Reading Copy Book Blog

The image on the left is from an 1802 book called Histoire naturelle generale et particulière des Mollusques by Denys Montfort. The image on the right is one I came across today, from 2004, listed as original children’s book art by Tom Leonard, and called Mysterious Giant Squid. The Kraken hasn’t changed much in 202 [...]

This is the way this poem should always sound. Goosebumps. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. ” ‘Tis some visitor,” [...]

Reading Copy has a sister. AbeBooks has just launched a new blog called Pages & Proofs for our AbeBooks.co.uk site, which serves our British customers. I’m handling most of the blogging on Pages & Proofs and I promise to make it the same but different to Reading Copy. It will be the same in that [...]

Former Newsday columnist Mike McGrady has died of pneumonia. McGrady was most famous as being the leader of a group of 24 prominent journalists (19 men, 5 women), who in 1966 set out to prove that the minds and tastes of the American people, when it came to culture consumption, had become tasteless and vulgar. [...]

We have a guest writer today – bookseller Peter Thackeray describes the legacy of the author who helped launch the espionage fiction genre with The Thirty-Nine Steps. John Buchan published more than 25 novels and yet he had a remarkable life away from writing that included being a Member of Parliament and Governor-General of Canada. [...]

There’s a lot of talk of wild things around the office here, today, and talk of curdmudgeons and cantankerousness, love of animals and children. Maurice Sendak, who has passed away at age 83, had a notable effect on books, and people who love books, like us. A famously blunt, outspoken and excitable grump, he always [...]

This is Morgan Freeman in approximately 1971 as “Easy Reader” – a literacy-promoting character on The Electric Company, a children’s television show in the 1970s. Amazing. Words fail me, so I will let the video speak for itself. “Top to bottom and left to right, readin’ stuff is… outta sight!” “What I’m needin’….is somethin’ for [...]

I love when booksellers take advantage of this feature on the site that allows users to supply multiple images for one listing. It’s an excellent way to better showcase a book – not only the cover, but also details of any damage, the copyright page, any special features of the book, illustrations, and of course, [...]

We urge fans of AbeBooks, and books in general, to take a look at the AbeBooks’ Tumblr – Bookorithms. It is devoted to beautiful, notable and rare books. Bookorithms is a very visual journey through our sort of books – famous first editions, memorable dust jackets, beautiful bindings, eye-catching illustration and obscure but interesting books [...]

Stephen King wants to pay more tax – and wants his fellow ultra-rich elite members to do the same.