Reading Copy

Nicole Peterson was inspired by Dante’s metaphorical use of mathematics and architecture when she designed this series of covers for The Divine Comedy. Hell has never looked better.

Popularity: 22% [?]

The Guardian on why Ian Fleming might be a bit low brow but is still a brilliant read

As the 100th anniversary of his birth approaches, it’s tempting to characterise Ian Fleming as The Man With The Golden Pen, as a calculatingly commercial author of absurd misogynistic fantasies. Even his own wife Ann icily described him as “hammering out pornography” when he spent his disciplined three-hours a day writing the books in their Jamaican home.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Last Saturday, The Guardian saluted Malcolm Bradbury’s The History Man - a fine, fine book. I read it not long after seeing the BBC’s 1981 adaption that starred Anthony Sher. The story of Howard Kirk and 1970s campus life is described as a modern classic by David Hodge, the article’s author.

Popularity: 17% [?]

The Times (of London) has the best and worst quotes from the literary world in 2007.

“Oh, Christ. You can’t go on getting excited every year about this. I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one.” Doris Lessing’s response on being told she had won the Nobel prize for literature

Popularity: 16% [?]

Our colleagues at BookFinder.com have released their annual list of the top 10 most-sought after out-of-print books of 2007. It focusses on the important things in life - sex, knitting and football.

1) Once a Runner (1978) by John L. Parker, Jr.; cult classic distance running novel (long-awaited sequel, Again to Carthage, released November)

2) Football Scouting Methods (1962) by Steve Belichick; legendary college football scout’s playbook, used by coaches and players

3) Sex (1992) by Madonna; the pop icon’s book of erotic photos, a perennial favorite

4) Promise Me Tomorrow (1984) by Nora Roberts; early novel that the bestselling romance novelist refuses to reprint

5) The Lion’s Paw (1946) by Robb White; enduring children’s adventure story

6) The Principles of Knitting (1988) by June Hemmons Hiatt; ultimate indispensable hand knitting resource

7) Raven: The Untold Story of the Reverend Jim Jones and his People (1982) by Tim Reiterman; chronicles the inner workings which allowed the Peoples Temple to flourish

8) Aran Knitting (1997) by Alice Starmore; history and how-to about the Irish technique

9) One Way Up (1964) by John F. Straubel; history of helicopters and vertically rising aircraft

10) Dear and Glorious Physician (1959) by Taylor Caldwell; novel based on the life of Saint Luke

Popularity: 15% [?]

Tis the season to be scared out of your tree. If you want to sleep poorly this weekend AbeBooks.com Avid Readers have voted on the 10 scariest characters in literature of all time.

Is there anyone YOU would have put on the list instead?

Popularity: 26% [?]

The Guardian blogs today about Canadian literature, which is close to our heart at AbeBooks.com. Of course, there is much more than ‘Queen Margaret‘ but she is such a prolific writer and such an enthusiastic promoter that she gets all the headlines. The blogger fails to mention William Gibson, Douglas Coupland, Cory Doctorow, Douglas Glover, Yann Martel, WP Kinsella, Farley Mowat, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, Jane Urquhart, and the list goes on and on.

Recent AbeBooks.com interviews with Douglas Glover and Yann Martel

Popularity: 12% [?]

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

Popularity: 22% [?]

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.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Last week, in response to a diminishing presence of Australian authors in literary curriculum in Australia, a roundtable was hosted by The Australia Council of the Arts to further examine this issue.  Following the path set by last year’s History Summit which determined it was the right of young Australians to learn of the country’s past as recorded by historians, it was deemed their right to see that history through the imaginations of authors.

Lack of study of Australian literature in that country is also seen as a contributor to the demise of “cultural memory” and as a detriment to up-and-coming Australian authors.

Read more on the blog at The Australian.

Popularity: 23% [?]

It doesn’t get much better then these.

Popularity: 22% [?]

I’ll just leave this one for your comments…

Popularity: 17% [?]

Filed under “because we love you,” AbeBooks is offering up a pair of Weekend Passports to the Steinbeck Festival and two night’s stay (August 3&4) in a hotel just a stone’s throw away.

This year’s festival them is John Steinbeck and the 1960s - A Culture of Discontent, and takes place from August 2-5 in Salinas, California, the heart of Steinbeck Country.

All you have to do to enter is visit our Steinbeck Festival Contest page and tell us which Steinbeck novel began with the line “The Salinas Valley is in Northern California. It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay.”?

Contest closes July 26!

Popularity: 28% [?]

“With their thrift-store inspired clothes and abundant tattoos, they looked as if they could be filmmakers, Web designers, coffee shop purveyors or artists.”
New York Times explains why the librarian is no longer a “bespectacled women with a love of classic books and a perpetual annoyance with talkative patrons.”

Popularity: 11% [?]

From July 26-29, Byron Bay will become the centre of the Australian book and writing community as it hosts the 11th annual Byron Bay Writers Festival.

We had a little chat with the Festival director Jeni Caffin where she told us a little bit of what goes on at this great event.

Any Aussies that want to attend this three day event can enter our competition to win a three-day pass.

Keeping with the theme of the event, all you have to do to win is write book review for your favourite Australian author.

Popularity: 23% [?]