AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Nic Boshart, the digital services coordinator at the Association of Canadian Publishers, recently posted a very thought-provoking and urgent call for book publishers to be more open at The Literary Platform. [via Joe Clark] The closing of This Ain’t the Rosedale Library (one of then best independent bookstore in Canada, Toronto landmark, and Abebooks seller) got [...]

In a building that once housed the main branch of the New York Public Library, there’s a highly exclusive and hidden room meant just for writers. It’s the Allen Room, and only 40 to 50 people have a key. It’s an elite group, too; writers need to provide a photocopy of a book contract to [...]

From a list of colouring books for grownups, I just found a lovely post on recto|verso about a colouring book from the 1860s: Nouveau Cours Élémentaire de Coloris et d’Aquarelle: Suivi de Considérations sur la Peinture Orientale. Made to teach basic colouring skills, each image has a coloured example and a black-and-white worksheet for students. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

For two years Gabriel Levinson has been pedaling a custom tricycle around Chicago, giving away free books to anyone. This summer, he’s filling his bike with works from independent publishers: high-end literary works, handmade zines, and all sorts of books between. Last month Levinson held a fund drive to raise $1,000 to cover the cost [...]