AbeBooks' Reading Copy

South Riding by Winifred Holtby was first published, posthumously, in 1936. The story is about a young headmistress living in a fictional Yorkshire neighbourhood; and the book itself has lived a fairly innocuous life in the midlist for over half a century until last week when Andrew Davies three part mini-series began to air on [...]

It was great fun to put this feature together. Pablo Picasso’s art is hard to ignore and people are still writing about his work today. There are some great books showing facets of his work and he moved from style to style with little apparent effort. He illustrated many books and there are also numerous [...]

Fine Books Magazine writes that Charles Bukowski is more collectible than ever. Bukowski died in 1994 but there is some story about him every couple of months. He goes into the ‘gone but never forgotten’ category of writer.

Good news from our neck of the woods. The Galiano Literary Festival starts today and continues until 28 February. Galiano is a tiny island between Vancouver Island and the British Columbia mainland. Like many of the Gulf Islands, Galiano has a bookshop and a vibrant community of artists and writers. We always visit the bookshop [...]

Unlike most awards the Nebula’s give out their award for the previous year, so we are only just now about to find out the winner of the 2010 Nebula Award. When you think about it this is really the smart way to do it since every book published in 2010 gets an even shake. The [...]

Spy author John le Carré is donating his archives – all 85 boxes of manuscripts – to Oxford’s Bodleian Library. I love the quote from the author where he reveals the Americans won’t be getting his stuff. Le Carré, real name David John Moore Cornwell, studied at Oxford’s Lincoln College where he received a first [...]

Bloomberg has an interview with Angus Robb, a big wig at Asprey’s luxury-gift emporium on New Bond Street in London (a road full fancy shops for rich people). Robb apparently buys rare books on behalf of Prince Charles and folks in the rich and famous tax bracket. “I rarely see my most important clients,” Robb [...]

An unpublished Enid Blyton novel has been found in an archive of the children’s author’s work. The wonderfully named Mr Tumpy’s Caravan is a 180-page fantasy tale about a magical caravan. The BBC reports the novel was found in a collection of manuscripts auctioned by the family of Blyton’s eldest daughter last year. Blyton died [...]

The Daily Telegraph lists its top 10 moments from Roald Dahl books. That’s a pretty easy list to put together. My favourite is from Danny Champion of the World when the drugged pheasants start to wake up and mayhem ensues. Not enough authors address the subject of poaching these days!

This youtube video shows how things have changed in the printing and publishing world.