AbeBooks' Reading Copy

My husband and I are expecting our first baby. It’s an exciting, wonderful, strange and occasionally terrifying time, as anyone who has been through it will remember. Both medically and emotionally, it’s an absolutely fascinating process that is affecting parts of my body and both of our hearts that neither of us ever expected.

To alterately comfort and alarm myself, I’ve become totally immersed in the PBS Series Call The Midwife. Originally a BBC drama (and apparently, the highest-rated in BBC history), the show is utterly engrossing and fantastic.

If you’ve never seen it, the series is set in tjhe 1950s, in the poor East End of London. It centers on a convent known as Nonnatus House, which is home to nuns, nurses and midwives. The main character and protagonist is young Nurse Jenny Lee, who arrives at Nonnatus at the beginning of the series, and is initially quite squeamish and a bit prissy. But that soon changes. The series follows Nurse Lee and her fellow young nurses, as well as the sisters of Nonnatus led by chief nun Sister Julienne, as they host midwifery clinics, attend births, tend to the sick working class people of the area, and generally do the best they can with limited resources, often in squalid or surprising conditions.

The births depicted are incredibly realistic and well done, the characters and settings are fully realized and believable, and the show works extraordinarily well on the whole. My only complaint is that the first two seasons were only six and eight episodes respectively, and I went through them very quickly. Which is why I am so excited to learn that it was a book first! Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth was originally published in 2002, after Worth retired. I was even more excited to learn that the book is a memoir, and based on her own, real-life experiences working in the same scenarios and conditions described. And the happy news and things to look forward to continue – it’s a trilogy! Books two and three are called Shadows of the Workhouse and Farewell to the East End.

I am going to go out and say it, there are far too many book prizes given out every year.  This isn’t to say that I don’t think authors deserve to be recognized for their fantastic work, it’s just that it can get a bit tedious when every day it seems that another seven prizes that I have never heard of are awarded (and I’m in the business of knowing what these prizes are).

This is why I really appreciate the Wodehouse Prize, it’s hard to forget. Instead of awarding the author some small pittance in cash, the winner of the prize (which is given for the best work of comic fiction) receives a prize so absolutely useless and comical that it could only be a Wodehouse prize:   An Everyman Library, a bottle of Bollinger Champagne, and an enormous Gloucester old spot pig named after the winning novel.

Gloucester Old Spot Boar

The winner of this year’s prize was Howard Jacobson for his novel Zoo Time.  It was the second time that Jacobson has won this award, which leaves you to wonder what he’s doing with all these pigs, and if they gave him a breeding pair would the Wodehouse committee be putting themselves out of business?

Jacobson commented that he was honored to have won this award, and is proud of his comic writing “Other prizes often view [comedy] as sort of embarrassing writerly malfunction – which is treacherous, in my view, when you consider the comic origins of the novel and the strong comedic traditions of English writing in particular. So to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic writing once was bliss for me. To win it twice is very heaven.”  He went on to say that it is a bit of a shame the pig has to be named Zoo Time, “But it could have been worse. It could have been Bring Up the Bodies.”

Runners up for the award were Joseph Connolly for England’s Lane, Helen DeWitt for Lightning Rods, Michael Frayn for Skios and Deborah Moggach for Heartbreak Hotel.

The term leporello refers to printed material folded into an accordion-pleat style. Also sometimes known as a concertina fold, it is a method of parallel folding with the folds alternating between front and back. The name likely comes from the manservant, Leporello, in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. Famed rogue and lover Don Giovanni (in Italian – also known as Don Juan in Spanish) has seduced so many women that when Leporello displays a tally of his conquests, it unfolds, accordion-style, into a shockingly long list. Many leporellos are used as a way of telling a story, while others are purely visual.

In the Victorian era, leporellos were quite commonly used as travel souvenirs, depicting beautiful, panoramic scenes of the places travelers had just seen, customs and culture of the region and the like. They are often used in illustrated children’s works, as well. Collectors of books and paper ephemera will love their scarcity and delicate beauty.

Here are some examples:

A retired interior designer from upstate New York named Phillip Patterson recently decided that he wanted to learn more about the bible, so for the past six years he has spent upwards of 14 hours a day copying out the passages of the King James bible line by line; in much the same way that it was done in the years before Johannes Guttenberg revolutionized the world with movable type. 

Patterson describes his approach to the project as more scholarly than religious in nature, however he does plan to spend the next year binding his 2,400 page manuscript before he will donate it to his local church St. Peter’s Presbyterian in Spencertown, New York. 

I think this is a fantastic project and will make an amazing artifact for St. Peter’s Presbyterian.  The look and feel of an autograph manuscript bible is something to behold.

Story from Fine Books Magazine

It can take decades to assemble a half decent collection of rare books…or you could just buy a ready-made collection with a single click. Booksellers on AbeBooks offer hundreds of ‘instant collections’ ranging from a complete set of the Flashman novels to Andrew Lang’s 12 Fairy books and Henning Mankell’s Wallander Series.

These book sets also cover Narnia, Middle-earth, the Wild West, 007, World War I and the American Civil War.

I love this letter that Norman Mailer sent to Ernest Hemingway in 1965, along with a copy of his novel, The Deer Park, which had been rejected multiple times for years before finally being published:

TO ERNEST HEMINGWAY

—because finally after all these
years I am deeply curious to know
what you think of this.

—but if you do not answer, or if you
answer with the kind of crap you
use to answer unprofessional writers,
sycophants, brown-nosers, etc., then
f*ck you, and I will never attempt
to communicate with you again.

—and since I suspect that you’re even
more vain than I am, I might as well
warn you that there is a reference to
you on page 353 which you may or may
not like

NORMAN MAILER

via the ever-wonderful Letters of Note.

Today marks the 80th anniversary of the Nazi book burnings.  On May 10, 1933 70,000 people gathered in central Berlin to burn tens of thousands of  books which were deemed to be un-German by the National Socialist regime.  These ranged from works of socialists, pacifists, Jewish writers or simply works that sympathized with another ideology.  An article in today’s Deutsche Welle (in English) explains that it was in fact students who led the charge, carting over 20,000 books to the public square, including works by famous German authors like Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria Remarque and Joachim Ringelnatz.”  Other banned works were by foreign authors like Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, The Iron Heel by Jack London, and several books by HG Wells.

We wrote a piece on book burnings five years ago which holds up well, in it we interviewed bookseller Matt Fishburn, Professor Rebecca Knuth, and Shaun Bythell who is a used bookseller in Scotland who staged their own book burning in 2005.

Our top 10 most expensive book sales list for April is topped by the poetry of none other than Emily Dickinson.

Dickinson was unheralded during her lifetime but today, 127 years after her death, the poet’s work is treasured by collectors. Three volumes of her poetry were sold last month on AbeBooks and became our most expensive sale of the year so far at $30,000.

Our top 25 list also includes a famous rabbit, a master sleuth, an Orwellian nightmare in red and a Gatsby.

See the whole list.

Harper Lee, who is now 87 years old, sued her literary agent on May 3rd in an attempt to regain full copyright to her novel, To Kill a Mockingbird. Lee claims that in 2007, Samuel Pinkus plotted to trick her into signing over the ownership of all rights and royalties from Mockingbird. Lee has poor eyesight and hearing, is elderly and had suffered a stroke at the time. Pinkus is the son-in-law-of her long-time agent, Eugene Winick, who had fallen ill, resulting in Pinkus taking over a number of his clients, including Lee.

Lee understood neither what she had signed, nor the seriousness of the consequences of the signature, and is now seeking to have full rights to the classic novel return to her. Pinkus has allegedly been receiving royalties from the book as recently as this year.

The novel, which was first published in 1960, is Harper Lee’s only published book. It has remained a widely-read and celebrated classic and is still on the curriculum of many schools worldwide.

We love the BC Book Prizes here at AbeBooks. Granted, we’re a bit biased, given that we make our headquarters in British Columbia’s capital city (Victoria). But the prizes really are something special, highlighting the best written talent this beautiful province has to offer in seven categories: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, regional, children’s literature, illustrated children’s literature, and booksellers’ choice. It’s now been 10 years that AbeBooks has been a proud sponsor of the prizes, in the Hubert Evans Award for Non-fiction category, and we couldn’t be more pleased to be along for the ride.

This year’s winners show that talent in Beautiful British Columbia is shining just as brightly as ever:

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize winner: The Art of the Impossible: Dave Barrett and the NDP in Power, 1972-1975 by Geoff Meggs, Rod Mickleburgh
From 1972-1975, Premier Dave Barrett and his team passed more legislation in a shorter time than any government before or since. A university or college student graduating today in BC may have been born years after Barrett’s defeat, but could attend a Barrett daycare, live on a farm in Barrett’s Agricultural Land Reserve, be rushed to hospital in a provincial ambulance created by Barrett’s government and attend college in a community institution founded by his government. The continuing polarization of BC politics also dates back to Barrett—the Fraser Institute and the right-wing economic policies it preaches are as much a legacy of the Barrett years as the ALR. Dave Barrett remains a unique and important figure in BC’s history, a symbol of how much can be achieved in government and a reminder of how quickly those achievements can be forgotten.

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize winner: The World by Bill Gaston
A recently divorced, early retiree accidentally burns down his house on the day he pays off the mortgage, only to discover that he’s forgotten to pay his insurance premium. An old friend of his prepares for her suicide to end the pain of esophageal cancer. Her father ends his days in a Toronto facility for Alzheimer’s patients. The three are tied together by their bonds of affection and a book called The World, written by the old man in his youth. The book, possibly biographical, tells the story of a historian who unearths a cache of letters, written in Chinese, in an abandoned leper colony off the coast of Victoria. He and the young Chinese translator fall in love, only to betray each other in the cruellest way possible, each violating what the other reveres most.

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize winner: Geographies of a Lover by Sarah de Leeuw
Drawing inspiration from such works as Pauline Réage’s The Story of O and Marian Engel’s Bear, poet Sarah de Leeuw uses the varied landscape of Canada—from the forests of North Vancouver through the Rocky Mountains, the prairies, and all the way to the Maritimes—to map the highs and lows of an explicit and raw sexual journey, from earliest infatuation to insatiable obsession and beyond.

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize winner: British Columbia: A New Historical Atlas by Derek Hayes
Over 900 maps tell the story of the planners, schemers, gold seekers and fur traders who built BC. When gold was discovered in quantity in 1858, leading to the gold rush that created BC, the interior of the province was mostly unknown except for the routes blazed by fur traders. Thirteen years later, BC became a province of Canada, and a transcontinental railway was built to connect the land west of the Rocky Mountains with the rest of the country. The efforts of these explorers, fur traders, gold seekers and railway builders involved the production of maps that showed what they had found and what they proposed to do—the plans and the strategies that created the province we know today. Master map historian Derek Hayes continues his renowned Historical Atlas Series with a richly rewarding treasure trove, bringing to light the dramatic history of BC.

Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize winner: Middle of Nowhere by Caroline Adderson
When his mother doesn’t return from her all-night job at the local gas bar, Curtis must keep her absence a secret and look after himself and his five-year old brother, Artie. He knows exactly what will happen if any of the teachers find out the truth. He remembers his last foster home all too clearly. But when it all becomes too much for him to handle, Curtis and Artie befriend Mrs. Burt, the cranky, lonely old lady across the street. When the authorities start to investigate, Mrs. Burt and the boys abscond to her remote cabin by the lake. At the lake, the boys’ days are filled with wood-chopping, outhouse-building, fishing, swimming and Mrs. Burt’s wonderful cooking. But then the weather grows colder, and Mrs. Burt seems to be preparing to spend the winter at the cabin. Have they really all just absconded to the lake for a summer holiday? Or have the two boys been kidnapped?

Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize winner: Maggie’s Chopsticks by Alan Woo Poor Maggie struggles to master her chopsticks — it seems nearly everyone around the dinner table has something to say about the “right” way to hold them! But when Father reminds her not to worry about everyone else, Maggie finally gets a grip on an important lesson.

Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award winner: Making Headlines: 100 Years of The Vancouver Sun by Shelley Fralic, with research by Kate Bird
This book is a celebration of The Vancouver Sun‘s first 100 years. It tells the story of Vancouver and the world through the eyes of a newspaper. Decade by decade, it provides fascinating stories from the sinking of the Titanic (just two months after its first issue), through wars, riots, parades, Royal visits and the Olympic Games. Filled with stunning images shot by The Sun‘s award winning photographers, it celebrates all that the newspaper has been, all that it is and all that it will continue to be as The Sun continues to offer all of us that first draft of history.

The winners were announced at a gala dinner at Government House in Victoria on May 4th. Congratulations to the winners, and to all the nominees.