I'm more of the, trips to Florida
Order the h'orderves, views of the water
Straight from the page of your favorite author
--Kanye West, Flashing Lights
There are books you want never to end, with stories, characters and settings you want to keep with you past the last page. Jean-Claude Izzo's Total Chaos, the first in his Marseilles Trilogy, is one of those books for me. In 2006 I'd just finished Total Chaos and become completely lost in Izzo's world--a steamy collection of jazz, whisky, wine and Marseilles.
Though the sequel, Chourmo, wasn't available in English yet, the story continued for me. Straight from the page of a now favorite author, I took a trip to Marseilles. I drank wine from Total Chaos. Listened to its music. Became obsessed with Lagavulin and returned after too long an absence to Oban.
Oban, Lagavulin, wine, Ray Charles, Thelonius Monk, the streets of Marseilles--all the things that make up the world of the main character of Total Chaos, Fabio Montale. And now they'd become part of mine too. I left Marseilles convinced the world inside of books is as rich a source of discovery--in fact, richer--than just about anything else available to me.
The problem was that the wine, the music, the streets of foreign cities found inside of books generally remained just there--on the page. I wanted them accessible to me, gathered together in one place where I could see everything meaningful inside a book, and everywhere that could take me. We founded Small Demons to do just that. To look through the pages of everyone's favorite authors, for all the people, places and things worth exploring further. For every book, we create a visual index that puts all those details at anyone's fingertips.
So now you can see, in one place, the music in Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, the tech and gadgets in Steve Jobs, the places from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, historical figures in John Adams, the comedians, actors and actresses in Steve Martin's Born Standing Up.
But if Small Demons is the world inside of a book, revealed, it's also the world of books, connected. Any person, place or thing you might find interesting in one book--like, say, Elvis Costello from Nick Hornby's High Fidelity--will lead you to any number of new books. Like The Fortress of Solitude, The Black Album, The Rules of Attraction, and the many other books that also share Elvis Costello references. You can try it yourself and see where some frequently mentioned topics in books take you:
Marvin Gaye
The Zippo
Doc Martens
New York City
Sunset Boulevard
In a world where, quite literally, the avenues through which we discover new books are shrinking--bookstores closing, library funding down, disproportionate market share to one digital books retailer--Small Demons injects thousands upon thousands of ways of discovering books. Because every page on Small Demons is a bookshelf, and they're all tied back to things we as readers care about.
Like Radiohead. Or Vienna. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird. Janis Joplin. Even Kanye West.