AbeBooks' Reading Copy

We don’t just sell books. AbeBooks offers thousands of old newspapers and magazines recording everything from the Normandy Landings to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the Apollo 11 mission. This selection of historic papers, periodicals, journals and magazines has a strong literary slant with contributions from Hemingway, Kerouac, Salinger, Faulkner and Wodehouse. Catch [...]

In Edinburgh locations that can be tied back to Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels someone has been leaving random acts of paper art. The paper models are quite intricate and have been cut from the pages of a book. It’s unclear who has been leaving these sculptures and whether it’s Rankin himself who is commissioning them [...]

Inquiring minds want to know and they also want to dig up The Bard’s corpse to find out. Via Time Magazine A South African anthropologist has requested to open the grave of William Shakespeare to see if he can demystify the cause of the English dramatist’s death—as well as determine whether or not marijuana was [...]

They’ve been increasing in popularity in The Netherlands for the better part of two years and now flipback books are making their way to English-speaking markets. These books are basically a new take on the paperback, except theoretically smaller and lighter. The books open from top to bottom, use sideways printed text and employ the [...]

Dramatic changes in music, fashion and politics helped turn the world upside down during the Sixties and there was a photographer on every street corner to record it. This selection of rare photography books published during the 1960s spans the world. Bill Brandt, David Bailey, Edward Ruscha and Paul Strand are just some of the [...]

Librarian and author Nancy Pearl recommends ten terrific reads for summer.

Moby Lives pointed me towards this neat blog post this morning which has compiled census data on librarians from the past 120 years. It looks at how librarians are less plentiful but better paid, increasingly married, and older than they used to be and almost always female.

The Minnesota Public Radio program WITS (think A Prairie Home Companion but, different) had Neil Gaiman on this weekend to sing a song he wrote about Joan of Arc titled The Problem with Saints. I suggest you have a listen, it’s quite clever.

Learn more about Pop-up books and movables and watch our latest video to see them in action.

What books would you take with you if you knew you were going to be stranded on a deserted island (we’re making the stance that it’s not a desert island it’s a deserted island). The UK’s former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, recently suggested to the Guardian that if he were in this predicament he would [...]