuscript of revisions to the first edition of the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica sold at Christie's for £1,702,500.

One of the nice things about reading electronic text is the fact that if there's a word you don't understand, you can just highlight it to do a Google search. Well, a device called the Googstick is designed to do the same thing for printed text.

Last year, we looked at a bookstore in China by X Living that made use of mirrors and light to create a spectacular, immersive experience for its visitors, and the local firm has just added the finishing touches to another creation of the same ilk.

New Atlas talks to research scientist Janelle Shane about the inherent oddness of neural networks and other AIs. Shane's sideline in experimenting with neural networks led her to write "You Look Like a Thing and I Love You."

A new book celebrating the science illustrations of Ernst Haeckel has launched on Kickstarter. The book features numerous drawings of microorganisms by the German zoologist and naturalist who identified thousands of new species during his career.

Melding the worlds of art and computer science, two Danish artists have developed a fascinating AI project called Booksby.ai, an online bookshop generated by AI - from the books and covers, to the reviews and pictures of people reviewing the books.

You might expect to be surrounded by a few paperbacks and hardcovers when you visit a bookstore, but the recently completed Chongqing Zhongshuge Bookstore in China takes this to a whole new level.

While a preference for traditional print books over an enhanced e-book counterpart may often stem from good old-fashioned nostalgia, a new study suggests using e-books to read stories to your child can result in less conversation and lower-quality interactions.

Augmented reality can bring a book to life by pointing a smartphone or tablet camera at coded objects on a page and viewing the results on the smart device's screen. Magik Book has created its own spin with brochures that sync with a tablet and launch digital content when a page is turned.​