Reading Copy Book Blog

Today is National Poetry day in the UK so in honor of that here’s a round-up of poetry news.

Sean O’Brien wins 3rd straight Forward Prize

The Guardian’s Poem of the week is back

Ginsberg: 50 years later more obscene than ever

Profile on Canadian poet Peter Sanger

On Monday Oct. 8th Powells in Portland is holding a I Am America (And You Can Too!) launch party at Blitz, a bar across the street from Powell’s downtown store. The party kicks off at 11 p.m. with flat-screen TVs in the two-level bar tuned in to the Daily Show with Jon Stewart, followed by the Colbert Report at 11:30. At the midnight conclusion of Colbert’s program, you can pick up a copy of the new book.

It’s that time again, help fight Big Brother and pick up something controversial

The “10 Most Challenged Books of 2006” reflect a range of themes, and consist of the following titles:

“And Tango Makes Three” by Justin Richardson and Peter Parnell for homosexuality, anti-family, and unsuited to age group;
“Gossip Girls series” by Cecily Von Ziegesar for homosexuality, sexual content, drugs, unsuited to age group, and offensive language;
“Alice series” by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor for sexual content and offensive language;
“The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things” by Carolyn Mackler for sexual content, anti-family, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
“The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison for sexual content, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
“Scary Stories series” by Alvin Schwartz for occult/Satanism, unsuited to age group, violence, and insensitivity;
“Athletic Shorts” by Chris Crutcher for homosexuality and offensive language;
“The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky for homosexuality, sexually explicit, offensive language, and unsuited to age group;
“Beloved” by Toni Morrison for offensive language, sexual content, and unsuited to age group; and
“The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier for sexual content, offensive language, and violence.

Off the list this year, but on for several years past, are the “Catcher in the Rye” by J.D. Salinger, “Of Mice and Men” by John Steinbeck and “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” by Mark Twain

Anyone living in or around Vancouver BC has the chance to meet a number of our charming staff this Sunday (Sept. 30) at the Word on the Street Festival.

AbeBooks will have two booths set up at the event. One for our website and the other for our Story Laboratory program where we teach kids to make their own book.

The festival is persevering though a continuing civic strike which was threatening this year’s event.

September is New Zealand Book Month. This is a month dedicated not only to get more New Zealanders reading but reading more books by authors from New Zealand.

AbeBooks is celebrating this month with our friends from Down Under.  For our next book, the Avid Reader Book Club will read a novel written by a New Zealander. But which one?! We’ve got a selection of three titles but we’re open to votes! Please see the choices on our Book Club page and follow the voting links to submit your vote.

I’m sure many of you remember the online charity auction we staged in conjunction with Penguin last December. We sold four special editions of books redesigned by famous designers and raised $13,000 for English PEN - a charity that supports the rights of authors and freedom in literature.

Well, we’ve teamed up with Penguin again and this time we’re going to be auctioning a one-of-a-kind collection of 14 signed novels - all of them recent bestsellers such as Zadie Smith’s White Teeth, Zoe Heller’s Notes On A Scandal and Nick Hornby’s How To Be Good. Once again, English Pen will receive all proceeds.

Penguin is reissuing 36 bestsellers in its famous retro striped cover designs on September 6 and it has taken the 14 modern fiction books from the series and got each one signed by the respective author. We’ll be selling them in a single lot.

The auction will be conducted on AbeBooks.com and AbeBooks.co.uk. It begins on Thursday 6 September and concludes on Tuesday 11 September at 1pm EST. The collection of signed books will not be available again.

The signed novels are:
Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
How To Be Good by Nick Hornby
The Accidental by Ali Smith
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Any Human Heart by William Boyd
How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff
English Passengers by Matthew Kneale
Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller
Regeneration by Pat Barker
A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
The Impressionist by Hari Kunzru
What a Carve Up! By Jonathan Coe
The Other Side of the Story by Marian Keyes
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction by Sue Townsend

That’s a pretty decent group of writers - a set of signed books worthy of any collector’s bookshelf. I particularly loved English Passengers and White Teeth. Let’s hope we can once again raise a decent sum of money.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of On The Road, AbeBooks.com has just posted an interview with Tom Peters, who runs the Beat Book Shop in Boulder. It’s been many years since I read On The Road but there are clearly many people still fascinated by the book’s style and its non-stop narrative. Tom’s knowledge of the Beat Generation is second to none - he’s certainly keeping the Beatnik flame burning in his corner of Colorado.

Although first editions of On The Road are in demand, the most collectible Kerouac book is The Town and the City - his debut novel. Tom is asking $25,000 for a signed copy - that’s not that much considering that ‘the scroll’ (the single piece of paper that Kerouac used to type out On The Road) sold for $2.3 million.

You might also be interested to an excerpt from an interview with Jack Kerouac himself from a 1968 edition of The Paris Review. It sounds like a crazy, mad-cap interview straight out of On The Road itself. Perhaps Kerouac’s whole life was like that? It sounds like once On The Road became a massive hit that the author was bugged to death by would-be travellers looking for inspiration from the man turned his back on white-picket fence America.

The novel adaptation of Snakes on a Plane has won a Scribe Award, given for the best adaptations and licensed spin-off books linked to media properties.

Other winners included Superman Returns, The most recent Buffy novel, and Donald Bain won the grandmaster award for keeping the Murder, she Wrote hit machine chugging along!

The awards were given out at this past weekends San Diego Comic Con.

Your last chance to win a pair (2) weekend passports to the Steinbeck Festival and two night’s accommodation at a hotel just a stone’s throw from the action. The contest closes on Thursday so enter now!

The couple who won our last weekend getaway to the Nebula Awards had a great time, this could be your turn!

The Highfield Mole continues to be the hottest collectible book at AbeBooks.com. Yesterday, I asked if it was worth spending $1,000 on a copy. Clearly, the answer is ‘yes’ as the prices have risenly steeply today in the face of increasing demand from collectors. The highest priced copy is now $5,079. (Although this book could be sold by the time you read this.)

This morning, we sold a hardcover copy for $1,440 and cheaper copies have also been selling - I’m expecting more to sell overnight.

1984 by George Orwell has been picked via a poll taken by The Guardian as the definitive book of the 20th century.

I suppose it is just because they haven’t read 1985 yet!

Expected to open in 2009 at Universal Studios in Florida.  The Harry Potter theme park will feature a life sized Hogwarts Castle, Forbidden Forest and the village of Hogsmead among other attractions.

If you’re a super serious Harry Potter fan, or happen to live in London, JK has organized a midnight book signing at the Natural History Museum in London on July 21. Those wishing to attend can apply for free tickets via Bloomsbury’s website.

A total of 1,700 will be chosen and all of them will get a free copy of The Deathly Hallows and have it signed by Rowling.

The first 500 randomly selected winners will also be invited to attend a midnight reading of the book by the author.

*UPDATE*
P.S. - For North American fans Scholastic added a contest giving 7 fans airfare and three nights in London to attend this event. Catch to this one is you must be UNDER 21 years of age.

NY Writers Coaliton is looking for volunteers for its 2nd annual Write-A-Thon, an all day writing session. You need to raise $100 or more to enter but there are prizes to the top fundraisers.

The anniversary is on May 25th and as anyone who has signed up for the Science Fiction and Fantasy newsletter knows we did a feature on Star Wars books to celebrate.  Well, I just found out today that BBC Radio Two is also celebrating on May 18th and 25th as well, with a two part series on the music from the films.