Walking into an antiquarian bookshop is a bit like opening a treasure chest; you never know what you are going to find and there are always hidden gems. I love knowing that I can walk into these stores and find something that I know has had a long and interesting life and belonged to people that cared enough to preserve and share them.

One of the shops I visited was Argosy Books in midtown Manhattan. Argosy Books was founded in 1925 and is now in its third generation of family ownership. There are books on the shelves, books in stacks and piled on tables. All combined with great lighting and small pops of colour from flowers placed throughout the store to make you feel instantly comfortable and welcome.

Argosy specializes in Americana, modern first editions, autographs, art, maps & prints and books about the history of science and medicine. If those aren’t up your alley, you will also find many other books in a wide variety of topics and with a wide variety of prices. If you have the time and you’re in New York, Argosy is definitely a store you should visit.

Another shop I visited was the Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore on Madison Avenue. This store evolved from The Complete Traveller Bookstore which was the first travel bookstore in the US. As the name states, this shop specializes in collectible travel literature and has one of the best collections of authentic Baedeker travel guides. Baedekers are considered to be the first modern travel guides and can be easily identified by their distinct red cover. The books were treasured for their detailed historic accounts and the many fold out maps they contain.

This is a unique and specialized shop and definitely worth a visit if you love travel, history and culture.

No visit to New York is complete for me until I visit The Strand. Strand never disappoints and I always walk away with at least one, well really several books. This time I came home with something for my children, but I love it too: This is New York by Miroslav Sasek. We love these books in my house and have many others in the This Is…. series.

Most people know that Strand is a great place to go for affordable books, but it also has a fantastic Rare Book Room. Hop in the elevator and go up to the 3rd floor, and you’ll walk into a room filled with lovely old books, many of which can be found on AbeBooks.

Strand also has many affordable and collectible signed first editions. The day of my visit, they were getting ready for a book signing and talk with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Junot Diaz, discussing his newest book This is How You Lose Her.

Bookstores in New York offer a slice of history and small pieces of beauty that will draw you in and make you love books even more.

Guest post compliments of Maria Hutchison, AbeBooks Account Manager for our rare and collectible segment.

Our latest video is brought to you by the letter P: Penguin, Puffin, Ptarmigan, Peacock and Pelican – apparently not even all of the “P-birds” in the Penguin pantheon. It also sheds some light on the different colored covers on the vintage Penguin paperbacks you no doubt come across in bookstores. Orange, cerise, dark blue, green, red, purple – even yellow and grey, though they’re scarce – all had meaning behind the color choices. And light blue means the Pelican imprint – but what does THAT mean? Watch and find out.

In honor of the anniversary, Flavorwire put together a slideshow of (to their minds) The 25 Books Every Kid Should Have on Their Bookshelf. Here is the list they came up with:

1. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
3. The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill
4. The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsburg
5. Matilda by Roald Dahl
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
7. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
8. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
9. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
10. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
11. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
12. Half Magic by Edward Eager
13. Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
14. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
15. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
16. Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
17. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
18. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
19. The Giver by Lois Lowry
20. The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
21. The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
22. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
23. Lizard Music by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
24. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
25. Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

Which of those do you agree or disagree with? What do you think they missed? For more great suggestions for children’s books, be sure to look at 30 Books for a Six-Year-Old, and 50 Books for an Eleven-Year-Old.

Some of the winners included:
Doors in the Air by David Weale - Children (tie)
Everyone Eats by Julia Kuo – Children (tie)
Handfuls of Bone by Monica Kidd – Poetry
Love and the Mess We’re In by Stephen Marche - Fiction
Little Black Lies: Corporate & Political Spin in the Global War for Oil by Jeff Gailus - Non-fiction (tie)
The Energy of Slaves: Oil and the New Servitude by Andrew Nikiforuk – Non-fiction (tie)

Artist Sharm Murugiah has taken nine Quentin Tarantino films drawn up what their covers might have looked like if they were Penguin paperbacks… I love it.

Imagine making a Secret Garden, with nooks and crannies tucked away. Or have a wardrobe door opening into the snowy wonderland of Narnia. Perhaps a giant chessboard, for Wizard Chess, a la Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In their own words:

Literary Lots is a program that ‘brings books to life’ in vacant lots in Cleveland. Working with the Cleveland Public Libraries and LAND Studio, Literary Lots will transform 2 to 4 vacant lots adjacent to libraries into six-week summer program spots for children in inner-city Cleveland. Between June and August 2013, local artists will use themes from specific children’s books to re-create places, concepts, or adventures from the book, creating a magical and educational space to engage local youth in art and culture. Working with other local non-profits and cultural institutions, the artists will bring engaging programming to youth right in their neighborhoods. The result: a transformative experience that combines creative land re-use, artist engagement, youth education and urban renewal.

It seems what books are represented/created will depend in part upon being granted copyright permissions. I hope they have little in the way of hurdles around that, as it’s such a wonderful idea for unused space. I would have been bonkers for something like that as a kid.

Learn more about Literary Lots (or donate, if you’re inclined)!

Achebe wrote novels, poetry and essays, and is most famous for his first novel Things Fall Apart, published in 1958. Things Fall Apart has sold more than 10 million copies and is one of the great novels of the 20th century. The title is taken from a WB Yeats poem and the colonial-themed plot concerns the arrival of white men in a rural village. He wrote the book in English but was widely criticised in Africa for doing so.

Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease and Arrow of God are sometimes described as The African Trilogy.

Born in 1930, The author won the Commonwealth poetry prize for his collection Christmas in Biafra. He was a finalist for the 1987 Man Booker prize for Anthills of the Savannah, and he won 2007 Man Booker international prize. In 1975, he famously called Joseph Conrad “a bloody racist.”

Things Fall Apart is the most widely read African book of all time and it has been translated into around 50 languages.

Achebe was a professor of Africana studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, until his death. He left Nigeria in 1990 after a car accident left him paralysed from the waist down and moved to the US.

You may notice that the top book on that last one is H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds – Edward Gorey did the cover for a 1960 edition of the book.

The Brainpickings blog has a post which gives a glimpse to see some of Gorey’s illustrations inside the book as well:

Definitely worth checking out – they are as dark and creepy as one would expect, but more devoid of whimsy than most of Gorey’s work, too. I’ve actually never read The War of the Worlds, and now that there are affordable reprints of the Gorey edition, I think I’ll pick up one of those.

A Song of Fire and Ice Box Set

Fans of George R.R. Martin love the author for his amazing attention to detail within his vast storylines; what they don’t love, is having to wait several years between books.  This isn’t to say his fans are unappreciative – I assume most understand that quality craftsmanship takes time.  It’s more that they’ve been accustomed to a certain quality in their fantasy writing, and darn it all they want more.

George R.R. Martin has now become the victim of his own success.  I am sure he loves that his fans are clamoring for more of his writing, but it has almost gotten to the point where some fans are annoyed with him doing anything else other than writing his books – such as writing his blog, promoting his books, or cooking breakfast.

So as an act of kindness, or perhaps to get the heat off his back, Martin recently wrote a list of book recommendations for his fans who are in need of further distraction while waiting for the next installment of his A Song of Ice and Fire series.  His main suggestion was for The Accursed Kings series by French author Maurice Druon, which is a seven-volume series that is finally being translated in its entirety into English; Martin has just written the introduction to the first volume: The Iron King.

For his other suggestions I’ll skip over the classic fantasy mentions, as we discuss the likes of Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and Jack Vance fairly frequently.  For contemporary fantasy Martin suggests Daniel Abraham (The Long Price Quartet & The Dagger and the Coin), Scott Lynch’s Locke Lamora series, Joe Abercrombie’s Best Served Cold and The Heroes, as well as Patrick Rothfuss novels.  Martin also throws in a few historical fiction plugs for Thomas B. Costain (The Black Rose and The Silver Chalice), as well as authors Howard Pyle, Frank Yerby, Rosemary Hawley Jarman and of course George McDonald Fraser whose character: “that cad and bounder Harry Flashman, swashed and buckled in every major and minor war of the Victorian era.”  

I don’t get around to Martin’s blog  very often, but it’s always a fun read when I do.  He’s very outspoken and a bit of a curmudgeon, but in a fun way, so I do recommend bookmarking the link. 

For additional Martin reading, you can check out a short interview with George R.R. Martin AbeBooks conducted a few years back.

Last year I read Heat (as did my colleague Richard) by Bill Buford, a former columnist for The New Yorker.  Bradford goes to work in the kitchen of a restaurant owned by celebrity chef Mario Batali and learns the extreme nature of high end commercial cooking.  I felt this book perfectly captured what a food memoir should be:  the day in and day out slog of working in a commercial kitchen mixed with an exotic adventure to learn the roots of your craft all told with well-crafted prose.  Find Heat, and 49 more Food Memoirs in our list of the…

The Fifty Best Food Memoirs