AbeBooks' Reading Copy

We thought we’d help put a little spring in your step this Friday morning, with these 11 dance books from times gone by – Charleston, Foxtrot, Waltz, Tango or even Black Bottom your way through your day today. Cha-cha-cha! (Some of these appear to be sheet music – be sure to read the description before [...]

What takes a first edition of The Great Gatsby from nice to priceless? Hint: It’s original, it’s celestial, and it’s gorgeous. Watch our video for Fitzgerald-fueled finery. Want to know more about F. Scott Fitzgerald and The Great Gatsby? Read our feature on this legend of literature, including an interview with an expert from The [...]

Move over, Superman – you’re not the only one who can perform a quick change in a telephone booth. According to the New York Times, an architectural designer from the Upper West Side is the real hero of this story. John H. Locke has devised a system by which he can quickly enter an empty [...]

Miroslav Sasek , who often published as M. Sasek, was a 20th-century Czech author and illustrator, best known for his This Is… series of children’s books. The series showed the sights, sounds and history of various regions of the world through the use of vibrant, colorful drawing and engaging, relatable writing. Published from 1959-1974, several [...]

Fannie Hurst (1889-1968) won over thousands of readers and also Hollywood’s movie moguls with her novels about working class women, and yet literary critics hammered her writing. More than 30 of her books were turned into films turning Hurst into a wealthy woman, but this author is unknown to most of today’s readers. Delve into [...]

For the weekend, I have something for dog lovers and can offer the first edition of Eric Knight’s Lassie Come Home from 1940. This copy above is lacking the dust jacket like so many books from more than 70 years ago. The John C Winston Company published the novel and Marguerite Kirmse was the illustrator. [...]

I was interested to read in The Telegraph earlier this week about a survey by the University of Worcester which asked 2,000 adults which books they would be most anxious to pass on and have their children read. The results demonstrated once more the strong ties of nostalgia to reading, with participants wanting to pass [...]

We at AbeBooks do so love a good literary letter. This 1917 example to Winston Churchill, written a year before the end of WWI, includes an early usage of “OMG”. It also includes a lot of exclamation marks. Lord Fisher (I assume naval fleet Admiral John Arbuthnot Fisher) was an enthusiastic writer, also seemingly randomly [...]

The Libraries at UC San Diego have a great archive up from when Dr. Seuss was in advertising, including many pieces I’d never seen before. The introduction: Before Theodore Seuss Geisel found fame as a children’s book author, the primary outlet for his creative efforts was magazines. His first steady job after he left Oxford [...]

Once again our good friends over at Amazon books have chosen 10 amazing books to read this month. It’s a good list so don’t delay in picking up your copy. From post-apocalyptic fiction to dog co-pilots to the science of sleep and a new novel from actress Molly Ringwald, find these titles and more. 1. [...]