The Sunday Times’ property section has an article on publisher Peter Kindersley – the man who brought us The Joy of Sex, which has sold an incredible eight million copies. Property-focused but still very interesting.
Archive for March, 2008
Peter Kindersley and his homes
Monday, March 31st, 2008Blog, blook, bling
Monday, March 31st, 2008I’m going to create a crazy blog and then wait for the megabucks book deal. Cue article in the NY Times. Stuff White People Like is a very clever blog – as a middle-class white person, I think it is very funny. The amazing thing is that this blog has only been around since January. Someone told me about it three weeks ago and here they are getting the $300,000 advance from a publisher.
Food literature boils over
Thursday, March 27th, 2008In the old days, there were just cookbooks. Now there are more books about food and eating than you can shake a truffle at. So says a lady in the Eugene Register-Guard in Oregon. She’s quite right – last night I started reading just such a book…. Heat by Bill Buford. I love these kind of books but overload isn’t far away.
‘Superbooks’ at super prices
Thursday, March 27th, 2008The Independent had an article last Saturday about ‘superbooks.’ We have featured a lot of these very expensive, very high-end, very limited edition books before on this blog…usually because they get a fair amount of media attention. A slice of celebrity helps for this market.
G.O.A.T: A Tribute to Muhammad Ali – Champ’s Edition by Jeff Koons is a typical ‘Superbook’.
G.O.A.T stands for greatest of all time.
Do you still use a phone book?
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008Phone books may be slowly going the way of the Dodo but many people still find them useful and several more make millions selling advertisements in them. The Slate article I just linked you to also mentions the novelty factor of looking up your favourite authors or celebrities in an old volume (Bram Stoker on Victoria-1436 or P.G. Wodehouse on Kensington-4150).
We also did our own bit of research on phone books and found that genealogy researchers and history buffs have been known to pay top dollar for old directories.
Best final lines in novels
Wednesday, March 26th, 2008I always find them a bit of a let down, perhaps it’s just because I’m sad about finishing the book, but here are the 100 best final lines from novels in handy PDF form!
Thanks to the Blog of a Bookslut
Stuff from the web
Tuesday, March 25th, 2008Other stuff….
JK Rowling used to be depressed – the Beeb.
An excerpt from Philip Pullman’s Once Upon a Time in the North – The Guardian.
A review of Ed Smith’s What Sport Tells Us About Life – The Observer.
