Archive for the ‘video’ Category

AbeBooks shoots a cover of a romance novel

Monday, February 13th, 2012

Romance novel readers don’t have it easy. Already teased for reading the steamy tomes in the first place, they further have to deal with the humiliation of truly ghastly covers – tasteless and tawdry, garish and gaudy, these are lurid and cheesy enough to make someone wish for plain brown wrappers. But we say no more! We say embrace your love of reading, and your love of love! And in solidarity, we tried our hand at making some romance covers of our own – very family-friendly, of course. Enjoy the fruits of our labors.

Read more about the art of romance covers.

Understanding book sizes: octavo to elephant folio

Wednesday, February 8th, 2012

Books come in different shapes and sizes. They can be small or very big indeed. Quarto, duodecimo, octavo and elephant folio are just some of the terms you will hear used, and this video from my colleague Christi helps to demystify the jargon.

You can learn more about book sizes at the AbeBooks’ Book Collecting Guide.

Muhammad Ali’s Legendary Trainer Angelo Dundee Dies at 90

Thursday, February 2nd, 2012

Boxing Legend Angelo Dundee, who trained Muhammad Ali, Sugar Ray Leonard, George Foreman and countless other champions, died yesterday.

If the rumors are true, the first words Ali ever spoke to Dundee, upon meeting him for the first time, were:

“My Name is Cassius Marcellus Clay Jr. I’m the Golden Gloves champion of Louisville, Kentucky. I won the Pan American Games a month ago and I’m going to win the Olympics, and I want to talk to you.”

Dundee was with Ali, then known as Cassius Clay, for almost all of his early fights. He toured around the world with Ali, and became known as the best man to have in your corner during a fight.

He died of complications from a blood clot on Wednesday, February 1st, at age 90. But not before he attended Ali’s 70th birthday party, the month before, and caught up.

If you’d like to learn more about the career of Muhammad Ali, including his work and friendship with Angelo Dundee, the Taschen book Greatest of All Time (GOAT) is an unforgettable tribute, full of countless facts, anecdotes, articles, essays and some truly jaw-dropping photographs.

Howard Pyle’s Art: Pirates to Robin Hood

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

American author and illustrator Howard Pyle had a huge influence on modern popular culture. He died in 1911 and you can see his influence in movies, television and books today. He transformed Robin Hood from a villain to a hero. He defined the look of pirates and positioned them as fearless adventurers.

His first full length work was a highly successful interpretation of the Robin Hood stories called The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood.

He wove various tales of Robin Hood into a single cohesive narrative, but he was happy to alter the original stories, so any child could pick one of his books and be gripped. Pyle used pirates in many adventure stories. He invented the flamboyant romantic garb that has become standard issue for any tale about piracy these days.

By 1900 Pyle founded his own art school – the Howard Pyle School of Illustration Art. He instructed many great artists including the great N.C. Wyeth, and it became known as the Brandywine School style of illustration. Read more.

I Like Big Books – A Literacy Rap

Thursday, January 19th, 2012

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.

From YouTube’s vault: David Foster Wallace interviewed by Charlie Rose

Wednesday, January 18th, 2012

YouTube might be stuffed full with videos of crazy cats and toddlers falling over, but it’s also an amazing archive like this opportunity to listen to David Foster Wallace express himself. This video was broadcast on March 27, 1997.

Books in motion: a bookshelf video

Thursday, January 12th, 2012

This stop-motion video must have taken forever to make, but it’s lovely. Life’s too short for constant reorganization of my bookshelves.

The Bookstore Comes Alive at Night

Monday, January 9th, 2012

When it’s dark, and the last customer has left… the proprietor’s gone home, the lights are out and the door is locked…the books can shed the silly pretense of being inanimate objects, shake off the constraints of the day-to-day shelf, and get on with the joyous, celebratory business of being a book.

Love it. Beautiful.

via Bolen Books

Video review of R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country

Friday, January 6th, 2012

My colleague Beth offers this review of R. Crumb’s Heroes of Blues, Jazz & Country.

Robert Crumb, better known as R. Crumb, is an American cartoonist, well-known for being outspoken, critical and subversive, for his highly recognizable illustrative style, and for his friendship and collaborations with Charles Bukowski. But many people don’t realize that Crumb is also a musician.

As well as singing, Crumb plays the banjo, the mandolin and more. He is an avid fan of blues, country, jazz, bluegrass and similar styles of music. As a project, Crumb created several sets of trading cards dedicated to the pioneers of his musical passion. Each card was an illustration by Crumb, with a brief bio of the musician in question on the back. In 2006, these cards were reproduced and published together. This book comes with a bonus CD of music selected by R. Crumb.

Goat eats textbook

Thursday, December 15th, 2011

Goats can eat anything including old textbooks. (However, to be honest, this goat should really have sold back that old textbook through the AbeBooks buyback program. There’s a lot of perfectly good grass in that field.)

Video review of Toast by Nigel Slater: my latest food memoir read

Tuesday, December 6th, 2011

Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger by Nigel Slater is the latest food memoir that I have read. I’m a fan of Heat by Bill Buford, Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain and The Hungry Years by William Leith. This memoir is a little softer than those three but that’s part of its appeal.

Slater is an English food writer on The Observer newspaper and is well known the UK. This book concerns a very English childhood in the West Midlands during the 1960s – a part of world hardly known for its fine dining. Every day was defined by what he ate and Nigel offers comment on everything toast to lamb chops.

In reality, Nigel is actually telling the story of his childhood through his meals. He explains the relationship between his mum and dad, and charts his mother’s descent into ill health. It’s a fast read and by the end we are seeing the author’s teenage years where he finds salvation as a dog’s body in a pub kitchen and realizes that his future lies in the food business.

The memoir moves effortlessly from a mundane meals to sudden references to his sexuality and then back again to lamb chops and gravy. The American edition has a glossary at the back so English food terms can be understood.

The difference between ex-library & ex libris books

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

When searching on AbeBooks, you will see the terms ex-library and ex libris. Although they sound similar, it’s important to understand the difference between the two.

Ex-library shows that the book was once in a public library. Ex-library books are usually identified with some marking of the library – a stamp, a card pocket, or catalog number. They are often marked as “discarded” or “withdrawn” or have their catalog number struck through when sold by the library. Ex-library books are often worn by use but they are affordable.

Ex libris refers a book that has come from the library of an individual. Ex libris is Latin for “From the Library of……” An ex-libris book usually has a bookplate – a small print of artwork pasted inside the cover that features the owner’s name or initials. You can see the example from the video (right) of the bookplate that belonged to Reverend Clement Mitchell from Prince Edward Island in Canada.

Learn more at the AbeBooks’ Book Collecting Guide.

Ernest Hemingway’s life in pictures

Wednesday, November 9th, 2011

Ernest Hemingway still seems larger than life more than 50 years after his death. Although his life is filled with legend and myth, there are some basic facts that cannot be disputed. Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in 1899 in Oak Park, Illinois. After a few months as a journalist on the Kansas city Star, he became a Red Cross Ambulance driver in Italy in World War I and was wounded by mortar fire. It was his first of many contacts with the military and war zones.

In 1922, Hemingway married Hadley Richardson, the first of his four wives, and they moved to Paris, where he worked as a foreign correspondent. His first novel, The Sun Also Rises, was published in 1926. After divorcing Richardson in 1927, Hemingway married Pauline Pfeiffer and they divorced after Hemingway’s return from reporting on the Spanish Civil War, which inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Martha Gellhorn became his wife No.3 in 1940 – that marriage lasted four years and until he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II. Hemingway, ever the man of action, again worked as a war correspondent and was present at the Normandy Landings and the liberation of Paris.

After the publishing The Old Man and the Sea in 1952, Hemingway went on safari to Africa and was almost killed twice in two plane crashes on successive days.

Aside from writing books that will be forever be remembered as iconic pieces of American literature, Hemingway enjoyed the most manly of pursuits from heavy drinking to hunting and sport fishing. He travelled widely and lived in Key West, Cuba, and Idaho where he killed himself in 1961 with a shotgun.

A video of Charles Dickens facts

Thursday, November 3rd, 2011

The author of the moment is not Stephen King, Jeffrey Eugenides, Haruki Murakami, Julian Barnes, David Guterson or any of these Johnny Come Latelys. It’s Charles Dickens – the 200th anniversary of his birth means that we are going to see a lot of retrospectives of his work. This video delivers some fast facts about Dickens for the modern generation who have the attention span of a gnat and glean most of their knowledge from Youtube. Watch out for the spooky fact as our special effects budget went through the roof on that one.

Review of Stephen King’s 11.22.63

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2011

Mark Lawson reviews Stephen King’s latest book in The Guardian. Sadly, it has a rubbish title that’s right up with It in terms of naming nonsense. 11.22.63 is King’s take on the assassination of US president John F Kennedy.

People are commonly said to remember their location when told of President John F Kennedy’s assassination, but many must also wish the place they had been on 22 November 1963 was Dallas, where they might somehow have diverted the motorcade or prevented Lee Harvey Oswald from entering the Texas School Book Depository. The possibility of such an intervention must number, along with its darker twin of going back and killing Hitler, among the principal fantasies of time travel, and is explored in the 54th work of fiction by Stephen King.

The blurb about the book goes something like this….Jake Epping is a 35-year-old high school English teacher in Lisbon Falls, Maine, who makes extra money teaching adults in the GED program. He receives an essay from one of the students – a gruesome, harrowing first person story about the night 50 years ago when Harry Dunning’s father came home and killed his mother, his sister, and his brother with a hammer. Harry escaped with a smashed leg, as evidenced by his crooked walk.

Not much later, Jake’s friend Al, who runs the local diner, divulges a secret: his storeroom is a portal to 1958. (We have one of those in the AbeBooks storage room where we keep old bookmarks and the Santa costume.)

He enlists Jake on an insane – and insanely possible – mission to try to prevent the Kennedy assassination. So begins Jake’s new life as George Amberson and his new world of Elvis and JFK, of big American cars and sock hops, of a troubled loner named Lee Harvey Oswald and a beautiful high school librarian named Sadie Dunhill, who becomes the love of Jake’s life—a life that transgresses all the normal rules of time.