Reading Copy Book Blog

The Reanimation Library rescues books destined for the trash heap and collects them and are given new life as resource material for artists, writers, and other cultural archeologists. Some curious stuff in the catalog.

The Boston Globe interviews Booker Prize-winning novelist Anne Enright. The Guardian looks at reading in Calcutta after the cancellation of the city’s book fair. Robin Moore, author of The Green Berets, has died. Here’s The Guardian’s obituary. Do you remember the John Wayne film? Conversative commentator William F Buckley died today. He founded the National [...]

Unlike other online retailers, AbeBooks has a single global database of books that is searchable through all of our five websites. We record the bestselling books for each of our websites but essentially buyers are purchasing from a single list of 110 million listings. So a buyer in the UK can buy a book from [...]

Last weekend was my favourite weekend of the year here in Victoria, BC – the Times Colonist Book Drive. Here’s what I picked up for a song at the charity book sale…. John Buchan’s autobiography – Memory Hold-The-Door. I found the 1941 Canadian edition. I’m also looking forward to reading Hard Courts by John Feinstein [...]

The pick of the weekend…. The Independent tells how winning the first Booker Prize didn’t change the life of PH Newby; The NY Times book review devotes a page to Upton Sinclair – the American socialist who wrote Oil!, the book upon which Daniel Day-Lewis’ There Will Be Blood movie is based. Did you know [...]

C’mon America – get it together. A popular video on YouTube shows Kellie Pickler, the adorable platinum blonde from “American Idol,” appearing on the Fox game show “Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?” during celebrity week. Selected from a third-grade geography curriculum, the $25,000 question asked: “Budapest is the capital of what European country?” [...]

Yesterday, I was the supermarket across the road from the office when I saw man buying Spam, but it wasn’t just any tin of Spam – it was a 70th anniversary tin. The customer and the checkout assistant began discussing the cultural impact of Spam on the world and I felt like I had stepped [...]

The San Francisco Chronicle has eight comics to read before you die.

The Bookseller magazine has announced its shortlist this year’s books with the oddest titles. Are Women Human? And Other International Dialogues; How to Write a How to Write Book; Cheese Problems Solved; If You Want Closure in Your Relationships, Start With Your Legs; People Who Mattered in Southend and Beyond: From King Canute to Dr [...]

Behind every glitzy Oscars ceremony, there are always books. Putting aside the red carpet, the fancy frocks and the long-winded speeches, Hollywood draws much of its inspiration from literature and this year’s event is no different. It’s a fact that often seems forgotten. The most interesting book behind this year’s Oscars is Oil! by Upton [...]