Archive for June, 2010

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2010 Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar scholarship winner

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

Jayne WaldronCongratulations for Jayne Waldron of Sea Chest Books in Massachusetts. Jayne has won a scholarship to the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar, a week-long educational event in August for booksellers, librarians and collectors.

Attendees learn about buying and selling books on the Internet, the auction market for antiquarian books, care and preservation of antiquarian books, pricing and appraisals, and compiling catalogues and online descriptions – and much more. AbeBooks staged an essay contest to pay the tuition fee of $1,095 for one lucky person, as well as provide them three free months of subscription fees for listing on AbeBooks. And Jayne is our winner.

Read her essay and learn more about her quest to become a bookseller. Find out why Lynd Ward’s God’s Man is so important to her.

Posted in AbeBooks, antiquarian, books, booksellers, news | No Comments »

Harper Lee Interview

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

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

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Never too old to start writing

Monday, June 28th, 2010

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.

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Bad Covers: a problem with science fiction

Friday, June 25th, 2010
I Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury, illustrated by Nebular

I Sing the Body Electric by Ray Bradbury, illustrated by Nebular

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 that, just like my collection of 80s movies on VHS, they become a guilty pleasure.

Good Show Sir is a website built around that guilty pleasure. They have a picture gallery featuring some of the very worst book jackets ever printed. Some of the very, very, worst ones. If you want to get these priceless bits of kitsch for your own collection, maybe the almost naked killer-whale-riding man, or the collared snake in front of hellfire, or even the recursive blond-haired centaur, they’re up for sale.

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Posted in AbeBooks, art, books, collecting, design, humor, illustration, internet, science fiction | 2 Comments »

Blacklisted by History: Glenn Beck’s latest book club pick

Friday, June 25th, 2010

blacklisted-by-historyGlenn 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 bad bloke after all and that Communism was rife in 1950s America! There is now steep demand for this book.

BECK: Tell me — America, this is such an important turning point. Tell me — when you went to go look for the documents on Joseph McCarthy, what did you find or not find?

EVANS: I found a lot of stuff missing, a lot of stuff had been censored, a lot of stuff that was in the records in one place but blacked out in another place. Mostly what I found was that the FBI files, which backed up what McCarthy was saying, had been withheld for 50 years. And we now have them, or many of them, and they show essentially that he was right in general. There was a massive penetration of the government, and that it was covered up, and that he threatened that cover-up. And that’s why he was isolated, demonized, and destroyed.

Posted in author, Glenn Beck, history, politics | No Comments »

Association Copies

Friday, June 25th, 2010

“For Fred & Pip, with my / very best wishes- / Arthur / Concord, 25 October ‘56”

“For Fred & Pip, with my / very best wishes- / Arthur / Concord, 25 October ‘56”

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 rocket scientist Frederick C. Durant III and his wife by Clarke.

As it turns out we are not the only ones who find this interesting. Richard Hyfler over at Forbes also enjoyed this little piece. After seeing it he published a post mentioning our feature and an association copy in his collection.

My only genuine association copy may be the poet Charles Reznikoff’s Family Chronicle (shown at top), inscribed by the author of the introduction, Milton (“Milt” here) Hindus, to the poet, David Ignatow. The attraction here was Hindus. Don’t bother looking him up on Wikipedia. The short entry on him was deleted in 2008, according to the Wikipedia archive deletionpedia, because “When this article was created, the writer did not include enough information to establish the significance of the subject.”

Do you have any great association copies in your collection? I’d love to hear about them.

Posted in AbeBooks, collecting, media coverage, Signed Books | No Comments »

Dick Francis’ son takes over writing duties

Friday, June 25th, 2010

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.

Posted in author, news, thrillers | No Comments »

Ian Brown’s “The Boy In The Moon” Is a Winner

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

ian-brown-boy-in-moonThe Boy in The Moon by Ian Brown is picking up speed and making heads turn. The book is the touching, honest and thought-provoking account of the Toronto-based author’s life with his profoundly disabled son, Walker. Walker has an incredibly rare genetic mutation which he shares with somewhere in the neighbourhood of 300 people.

Brown, a writer for the Globe and Mail, writes about the pain, bewilderment and stress of trying to raise and protect his son, who, if left to his own devices, would bang his head ceaselessly and hard enough to injure himself. He writes in raw, vivid detail, with an unflinching honesty and unapologetic reality. But perhaps the most painful and heartbreaking sentences are those in which Brown laments his inability to get to know his son, to reach him. He wonders, simply, who Walker is, and what goes on inside him.

The exhaustion and sorrow of these daily struggles come across loud and clear throughout The Boy in The Moon, as everything in Brown’s life – his marriage, his finances, his very sanity and faith – are tested relentlessly.

But among the pain is compassion, and it is hard not to admire and even feel hope in words so authentic, so self-aware, written with love. For anyone who has ever had a child, or anyone who appreciates writing so skilled and honest that it makes your chest ache, this book is not to be missed.

The Boy in The Moon has won the Charles Taylor Prize for non-fiction, the BC Nonfiction Book Prize, and most recently Ontario’s Trillium Book Award.

Posted in AbeBooks, awards, bestsellers, books, Canada, life | No Comments »

Canada’s publishing talent

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

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 is wondering what the heck goes on in their office.

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From Harry Potter to Paul Baumer

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

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.

Posted in Harry Potter, movies, news | No Comments »

The Betamax of Printing

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

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 of printing used, an obsolete technique that they call ‘the Betamax of Printing.’

Block books, also called xylographica, were printed in Europe from about 1450 onwards. They were made by engraving whole pages into wood and rubbing that against paper, rather than using expensive metal type. It was a way to make books cheaply and for a wider (and poorer) audience. Most block books were about religious matters, such as excepts from the Bible and theological matters. The Art of Dying is a guide to dying without sin in order to pass into the good part of the afterlife.

Block books are actually a lot like modern-day supermarket paperbacks: reprinted books about popular subjects made cheaply and sold at low prices.  But as printing costs came down and woodcuts allowed for better illustrations with moveable type, printers moved on and the books were not printed after 1500. Today few European block books are left, which is why the people at Peter Harrington are so excited about just finding a single leaf from one of these books.

Obsolete technology is a favorite subject of mine (I currently own 400 VHS tapes, and the collection keeps growing), so I was fascinated to read about this find. You can also find some material related to xylographica on AbeBooks, including some original leaves being listed for thousands of dollars. Peter Harrington is an AbeBooks seller, so this leaf might end up on AbeBooks soon.

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Rare book thief jailed again

Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010

Serial rare book thief William Jacques is going to the Big House, again. I imagine he won’t be given a card for the prison library. Libararies and rare bookshops around the UK breath a huge sign of relief.

Posted in antiquarian, crime, news | No Comments »

John W. Campbell Award nominees

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

The nominations list has been announced, nice to see some Canadians in there too.

The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling

The Caryatids by Bruce Sterling

1. Paolo Bacigalupi, The Windup Girl
2. Iain M. Banks, Transition
3. Nancy Kress, Steal Across the Sky
4. Paul McAuley, Gardens of the Sun
5. China Mieville, The City & the City
6. Adam Roberts, Yellow Blue Tibia
7. Kim Stanley Robinson, Galileo’s Dream
8. Bruce Sterling, The Caryatids
9. Margaret Atwood, The Year of the Flood
10. Cory Doctorow, Makers
11. Robert J. Sawyer, Wake
12. Robert Charles Wilson, Julian Comstock:
A Story of 22nd-Century America

Posted in awards, fantasy, lists, science fiction | No Comments »

John Updike’s archives

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

I think John Updike’s legacy is pretty safe. The NY Times took a look into his archive at the weekend.

And there is a memo from a researcher catching Updike up on current sales and commissions at Toyota franchises of the kind owned by the Angstrom family, along with photocopied pages from a handbook on car salesmanship, with Updike’s marginal notes, and several pages (obtained through the Federal Highway Administration) showing sample Florida license plates. Other folders include a jotted list of basketball moves (“double-pump lane jumper”) and a letter from Bob Ryan, a sportswriter for The Boston Globe, summarizing the career of the 1980s N.B.A. dunk-shot specialist Darryl Dawkins.

There is even a wrapper from a Planters Peanut Bar, as lovingly preserved as a pressed autumn leaf, evidently used by Updike to describe the moment when Rabbit, addicted to high-cholesterol junk food, greedily devours the candy and then, still unsatisfied, “dumps the sweet crumbs out of the wrapper into his palm and with his tongue licks them all up like an anteater” — an early warning that he’s headed for a heart attack.

Posted in author, literature, news, writing | No Comments »

Leather-bound books from the Franklin Library

Monday, June 21st, 2010

hooking-upThe Franklin Library, a division of The Franklin Mint, was a publisher of fine collector edition books from the early 1970s until 2000. Known for beautiful bindings, Franklin books were published in three styles – full genuine leather, imitation leather, and quarter-bound genuine leather. The full leather-bound editions were produced throughout the Library’s lifespan but the other two styles (imitation and quarter bound) were only published in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Much like Easton Press, Franklin published series of books such as Signed First Editions, Pulitzer Prize Classics and The 100 Greatest Books of All Time. Take a look at our latest feature – leather-bound books from the Franklin Library.

Posted in AbeBooks, books, collecting, literature | No Comments »

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