AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Louis Wain was a British artist in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, best known for his whimsical and chaotic drawings of cats. If you’ve come across any of Wain’s art, you know it’s memorable. The cats and kittens are depicted with large, wide eyes, often with crazy, spiky fur, and with psychedelic patterns [...]

The Perogy Cat was born in 2003, which makes today his 10th birthday. If you want to be specific, it is the 10th anniversary of the first Perogy Cat drawing by Gareth Gaudin. If you just went: “what?” and enjoy comics, here’s a thing you might like to know about. Gareth Gaudin arrives at his [...]

In 2010, I was lucky enough to visit Key West, Florida. A wonderful escape from Canadian winter. While there, I spent an enjoyable couple of hours touring the grounds and house of Ernest Hemingway’s Key West Home, where Hemingway lived from 1931 until 1939 with his second wife (of four!), Pauline. We were certainly enchanted [...]

When is the last time you stopped by the Weird Book Room for a fix of literary oddities? Here’s a little something for you: these images are just a drop in the bucket of the many strange and fanciful photographs found in the weird book Why Paint Cats by Burton Silver and Heather Busch. There [...]

This lucky cat contemplating his next great read is Henry. Henry is one of two fur-acious readers from David Mason Books in Toronto, Ontario. David Mason Books has been in business for 40 years and is home to over 60,000 books, including 19th century British and American literature, modern first editions, Canadian literature, science, travel [...]

The cover of this vintage children’s book caught my eye. You can see why: It’s an 1860 children’s book called Mee-a-ow! Or, Good Advice to Cats and Kittens by Robert Michael (R.M.) Ballantyne. Ballantyne was a 19th-century Scotsman who lived in Canada and worked for the early Hudson’s Bay Company. He was an incredibly prolific [...]

Have you heard of Harry Whittier Frees? Born in 1879, Frees was an American photographer who became well-known for his recognizable and unusual style of photography. Specifically, he posed animals in human scenarios – riding bicycles, painting on easels, sitting in a ferris wheel at the fair. Real, live animals, which he also dressed in [...]