Got that back-to-school feeling again? Take a gander at our literary tribute to teachers and students in literature. My personal favourite from this list of 25 memorable books is Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blue. The head porter, Skullion, is a wonderful creation and a truly crafty individual. Having spent 10 years living in Oxford, I am positive there are many Skullions in reality. I’d out The History Man by Malcolm Bradbury as a close second simply because Howard Kirk such a completely awful person. Again, I’m sure there are many Howard Kirks in reality. The list also includes Miss Jean Brodie, Mr Chipping, Sebastian Flyte, plus his teddy Aloysius, from Brideshead Revisited and much more. Go back to school with Tom Wolfe, John Knowles and many other wonderful writers.
Archive for August, 2010
Top Class Writing: Teachers & Schools in Literature
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010Berlin bombed by poets
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010Berlin was ‘bombed’ with poetry at the weekend, reports The Guardian.
Women of Pulp: Blonde, Buxom & Dangerous
Monday, August 30th, 2010
My favourite kind of women are…..The Women of Pulp. They can’t be tamed, they cannot be trusted. Blondes, brunettes, redheads – we have got the lot. There are voluptuous vixens, dangerous dames, and buxom bombshells. They really don’t publish books like these any more.
I love this selection of pulp fiction put together by my colleague Beth. I could hear her chuckling to herself as she selected the books.
150 covers of Lolita
Monday, August 30th, 2010
I love this display of the 150 covers of Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita. It says more about the world and how different nations have interpretated the book than the book itself. There is a Greek cover where the girl looks about seven. This one is rather disturbing.
Let’s see now – lots of knickers, lollypops, pigtails and shoulder length hair cascading down bare backs, a delicate flower, a delicate butterfly, a couple of dirty old men, some heart-shaped glasses, plenty of lipstick, several pairs of bobby socks, lots of tits and ass, a keyhole (what on earth?), Jeremy Irons and a weird German one where a man in straw boater has a picture of a girl on his back.
Nevada bookbinder still going strong
Monday, August 30th, 2010I can’t say I am familiar with the Nevada Appeal newspaper but it has a lovely article about the Jurey’s Bookbinding Services. It’s an interesting read.
The Jureys’ workshop in Wellington, 65 miles from Carson City, is stacked with projects including several very old, large and lavishly illustrated family Bibles with embossed leather covers and gold leaf decorations. They sit on and around the tools of his trade including hand-cranked presses, cutters, drills and cases of different fonts of type — some of them more than 100 years old.
One massive Bible sits on a workbench, its covers tattered and broken, the yellowing, brittle pages separating so badly it looks more like a stack of old paper than a book.
“There are an awful lot of hours in one of these,” Jurey said. “The first thing I’ll do is take it completely apart down to the pages. We’ll save the cover. Then I’ll re-sew the signatures.”
‘Bookseller With A Window To My Soul’
Monday, August 30th, 2010Deliverance’s 40th anniversary & Dickey’s Southern monsters
Friday, August 27th, 2010
Dwight Garner writes about the 40th anniversary of Deliverance by James Dickey in the New York Times book review.
Dickey wrote about men, neither dudes nor (although they were fathers) dads. The men in Deliverance meet real monsters and recognize their ability to become, in Dickey’s phrase, countermonsters. Deliverance had its moment. The book got ecstatic reviews; its author was interviewed on Today. Deliverance tangled on best-seller lists with Love Story, The Godfather and The French Lieutenant’s Woman. It was an unsettling book that arrived, as if on cue, at an unsettled time. In its primitive violence readers caught echoes of Vietnam, the Sharon Tate murders, even of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. In its elegiac lament for a disappearing river, the book chimed along with America’s budding environmental movement.
The articles goes on….
The novel has the primal witchery of Lord of the Flies, but attempts to teach it in classrooms have mostly been rebuffed: the novel’s homosexual rape scene, and its musky sexuality throughout, are too much for many. Deliverance has its detractors among Southerners, too, for its portrait of mountain people as toothless sociopaths. When he was governor of Georgia, the future United States senator Zell Miller placed it on his list of most hated books.
Chaotically quirky used bookshops
Friday, August 27th, 2010Therese Holland of McLeods Books in Melbourne, Australia, blogs about why secondhand bookshops are chaotically quirky. I feel customers of used bookstores actually want to see quirky things. They want to be surprised. They want to see books that haven’t been stocked in a Barnes & Noble or Borders or Waterstones or Chapters for decades. They relish the idea that secondhand bookstores have their order of things that depends on the owner. I think it’s called the thrill of the chase.
Priests in Literature
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
Bishops, monks, chaplains, vicars and deacons – men of the cloth are found through all genres of fictional writing, including science fiction. They were key figures in several of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and can still be found in modern bestsellers like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. They feature so often because of their flaws. They are tempted by the flesh, their faith is questioned and tested, and they have doubts about themselves and their vocation. Some priests are simply evil. Of course, they are also heroic, comedic and sometimes pompous, and there is a raft who are sleuths – detectives in habits or dog-collars. Take a gander at our list – The Exorcist, The Vicar of Wakefield, The Thorn Birds and many more.
Rare Book Treasure Contest: Win an Autographed John Updike Book
Thursday, August 26th, 2010
We have a signed copy of The Widows of Eastwick by John Updike to give away to one lucky person. It’s easy to enter our contest – just tell us about your greatest rare book discovery, found while sifting through the piles of Nora Roberts and Tom Clancy paperbacks at yard sales, garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, thrift stores, library sales and any other sources of used books.
We know bibliophiles cannot resist hunting for rare first editions and collectible books when they see a pile of used copies. And we know you have some wonderful stories to tell. We?ll print the best ones in a feature on AbeBooks and the treasure hunter with the most interesting tale, as judged by AbeBooks? Richard Davies, will win the Updike book.
You need to describe your discovery, including where it occurred, what you paid and what you think the book is worth, in no more than 200 words. Don?t forget to include your name and the town or city where you live. Email the entry to contests@abebooks.com
And of course, what would a contest be without Contest Rules?
Good luck.
Keith Richards, Jimmy Page, Jay-Z & books
Thursday, August 26th, 2010A couple of music-themed book stories this morning. Keith Richards and Jay-Z will be giving talks at the New York Public Library. Richards is a well known rare book collector but as for Jay-Z, I suspect he’ll just be flogging his new book.
Talking about dinosaurs of rock, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame is publishing a book at the end of September. It’s not cheap at £445 a pop. There will be 2,500 copies featuring over 650 images from his very long career (although he doesn’t seem to do much these days). They are leather and perspex-bound with a silk and leather slipcase. Page has signed each copy.
Kurt Vonnegut is turning Japanese
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010Every now and then you find really neat things while searching on AbeBooks. While putting together an upcoming feature, I found out that we have copies of a couple Japanese editions of Kurt Vonnegut books. Very cool.
Deadeye Dick by Kurt Vonnegut, published by Hayakawa Publishing in Japan
Walking Dead Trailer
Tuesday, August 24th, 2010
I love Robert Kirkman’s Walking Dead series of graphic novels. They came about when Kirkman was frustrated at how much he loved zombie movies, only to have them all end and not explore the continuing effect on society – the collapse, the adjustment, the rebuilding, the progression of events after the initial crisis. So, he decided to write it himself. With 13 volumes so far (I have ‘em all), the series is fresh and interesting. It ranges in tone from heartbreakingly hopeful to unthinkably horrific to occasionally even uneventful and dull, much as I imagine attempting to survive in the circumstances would. The story’s main character is Rick Grimes, a police officer who is shot in a standoff with a criminal, and wakes from coma in the hospital to find the world he knew, along with his wife and child, gone. Grimes sets out to look for his wife and son, to find what is left, to help where he can, and to survive. Other characters rotate in and sadly, often out, of the story.
If you’re a fan of zombie stories (it’s okay, everyone has to be a nerd about something), this series isn’t to be missed. The story is thoughtful, the art is fantastic, and I look forward to the rest to come.
And now, it’s going to be a television series, too! Please, please AMC – do it right. Don’t screw this up. From the trailer, I feel pretty optimistic that this could be good.
Positions in Bed
Monday, August 23rd, 2010
All kinds of unusual positions
Since discovering I’m weird, I’ve asked around and have found many people who sit up, against the headboard or a pillow or two, and prop the book on their knees. Many side-readers. But no tummy-reader-elbow-proppers like me. Am I so strange?
How do you read, when you read in bed?
Lifehacker votes AbeBooks a top textbooks website
Monday, August 23rd, 2010Lifehacker has listed us as one of the top five websites to buy cheap textbooks.
At the bottom of the article they also included a poll allowing users to vote for their favorite site. We’re up against some VERY big websites, and as they say it’s an honor to be nominated, but it would be awesome if you AbeBooks boosters could vote for us and help spread the word about our cheap textbooks and great textbook buyback option.
