Reading Copy Book Blog

The books listed here were the top 10 best selling books on AbeBooks.com for the month of June, 2008

1) Big Russ and Me by Tim Russert
2) Wisdom of Our Fathers by Tim Russert
3) Change Your Brain, Change Your Life by Daniel Amen
4) Dreams of My Father by Barack Obama
5) The Pillars Of The Earth by Ken Follett
6) The Red Car by Don Stanford
7) A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
8) Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson
9) The Wordsworth Dictionary of Culinary and Menu Terms by Rodney Dale
10) Night by Elie Wiesel

Robert Crais, author of the Elvis Cole books, is interviewed in the Shelf Awareness newsletter.

On your nightstand now:
The books I’m currently reading are manuscripts for possible blurbs, so I shouldn’t name them. But the books I’m looking forward to reading soon are Shadow Bridge by Gregory Frost, At the City’s Edge by Marcus Sakey and Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere.

Favorite book when you were a child:
I remember the story, but not the title. Maybe a Shelf Awareness reader can help. It’s an adventure story about three children marooned on a desert island, a la Robinson Crusoe, and how they survive. It held amazing, adventurous factoids like “banking the fire.” These kids kept a fire going for weeks by “banking the fire” every night. I never understood what “banking the fire” was, but it seemed magical. I read that book again and again, and wish I recalled the title. We’re talking the early ’60s. If you have any ideas what this book might be, please write to me through my website, robertcrais.com.

Your top five authors:
Robert Heinlein, Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Harlan Ellison, Mark Twain.

Book you’ve faked reading:
Pretty much everything assigned by my 10th grade English teacher. I got a “D” for the year. We were supposed to read all manner of ponderous, uninspiring tomes, but I was hiding in back of the class, reading Mailer and Ellison and Truman Capote. I was a terrible student. I chased work that inspired me.

Book you are an evangelist for:
I like helping newer writers, so if I find something special I spread the word. I felt this way about Ace Atkins’ book, White Shadow, and The Crime Writer by Gregg Hurwitz, which held some of the best passages about Los Angeles I’ve read in years. When Joseph Wambaugh returned with Hollywood Station, I couldn’t stop talking about it, though Wambaugh hardly needed my help.

Book you’ve bought for the cover:
That’s easy. Paperback covers were once painted by fabulous painters like Frank Frazetta, James Bama and Jim Steranko. I used to collect those guys. I bought anything with a Frazetta cover. Didn’t matter what the book was–I bought it for Frazetta’s art.

Book that changed your life:
Harlan Ellison’s book of essays, The Glass Teat, which chronicles his views about the television industry. Here I was, this totally out-of-the-loop kid in Louisiana, with no real belief or expectation that someone like me could be a writer–”writing” was something larger-than-life people did, like becoming astronauts or actors or president. But The Glass Teat demystified the working world of television, and convinced me that if “they” could be a writer, I could be a writer. So I came out to Hollywood and did it. Every good thing in my life began when I moved to Los Angeles. The Glass Teat, like any meaningful book, opened the door to possibilities.

Book you most want to read again for the first time:
The Old Man and the Sea. I’ve read it several times, and each time it leaves me awed.

(Thanks to Shelf Awareness - we read it Monday to Friday)

Fleeced: How Barack Obama, Media Mockery of Terrorist Threats, Liberals Who Want to Kill Talk Radio, the Do-Nothing Congress, Companies … Are Scamming Us … and What to Do About It” by political commentator Dick Morris is not only one of the longest book titles I have ever seen, but seems to be flying up the bestselling charts at the moment.

Morris made his name in the political sphere assisting Bill Clinton in his bid for Governor of Arkansas in 1978 and then again when he was seeking his second presidential nomination in 1996. However his career with the Clintons came to an end in August of 1996 when he was forced to resign under allegations of hiring prostitutes.

In the aftermath of his resignation Morris wrote Behind the Oval Office, a retrospective of his work with the Clinton’s as well as a pair of books criticizing the Clinton’s: Rewriting History, written as a rebuttal to Hillary’s book Living History, and Because He Could, a response to Bill’s My Life.

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Why isn’t The Edge of Love - the new movie about Dylan Thomas - being released in North America? Are these people crazy? Didn’t they realize Thomas was massive in the States thanks to his sold-out speaking tours in the early 1950s? There’s still a huge following for Thomas and I’m sure the film would do well here.

The UK is liking the movie complete with superstars Keira Knightley and Sienna Miller. We’ve put together a feature on Dylan Thomas to wet your whistle for the movie or torture you if you’re American or Canadian.

I also recommend this VW ‘night driving’ ad from Youtube where we can listen to Richard Burton reading Under Milk Wood. Great ad.

Sorry for the gremlins - we’re back and we’re going to post until we’re blue in the face today.

I don’t really hate anyone or anything as life is too short, but I’m very tempted to hate this blogger at The Guardian today. He hates secondhand books, so I should really stand up for the world’s secondhand book business as it clothes and feeds my family.

OK - let’s examine the facts. The blogger is called Chas Newkey-Burden. Chas, clearly a posh kid trying to be ’street’ by being Chas rather than Charles, is the author of Great Email Disasters and Paris Hilton: Life On The Edge. Ohhh - weren’t those two memorable tomes up for the Booker Prize last year? Oh no, I remember now, they were in the remainder pile. It will be a pleasure for AbeBooks to sell secondhand copies of Chas’ literary efforts but I think we’ll be lucky to shift them.

Long live secondhand books!

For everyone who enjoyed Richard’s article about Things Found in Books, you should read the comments from The Chronicle for Higher Education, who ran the story in their paper.
I think my favourite was the first one…

When I attended the same Univ that my Dad had 30 years earlier, he told me to go check out his dissertation. I did and found a $10 bill inside! I called him and told him. He had forgotten that — when he had recently earned his doctorate — he had placed that bill in the library’s copy of his dissertation, just to see if anyone ever read those things. 30 years later, it was still in there. I initialed it, replaced it, and returned the book.

… all I ever find are receipts, what have you found?

I’m a little late putting May’s list up, but better late then never!

1. Etudes à l’Eau-Forte by Francis Seymour Haden - $17,216
A collection of 25 etchings by Seymour Hayden. 24 of the plates depict the landscape around London, the Thames, Ireland and Wales and the final plate is a portrait of Thomas Haden. The text reproduces an article printed in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts by Philippe Burty and contains a catalogue of the etched work of Seymour Haden.

2. Grimms Fairy Tales by Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm - $11,388
A first edition, first issue copy of these famous fairy tales, includes 22 etched plates by George Cruikshank. Housed in clamshell box.

3. Atlas der Krystallformen by Victor Goldschmidt - $8500
A complete 18 volume treatise on modern mineralogy by the man considered to be the founder of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry, developer of the Goldschmidt Classification of elements.

4. Traité élémentaire de Chimie by Antoine-Laurent de Lavoisier - $7709
Second printing of Traité élémentaire de Chimie, which is considered to be the first modern chemistry Textbook created. Lavoisier has been called the father of modern chemistry and is credited with the introduction of the metric system and the law of conservation of mass.

5. The Library of Treasury of French Law by Laurent Bouchel - $6356
A digest of the laws of France put together in alphabetical order by the lawyer and French writer Laurent Bouchel in 1615.

6. English Etchings - A Collection of Original Etching - $5867
An 8 volume set of the English Etchings series of prints. A thorough survey of the etched work of English artists such as William Strang, James McNeill Whistler, Frank Short, Percy Thomas, Herbert Marshall, Robert Currie, Buxton Knight and Oliver Baker among othes.

7. The Four Books of Architecture by Andrea Palladio - $5844
A treatise by the Italian Renaissance architect widely considered to be one of the most influential people in the history of Western architecture. This was the first French edition (1640), which included woodcuts from the original Italian edition of 1570

8. A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf - $4950
A limited, signed, first edition copy of this 1929 essay on feminism.

9. The Collected Poems by D.H. Lawrence - $4893
A limited first edition, one of 100 numbered copies that were signed by Lawrence. This 1928 two volume collection comes with a cream dustjacket that is especially prone to wear, thus making fine copies highly desirable

If you haven’t already sign up to win a very nice bundle of books in our Summer Reading Contest.

You could win When You Are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris, Beijing Coma by Ma Jian , and The Monster of Florence by Douglas J. Preston.

And all you have to do is know which two countries David Sedaris lives in.

Last night I was in Vancouver where AbeBooks.com picked up an award at the BCTIA (British Columbia Technology Industry Association) awards. We won the “Leadership in Social Responsibility” category.

Social responsibility is an ideological theory that organisations have a responsibility to society, which they, indeed, do. I think it means how we behave as a company. How we treat people and how we interact within the community, or should I say communities. AbeBooks is part of the local community in Victoria on Vancouver Island, but we are also part of the local technology community, and also the communities of book readers and booksellers.

The staff here are extremely motivated to help good causes. Many people give to the United Way through direct desposits from their monthly pay checks. Others rappel down tall buildings and raise money for charity. We auction rare and collectible books on the site for causes like English PEN, Canada PEN and the United Way’s literacy fund.

The Washington Post reports one of Google’s co-founders is spending $35 million to become a space tourist and we already know Amazon’s Jeff Bezos is building his own space rocket.

So what do we spend our money on here at AbeBooks.com? Well, we splashed out on pizza the other lunch time.

So you went to see the Sex and the City movie at the weekend and now you are wondering about the love letters book that was featured. Carrie Bradshaw reads to her sweetheart, Big, from a book apparently entitled Love Letters ofGreat Men – this book does not exist even though the love letters contained within go on to play a prominent role within the movie’s plot.

A book called Love Letters of Great Men and Women: From The Eighteenth Century To The Present Day by CH Charles does exist. This is probably the book that inspired the SATC plotline. The book was originally published in London in 1924 by S. Paul & Co and was republished in March 2007 by Kessinger – a publishing house dedicated to breathing life into great books that should never have gone out-of-print.

I can assure lots of people are currently using the internet search engines to try and find the love letters book. I have never seen such interest in a book that does not exist.

Thousands of people tried to obtain one of the 300 limited edition copies offered by Penguin last week.

Designed by the high-end car manufacturer, each copy cost £750 or $1500, and sold out in minutes. Today, the first Bentley copy has appeared on AbeBooks.com offered by Pages of Boston - an excellent seller of modern first editions.

To remind you, the Bentley edition of Devil May Care is bound in Burnt Oak leather from an Italian tannery. The leather casing is stitched in the Bentley diamond pattern. The Bentley ‘Flying B’ adorns the front cover and spine. Each edition is individually identified by a number on a black lacquer machined aluminium plate. Each book block is die-cut with a car-shaped silhouette and into this die-cut hole is inserted a cast and polished 1:43 scale model of the modified R Type which Bond drove.

Nice.

While at the LA Times Festival of Books in April I was sorting through a box of used books. I picked up one and an airline boarding pass fell out. It was for a flight from Liberia to Texas. That’s interesting, I thought, who’d be flying from a war-ravaged west African country to the States - perhaps someone fleeing the turmoil for a new life? Who knows?

That boarding pass got me thinking about the objects found inside books. So we asked our booksellers what they had found inside books and received some amazing answers. Used booksellers spend hours going through books in order to catalogue their inventory in terms of pricing and creating an accurate description for their online listings.

Shopping lists, bus tickets, business cards and theatre tickets are just the boring stuff. The interesting things would be a diamond ring, a Mickey Mantle 1952 rookie baseball card, a baby’s tooth, a Christmas card signed by Frank Baum, some original handwritten poetry, and $40,000. Imagine opening a run-of-the-mill microwave cookbook and finding $40,000?

Enjoy the article.

Even though the headline writer can’t spell for toffee, a paper in Oregon profiles the owners of Second Chance Books - Steve and Dina Carter. They sell with AbeBooks and they used a book called ‘How To Start A Used Book Store’ as their inspiration.

Moving back to Dina’s hometown of Salem from Santa Barbara, Calif., in 1993, the Carters picked up a used book at a book sale and saw their future. The book, “How to Start a Used Book Store,” gave them plenty of tips, some valuable, some useless, as they pondered their plan…..