AbeBooks' Reading Copy

At least that’s what The Daily Mail is calling it, the reporter was only granted it if they did not mention “The Book.” The big news is that Ms. Lee said thank you for the chocolates the journalist bought her. Read the “interview” here

In response to the never-ending 40 under 40 lists, Robert McCrum at The Observer says it’s never too old to start writing. Just look at Walt Whitman.

Pulp science fiction paperbacks were a base staple of my young life. But after growing up and becoming a design nerd, those paperbacks are a little… embarrassing. For every well-designed book cover (like David Pelham’s cover of Clockwork Orange), there’s three terrible illustrations of floating orange skycars and lizard-faced aliens. They can be so bad [...]

Glenn Beck is a bookselling machine. Whatever happened to Oprah? It’s Beck who moves copies these days. Today’s hot Beck book is Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America’s Enemies by M. Stanton Evans. Yesterday, Beck told his army of followers that Senator Joseph McCarthy wasn’t such [...]

A new addition to the AbeBooks Rare Book Room is our feature on Association Copies. These are books which came from the library of someone famous, or were signed from one person of literary or historical significance to another. For example this copy of Arthur C. Clarke’s Reach for Tomorrow was signed and given to [...]

Dick Francis is dead, long live Dick Francis. The son of the famous thriller author, who died in February, is going to ensure Dick Francis novels keep on coming by taking over the writing duties. Apparently, Dick Francis is a brand, reports the Bookseller.

The Boy in the Moon – Ian Brown’s raw, honest account of life with his profoundly disabled son – is by turns exhausted, yearning and hopeful. It has won three major literary awards so far.

I always knew I should have become a publisher… for the skirt alone. The Globe and Mail ponders the good looking women of the Canadian publishing industry on the back of Penguin Canada’s sexual harassment scandal. Penguin’s problems could not have come at a worse time – instead of celebrating 75 years of publishing, everyone [...]

I love the idea of Harry Potter becoming a German and starring in All Quiet on the Western Front as Paul Baumer. Clearly Mr Radcliffe does not want to be schoolboy wizard forever.

Peter Harrington Books of London just started up a blog about interesting items at their book shop (found due to the Fresh Signals news feed at Coudal.com). Today they shared a very rare find: a leaf from the block book Ars Moriendi, The Art of Dying. What they and I find interesting is the method [...]