Galleycat alerted me to The Composites – a Tumblr – dedicated to police sketches of literary characters. It’s definitely my site of the day. Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon, Keith Talent from London Fields, Edward Rochester (above) from Jane Eyre, Pinkie Brown from Brighton Rock, Emma from Madame Bovary….
I had to laugh watching this take-off of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s early nineties rap hit “Baby Got Back”. It’s called “I Like Big Books”, and it was done by the staff and students at Dowell Middle School of the McKinney school district in Texas. It’s over a year old now, but this is the first I’ve seen it, and it definitely made me smile. I especially liked the school librarians blowing imaginary smoke off their barcode scanners. Kudos to all involved – what a fun video.
Here at AbeBooks Headquarters, we occasionally step away from our bubbling beakers to read books. And we’ve all noticed a disturbing trend throughout classic literature.
Many of the so-called “classics” are entirely devoid of cats. I know.
Cats and books go together like bees and honey. So we took it upon ourselves to properly “Catify” some of the classics. We bring you, the joy of Kitty Lit. Cats on classic covers!
We’ve gotten a great start with The Great Catsby, A Tale of Two Kitties, Lord of the Fleas and more. And our talented group of Design wizards worked their magic to create newer, cat-centric classic covers as well, to lend some gorgeous visuals to our catification. Enjoy, share with your friends, and if you have an idea for another cat-centric book title, please leave it in the comments!
…and just in time for Santa Claws!
…sorry. I hope that doesn’t cause any hissy-fits. Ooh, there’s another. Sorry. Don’t get furryous. Whoops. Don’t worry, I’m at the tail end of this post…
…about our pet project.
..Sorry.
…No need to be catty.
Danny, one of the database guys at AbeBooks, has carved this lovely pumpkin featuring the AbeBooks’ book-bird logo.
The November 2011 issue of Which? Magazine has just been published in the UK and it carries an in-depth review of the UK’s online shopping sites. If you don’t know Which?, it’s the UK’s leading consumer protection organization and highly respected for its work in consumer affairs.
Which? surveyed 14,671 of its members about their online shopping habits and asked them to rate the best and the worst internet retailers.
The top five overall sites, according to the survey, are (along with customer scores out of 100)
1 Lizearle.com (92)
2 Johnlewis.com (89)
3 Amazon.co.uk (87)
4 = AbeBooks.co.uk (86)
4 = Lakeland.co.uk (86)
Here is some copy from the article:
“A good stock of items was also mentioned by several AbeBooks customers. ‘Its choice of books is truly impressive and descriptions of titles are always accurate. A very reliable service all round.
“One member said: ‘Having an alert to know when a rare book becomes available is really good – the World War I book I wanted became available in California, and was shipped to me speedily, and at a reasonable cost.”
Congratulations to all our booksellers for helping AbeBooks.co.uk become such a highly rated website within the UK. Books from booksellers all over the world are purchased by British customers via AbeBooks.co.uk on a daily basis and very high standards of service are being maintained.
A lot of very famous brands trailed way behind AbeBooks.co.uk in the Which? poll and customer satisfaction is always the most effective measurement of a website’s worth.
Vancouver-based author William Gibson is profiled by The Guardian and once again we hear the story of how he invented the word ‘cyberspace.’
It first appeared in a short story by Gibson for the July 1982 edition of a science fiction magazine that no longer exists.
“The first thing I did was to sit down with a yellow pad and a Sharpie and start scribbling – infospace, dataspace. I think I got cyberspace on the third try, and I thought, oh, that’s a really weird word. I liked the way it felt in the mouth – I thought it sounded like it meant something while still being essentially hollow.”
Surely, he seen the cybermen on Doctor Who and they were the real inspiration. Cybermen have been causing havoc since 1966. Also the Cybermat was damned scary – see The Tomb of the Cybermen.
First editions of Gibson’s Neuromancer (published in 1984) are super expensive (but Doctor Who paperbacks are not).
Earlier this week, I met a couple of lovely ladies from a website called Fabric.com. This website, well…, sells fabric on the Internet and they’ve been doing it for a long time. My initial feeling was ‘that’s great but we’ve got nothing in common’ and then I did a few searches on their site, and started to change my mind.
Did you know there are fabrics featuring designs by some of the biggest names in books and illustration?
There’s Beatrix Potter’s Flopsy Bunny, Eric Carle’s Hungry Caterpillar and lots of Dr Seuss designs.
How fantastic would it be to create a homemade Cat in the Hat quilt or a Thing One, Thing Two cushion?
And you can buy this stuff by the yard? “I’ll have seven yards of Cat in the Hat please.”
Fabric.com should consider adding more classic book covers to their selection – The Catcher in the Rye, Casino Royale, Atlas Shrugged or anything from our 50 iconic book covers feature? They’d go down a storm with needleworking booklovers. (I also found some clever soul, who is clearly flogging is Edward Gorey-inspired fabrics.)
Book people might seem like calm, mild-mannered and reasoned folks, but never make them angry. Books and reading are sacred to these people and the whole ‘I Hate Reading’ Facebook page (and I’m not going to link to it) debacle has stirred up a hornet’s nest.
It appears someone has taken my advice from earlier this month and indeed created an ‘I Hate The I Hate Reading’ Facebook page. Well done to that person and to everyone who is liking and leaving positive comments on the page. Get liking!
In case you missed our reply to the ‘I Hate Reading’ Facebook page, here is another opportunity to watch our ‘Long Live the Book’ video which illustrates all the wonderful aspects of books and reading. And thanks from AbeBooks to everyone for all the kind words about this video.
And to cap off a great week of plunging share prices and riots on the streets, there is a ‘I Hate Reading’ Facebook page with 438,544 likes. Somebody should set up the ‘I Hate the I Hate Reading Page’ page on Facebook. (I know hate is a strong word and my mother told me never to use it, but they started this – although I like to think these people just haven’t found the right book yet.)
Here is the official AbeBooks.com reply to the ‘We Hate Reading’ Facebook page – it’s a video entitled Long Live the Book created by Lindsay Thompson. We love this video and Lindsay did an amazing job – she even wrote and performed the soundtrack. We love reading, we love books.
Strange things ARE afoot at the Circle K. Keanu Reeves, the actor who brought us cinematic greats like Speed, Speed 2, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey and Johnny Mnemonic* continues to give back to the world, this time with a book of poetry titled Ode To Happiness.
The New York Daily News explains that “Ode To Happiness” is a collection of inkblot paintings — which purposely look like they’ve been blurred by tears — and accompanying depressing passages, like ‘I draw a hot sorrow bath’ and ‘In my despair room.’ The last line in the book is a black smudge with the words ‘It can always be worse.”
… before I get too carried away with the Keanu bashing (it’s just so much fun though, and he takes it so well) the book was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek as Reeves pokes fun at the “Sad Keanu” meme which had internet denizens photoshopping a pensive looking Reeves eating a sandwich into a myriad of famous photos.
*Really? A heroin addicted cyborg dolphin? Sometimes I think we give William Gibson too much credit.
I notice a lot of bloggers have already packed it in for Christmas. Part-timers! We’re still here and I’m back again tomorrow. The online bookselling business never sleeps – well, I do sleep but the machinery keeps on whirring and we do get orders on Christmas Day. I imagine they are from folks who thought they were getting a certain book (oohh, perhaps the Mark Twain autobiography) and were disappointed (oh, how lovely, Kardashian Konfidential by Kim Kardashian).
So today, we can offer you AbeBooks’ most expensive sales of 2010. We have the top 10 and also divided these big ticket purchases into several genres such as art, poetry, science and even books written by US presidents. It’s a fascinating list and shows that it was a bumper year for AbeBooks in terms of rare bookselling.
Over at the AbeBooks’ Facebook page, we have a contest to win a signed copy of The Swan Thieves by Elizabeth Kostova. Entering is super easy. Just ‘like’ our page and you will be entered into the draw.
This book was published in January 2010 and has been a regular on our bestselling signed books lists during the year. If you like The Historian by the same author then you will love this book.
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