AbeBooks' Reading Copy

My colleague Jessica offers this video review of Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel, The Sun Also Rises. It was published in 1926 when the effects of World War I were still being felt. The story focuses around a group of American and British expatriates who travel from Paris to the Festival of Fermín in Pamplona to [...]

Attention Steampunk fans! Jeff VanderMeer and S.J. Chambers have brought you The Steampunk Bible: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Imaginary Airships, Corsets and Goggles, Mad Scientists, and Strange Literature. It’s a complete overview of this Johnny Come Lately genre – less than 30 years old – with more than 150 images and commentary [...]

I would like to introduce a British book designer called David Pearson. He’s well known within the publishing industry but it’s about time ordinary Joe Bloggs’ learnt a little about him. He is currently the art director for White’s Books but he spent several years with Penguin working on many successful series including the Pocket [...]

Here’s my review of At Work by photographer Annie Leibovitz. It’s half memoir, half photography book. She describes her career from a young snapper on Rolling Stone magazine to becoming one of the world’s most prestigious photographers. Lots of great photos of Hunter S. Thompson, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Demi Moore, Whoopi Goldberg, the [...]

Michael Chabon writes at length about Norton Juster’s masterpiece, The Phantom Tollbooth, in the New York Review of Books. The Phantom Tollbooth, which is illustrated by Jules Feiffer, will be 50 years old later this year and I find it hard to believe that there are still people who have not read it. Chabon writes…. [...]

Apparently, there is a wedding tomorrow…. a royal wedding at that. With all due respect to the Prince William, weddings are really about the bride. Authors agree. There are few novels about bridegrooms but there are thousands about brides. In fact, AbeBooks has almost 150,000 listings where the word ‘bride’ is mentioned in the title. [...]

A few weeks ago, my eight-year-old came home from her elementary school with a book from the school library. It was The Chronicles of Robin Hood by Rosemary Sutcliff. I did not know that Sutcliff, famous for writing the wonderful adventure story, The Eagle of the Ninth, had ever written about Robin Hood. My daughter [...]

Judy can feel Daddy’s putrefying face!

The Millions blog talks about food and reading – two of my favourite activities in life. For example, Lydia Kiesling relates eating tuna fish sandwiches while spending an afternoon reading Lolita. The fall I read 2666 coincided with my rediscovery of a very plain spaghetti I remembered eating every day one summer in my childhood–a [...]

The Nominees for the 2011 Hugo Awards have been named, the winners will be announced Saturday, August 20th, 2011, during the Hugo Awards Ceremony at Renovation in Reno, Nevada. Here are the finalists for the Best Novel catagory: – Blackout/All Clear by Connie Willis – Cryoburn by Lois McMaster Bujold – The Dervish House by [...]