Reading Copy

What does the office of a book reviewer look like? Something like this - here’s where Frank Wilson, book editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer, spends his working hours.

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Andrew Keen, author of The Cult of the Amateur, thinks bloggers don’t read and the Internet is killing culture. How ironic I found this news story on the Internet. The Guardian gives him rather a lot of column inches.

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Dwight Garner’s book blog, Paper Cuts, on behalf of the New York Times book review continues to gather pace. It is a very good blog indeed - every post is interesting. Find out what Julia Powell, author of Julie and Julia, is doing in Argentina. Plus find out what links Hank Aaron, Lauren Bacall, Warren Beatty, Gene Kelly, Henry Mancini, Andy Williams and Rod Steiger.

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The excellent Bookride blog has two great posts on celebrity book collectors. I knew about a few of these - people like Whoopi Goldberg and Johnny Depp - from chatting to a few booksellers, but not folks like Jimmy Page and Keith Richards.

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I saw Dwight Garner, a editor from the NY Times book review, two weeks ago at Book Expo America when he appeared on a panel about blogs. He was representing the old traditional media in the debate and immediately mentioned that the book review staff often dreaded Mondays when they logged to see how the book bloggers had butchered their book reviews.

Guess what? Now the NY Times has a book blog - Paper Cuts. Surely, there is an ever so gentle stab at the purely-online book bloggers with the name of this blog?

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Fans of rare books will enjoy Bookride, a vibrant blog from Any Amount of Books on Charing Cross Road in London - lots of interesting information on collecting and pricing (and a sprinkling of humour too).

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Once again, we’re looking for people who have science fiction and fantasy books that they wanted valued? A few weeks ago, the Book Guys NPR show hosted a special on collecting sci-fi and fantasy books and several of our customers had books valued.

Well, the show was so successful that the Book Guys will be recording another show on Tuesday March 13 dedicated to sci-fi and fantasy so they can go even further into these two genres. So if you have a book that you want valued, please contact my colleague Scott Laming on slaming@abebooks.com

Include your name, phone number, and the book details. The show is recorded between 7pm and 9pm EST and you spend five minutes on the phone describing the book and where you found it before hearing how much it’s worth. It’s like the Antiques Roadshow for books on the radio and you don’t even have to leave home to get a book appraised.

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Apparently Myspace just launched a new comic book community, and the folks over at Mashable were discussing if this news would be the beginning of the end for the newly formed ComicSpace.  The battle for Web2.0 comic supremacy wages on.

In related news, Jessa at Bookslut tipped us off to The Nerve’s 20 comics that may change your life

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I love rhyming slang and I’m thinking of buying this book for a few of my Canadian colleagues. Why doesn’t North America introduce rhyming slang?

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