AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Modern science is rarely dull and there’s usually a fascinating story behind each new discovery. This was the formula that fuelled the Scientific Book Club for more than five decades. With a new title released each month, the Scientific Book Club covered a broad range of topics from geology to marine life and fossil fuels [...]

A couple more images from the AbeBooks’ Hackathon which concluded earlier today at the University of Victoria with a series of presentations from the hackers. Excellent work all round (a true 24-hour effort) and true innovation too.

AbeBooks is currently (and I mean right now) staging a 24-hour ‘Hackathon’ coding contest at the University of Victoria for computer science students. The event kicked off at 4pm and the teams will be working through the night before presenting their work to engineers from AbeBooks at 4pm on Saturday. Good luck to all the [...]

Carl Sagan brought the heavens a little closer to Earth through his books. A scientist of such repute that he advised NASA, Sagan popularised science for ordinary folks by writing about the cosmos and the possibility of extraterrestrial life. Innumerable folks all over the world discovered that opening one of Sagan’s books was opening the [...]

Nasa announced yesterday that The Mars Curiosity landing site has been named Bradbury after literary legend Ray Bradbury who passed away in June of this year. Henceforth known as Bradbury landing, the site unnamed until its official dedication and naming yesterday, which would have been Bradbury’s 92nd birthday. All of this points, to me, to [...]

I just read about a very cool project, Save the Sci-Fi, from an outfit called Singularity & Co. If you love science fiction and mourn the idea of great stories quietly going into that big out-of-print light in the sky, I bet you’ll like it too. They’re asking for readers and science fiction lovers to [...]

How will the changing landscape and increasing presence of e-books affect traditional book designers and book covers as we know them?

At the 2012 California Antiquarian Book Fair we met up with the International Printing Museum and they demonstrated how an old style printing press works. This miniature colonial-style printing press was actually made in 1976 but is a replica of what Benjamin Franklin would have used.

Did you know author E.M. Forster predicted the digital age and the invention of the iPad in his 1909 science fiction story The Machine Stops? NPR had an interesting segment on our digital times and Forster’s vision for the future. His novella describes a society that is over reliant on technology and devices. Going out [...]

Technology marches on. Ebooks are going to have soundtracks. The days of a quiet read are over. Last week, the first so-called “enhanced ebook” was released in the UK – it was The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Adventure of the Speckled Band and it came complete with driving rain, thunderclaps and blood-curdling screams. It [...]