This week is Banned Books week, the website has a list of events happening in cities around North America or you can celebrate on your own by reading something controversial!
You can even get a flaming bookmark to help get in the mood…
Archive for September, 2008
Banned Books Week
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008Literary Pub Crawl
Tuesday, September 30th, 2008The Guardian embarks on a perfect pub crawl though the best literary watering holes from Patrick Hamilton’s The Midnight Bell to the Korova Milk Bar from Clockwork Orange…
Towering Inferno script
Monday, September 29th, 2008Sad news about Paul Newman’s death at the weekend. I feel he probably did this disaster movie for the money. I always thought Cool Hand Luke was a great film.
Nelson books
Monday, September 29th, 2008The Guardian has the top 10 books about Nelson. (Ahh, the good old days when Britain ruled the world….)
I like the sound of What’s Left of Nelson by Leo Marriott.
AbeBooks at Word on the Street in Vancouver
Friday, September 26th, 2008Staff from AbeBooks.com will be manning a booth this Sunday (Sept 28) at the annual Word on the Street festival in Vancouver, BC. We’ll be at booth T7a. Please drop by and see us – Shauna, Michael and Seth will be there from our marketing department and they’d love to meet you.
Word on the Street can be found in Library Square (Homer & Hamilton between Robson & Georgia) and it runs from 11am until 5pm. I believe the weather is going to be sunny too.
If you drop by, you can enter a contest to win a signed copy of The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. I’ve read the book and interviewed the author and I can recommend it.
The festival promotes books and authors with exhibits, performances and activities for a wide range of ages and interests. Around 35,000 folks go along each year – can’t be bad.
Depression reading
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Economic crisis! Stock market turmoil! Credit crunch! Bail out rescue package! Things are looking bad…..America’s seen it all before and it was called the Great Depression. Check out this 1939 first edition of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath offered for sale by Between the Covers – one of the best rare booksellers in the States. As the seller points out this is the literary masterpiece from the Great Depression.
Book spine literature
Friday, September 26th, 2008A Road Trip Journal
Thursday, September 25th, 2008I like this article from today’s Guardian about Stephen Shore’s photography book A Road Trip Journal, which is a personal record of 1970s Americana.
When Shore set off in 1972 he decided to make a photographic diary of the journey, to record “every meal I ate every person I met, every bed I slept in; every toilet I used; every town I drove through. I wanted to be visually aware as I went through the day.” The result was hundreds of snapshot-size glossy colour prints of the minutiae of ordinary life, which he exhibited in New York that same year in a show called American Surfaces. Although some of these pictures were published in other books, it was nearly 30 years before they were brought together in one book, under the same title.
American Psycho the musical
Thursday, September 25th, 2008American Psycho could be made into a musical reports the NY Times. What an excellent idea – doesn’t the book contain torture, rape, mutilation, cannibalism, and necrophilia? I can just imagine the Japanese tourists lining up to buy tickets on Broadway for that one.
Librarianz N the Hood
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008Cornell Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections is going big on hip hop and rap music.
The founding materials in Cornell’s hip hop collection were the gift of collector and author Johan Kugelberg. Materials in the collection form the basis for the book Born in the Bronx: a Visual Record of the Early Days of Hip Hop (November 2007) edited by Johan Kugelberg (author), Afrika Bambaataa (foreword), Buddy Esquire (contributor), Jeff Chang (contributor) and Joe Conzo (photographer).
I can just see the librarians dripping in bling, hanging out with some dirty-assed fly honeys, and digging Gangsta tunes from Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube and 50 Cent. (You can tell I’m white, can’t you?)
F Scott Fitzgerald Movie
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
News reports this morning claim that actress Keira Knightley is in negotiations to play the role of Zelda Fitzgerald, the wife of legendary Jazz Age author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The role would be in an upcoming film scheduled to begin shooting next April as a biopic about the life and times of the famous author. F. Scott Fitzgerald is best known for the classic novels The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night. Ironically, the news comes on the same day that Fitzgerald was born in 1896. No news yet on which actor will be playing F. Scott Fitzgerald himself, an author rumoured to have suffered through fits of alcoholism and jealousy.
Collectible football books
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008I spotted this NFL story this morning that begins with Bill Belichick’s collection of football books.
Bill Belichick’s library is believed to contain the world’s third-largest collection of football books behind only the Library of Congress and the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
His collection of more than 800 titles is housed at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where Belichick’s father coached 33 years.
Talking of sports, check out our just-updated Rare Book Room – there’s a carousel of collectible sports featuring eight gems, including this 1891 copy of American Football by Walter Camp. It belonged to General Matthew B. Ridgway who succeeded Dwight D. Eisenhower as supreme commander of the Allied Forces in Europe.
Books from Wasilla, Alaska
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008
Three weeks ago, no-one had heard of Wasilla, Alaska, and now it’s the most famous smalltown in the world thanks to Sarah Palin. A single of keyword search on AbeBooks and I was surprised to find a decent number of books that had been written about Wasilla, written in Wasilla, published in Wasilla or inspired by Wasilla. Enjoy our top 10 examples of ‘Wasilla Literature.’
I found Wasilla is a mecca for hunting books and was strangely drawn to Sheep Stalking in Alaska by Tony Russ. I had no idea that people hunted sheep. Now I imagine things can get pretty dicey when hunting bears and wolves and perhaps even those massive mooses, but what is a sheep going to do you? Give you a nasty friction burn with its wool?
And what about New Eyes on Old Alaska by Edward Godnig – Wasilla’s optometrist/memoirist? HarperCollins, Random House – sign this guy up.
Medieval manuscripts to be digitised
Tuesday, September 23rd, 2008Manchester University’s John Rylands Library will be digitising much of its collection of medieval manuscripts, including parts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales reports The Independent.
