AbeBooks' Reading Copy

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, [...]

Today’s gorgeous and unusual find is this hand-illuminated book. Not much appears to be known about it, but it’s just stunning (An illuminated manuscript is any manuscript whose text is accompanied by decoration. It originally referred only to silver or gilt adornments, but came to be acceptable terminology for any manuscript with drawings, paintings or [...]

In the publishing world, pelicans are related to penguins. Famous for affordable paperbacks, Penguin launched a non-fiction imprint called Pelican and published thousands of titles between 1937 and 1984. The first Pelican was George Bernard Shaw’s The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Socialism, Capitalism, Sovietism & Fascism, and today you will find these books in used [...]

You may have noticed that many of us here have a bookshelf fetish; always on the lookout for the most unique new design.  This isn’t to say that we have anything against the traditional six foot by three foot, four shelf standard but a secret door bookcase or a shelf that defies gravity are much more [...]

When I was in Atlanta, Georgia in October, our friends took us for dinner at Pizzeria Vesuvius (damn fine pizza). When I went to the bathroom towards the back of the restaurant, I saw there was a bookcase against one wall – which then swung open, and a guy emerged. Behind the bookshelf was a [...]

Is there a more stylish, more dashing, more debonaire fictional character than James Bond? I think not. The spy we love to love, 007, took style to whole new heights from his clothes to his quotes to his drink preference. So it should come as no surprise that our favorite swoon-worthy spy has inspired the [...]

The latest AbeBooks video offering is a review and peek inside of the book Le Corbusier Le Grand, a stunning visual biography of the work and life of Swiss-French architect Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, more commonly known as Le Corbusier (an altered version of his maternal grandfather’s name).  Le Corbusier specialized in building solutions for exploding populations [...]

She’s not an author but an illustrator. Coralie Bickford-Smith‘s artwork for Penguin has been setting high standards in the publishing world. Her use of colour, patterns and eye-catching imagery is second to none. The works of John Buchan, Arthur Conan Doyle, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Jane Austen have never looked so good. Click through for [...]

I strongly dislike the vast majority of theatlanticwire‘s 25 Most Wonderful Book Covers of the Year, proving once again that art is artbitrary, and its value highly subjective. So I’m posting them, because you might love them, and someone clearly put some thought and work into the selection. Here are three covers that I did [...]

Via. I’ve posted before about how I love the upcycling and repurposing of old books. I understand how some people feel taken aback or even hurt when they see books turned into art, or furniture, or decor, but the reality is that those books, once decided they are no longer of value for their original [...]