They range in scope from the broad-themed Biblio in Williamsburg, which is simply a book-themed eatery, to more specific culinary-cum-literary adventure spots such as Club Verne, a wonderfully weird-looking Jules Verne-themed restaurant found in Budapest, Hungary. Or if you’re feeling like you need a change (get it? change? metamorphosis?), check out Cafe Kafka, found in Barcelona, Spain. I’d love to make it a bucket-list goal to visit as many of these places as possible.

I think my favorite may be Alice in Magic World, found in Tokyo Japan. Sometimes, one craves a little taste of the surreal. I can only imagine the food and beverage menus are headed with “Eat me” and “Drink me”.

Via Flavorwire.

AbeBooks is all about the business of books, including book-related ephemera: in this case, art. Many authors have tried their hand at drawing or painting, and many artists and illustrators drew and painted long before they became successful or famous. To the lucky collector who finds one, nothing is more priceless or precious than a unique and irreplaceable piece of artwork by a much-admired hand.

Watercolor and pencil, sketches and doodles, each of the pieces below is a rare and unique treasure, waiting to become the crown jewel in a beloved collection. From Arthur Rackham and Dr. Seuss to Edward Gorey and e.e. cummings, enjoy the skill and beauty of original art.

Original Artwork from Famous Folks

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.

This is a unique reading list – these books were all written by librarians and most of them were recommended to us by librarians. If any profession is well qualified to write books then librarians truly fit the bill.

Librarians are loyal customers of AbeBooks and we tend to listen when they speak. But it was interesting to see so many librarians recommend Casanova’s autobiography – were they trying to tell us something? This famous Italian adventurer and lover was a librarian in the household of the German nobleman Count Waldstein. The authors on this list range from the top dogs at the Library of Congress to folks who have worked at the national libraries of Argentina, France and Sweden, and people who have checked books in and out at public and school libraries.

We decided to exclude Chairman Mao and his Little Red Book. This one-time librarian at Peking University is perhaps the most widely read of all librarians who wrote but it was under extraordinary circumstances (although it is now thought the book was ghostwritten). Our featured book (pictured at left) is Hemlock and After by Angus Wilson, illustrated by Ronald Searle, and was a bestseller in 1952. Wilson was a librarian in the British Museum.

Librarian Lit

Star Man’s Son
Andre Norton

A post-apocalyptic tale from 1952 – Norton was a librarian in Cleveland and the Library of Congress.

Books in My Baggage
Lawrence C. Powell

Clark Powell was a librarian at UCLA and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

Jill
Philip Larkin

Larkin was a librarian at the University of Hull. Jill is a novel about life in Oxford during WWII.

A Winter’s Love
Madeleine L’Engle

L’Engle was a volunteer librarian in New York. A scarce novel about a troubled marriage.

Collected Poems
Marianne Moore

This modernist poet, noted for her wit, worked in the New York Public Library in the 1920s.

Higher Power of Lucky
Susan Patron

Patron won a Newbery Award for this children’s book. She worked at the Los Angeles Public Library.

The Feud
Thomas Berger

A novel about conflict in small town 1930s America – Berger was a librarian and journalist.

The Wild Old Wicked Man
Archibald MacLeish

MacLeish, Librarian of Congress from 1939-1944, was also a playwright, journalist, lawyer & statesman.

The Giant’s House
Elizabeth McCracken

Written by a former public librarian, this novel (about a librarian) was a National Book Award nominee.

The Mouse & the Motorcycle
Beverly Cleary

Cleary worked as a children’s librarian in Yakima, Washington, before writing children’s books.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee
Dee Brown

An agriculture librarian at the University of Illinois, Brown’s 1971 book remains a non-fiction classic.

Ill-Starred Captains
Anthony J. Brown

Brown was a former librarian from the State Library of South Australia.

Dr Brodie’s Report
Jorge Luis Borges

Borges was a director of Argentina’s National Public Library. This is a collection of 11 short stories.

Miss Julie
August Strindberg

Strindberg worked for eight years as an assistant librarian at Sweden’s National Library.

Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant
Anne Tyler

This novel was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Tyler is a former librarian and bibliographer.

Out Stealing Horses
Per Petterson

An ex-librarian & a bookseller, Petterson’s novel was one of the NY Times’ books of the year in 2007.

Story of the Eye
Georges Bataille

Histoire de L’Oeil is a controversial novel from 1928. Bataille was an archivist at France’s National Library.

Vertical Poetry
Roberto Juarroz

Juarroz was head of Bibliotechnology & Informational Science at the University of Buenos Aires.

Bachelor Brothers’ Bed and Breakfast
Bill Richardson

This Canadian is a Master of Library Science. This book won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humor.

The Legate’s Daughter
Wallace Breem

Breem was a legal manuscripts librarian in London – this novel is a Roman kidnap adventure.

Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!
Laura Amy Schlitz

A novel set in medieval England in 1255. Schiltz is a school librarian in Maryland.

Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer

A true bookperson, Shaffer worked as a librarian but also in bookselling and publishing.

Story of My Life
Giacomo Casanova

This great lover was a librarian in Count Waldstein’s household where he wrote his autobiography.

Chewing the Scenery
Davina Elliott

Davina worked for London’s Westminster Libraries and still volunteers at St James’s Library.

From informational texts like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (The DSM) to autobiographies, to fiction, there is a fascinating array of books about mental illness to delve into. This list is just the beginning.

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

Perhaps the most entertaining thing about the award is that the books themselves are not necessarily wacky, it is often the case the books content is quite serious.  Case in point is the 1992 winner How to Avoid Huge Ships, which describes proper tactics for small water craft captains who wish to learn improved evasive action tactics.

Which brings us to the 2013 Diagram Prize Shortlist

• Was Hitler Ill? by Henrik Eberle and Hans-Joachim Neumann
• How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical & Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening for Writers, Artists, Contractors, Flange Turners, Anglesmiths, & Civil Servants by David Rees
• God’s Doodle: The Life and Times of the Penis by Tom Hickman
• Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop by Reginald Bakeley
• How Tea Cosies Changed the World by Loani Prior
• Lofts of North America: Pigeon Lofts by Jerry Gagne

Each edition of The Saturday Book provides a wonderful glimpse into the culture that shaped a nation with contributions from some very talented individuals. Readers were treated to short stories, poetry and art from the likes of Evelyn Waugh, P.G. Wodehouse, Graham Greene, Siegfried Sassoon, John Masefield, Cecil Beaton, Edward Ardizzone and Robert Gibbings. The books were designed for casual reading and contained both serious and frivolous content with real English flare.

Copies of The Saturday Book are fairly easy to find but the early volumes are scarcer partly due to the more rapid deterioration of the thinner wartime paper used between 1942 and 1945. Reading copies can be picked up less than $20.

A Selection of Saturday Books

Saturday Book 6

Saturday Book 7

Saturday Book 9

Saturday Book 10

Saturday Book 11

Saturday Book 12

Saturday Book 13

Saturday Book 14

Saturday Book 15

Saturday Book 16

Saturday Book 17

Saturday Book 18

Saturday Book 19

Saturday Book 20

Saturday Book 21

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Saturday Book 23

Saturday Book 24

Saturday Book 25

Saturday Book 26

Saturday Book 27

Saturday Book 28

Saturday Book 29

Saturday Book 30

AbeBooks.com top 10 Bestselling Books

AbeBooks Top 10 Bestselling Signed Books
1. Tenth of December by George Saunders
2. Pastoralia by George Saunders
3. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
4. My Beloved World by Sonia Sotomayor
5. Maximized Manhood by Edwin Louis Cole
6. Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
7. Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain
8. The World until Yesterday by Jared Diamond
9. 3:16 The Numbers of Hope by Max Lucado
10. The Third Bullet by Stephen Hunter