Reading Copy Book Blog

The American Guide Series is a collection of books, magazines and pamphlets published between 1937 and 1941. Meant to educate and attract, the series was put together by The Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) which provided government funding towards writing and publishing initiatives during the Great Depression. Each publication in the American Guide Series included background [...]

Beautiful vintage airline posters and vintage travel posters are a gorgeous way to remember when airline travel was a treat.

Ever wondered what the AbeBooks HQ looks like? Probably not, but here’s a video tour of our office in Victoria, British Columbia, on Vancouver Island, in Canada for anyone who is interested. As I sit here writing this blog post, I can see float planes taking off, ships and yachts going past, and the Olympic [...]

Here’s the trailer for the On The Road movie. Take a look at the lovely Kristen Stewart and her crazy ‘hepcat’ dancing. I thought Jack Kerouac’s book would always make an awful film but perhaps I am wrong.

Our friends at BC Transit have just launched an interesting initiative around Transit Heroes – they are looking for engaging stories from people who ride public transport around British Columbia. You can write something, make a video submission or record an audio file. If you do submit a story, then you will have a chance [...]

The Charles Dickens bicentenary has been taken very seriously by anyone who can string a sentence together. Robert McCrum in yesterday’s Observer brought my attention to Charles Dickens’s Networks: Public Transport and the Novel by Jonathan Grossman. Grossman explores the rise of the global, high-speed passenger transport network in the 19th century and the indelible [...]

This video review showcases some beautiful, beautiful posters. I found Posters of the Canadian Pacific by Marc H. Choko & David L. Jones to be hard to put down. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company was hailed as one of the wonders of modern travel. The Canadian Pacific [...]

Cape Cod by Henry David Thoreau is one of the great travel books. Published in 1865, Thoreau describes the natural environment and people of ‘the bare and bended arm of Massachusetts’ during three short visits to Cape Cod spread over six years. A first edition will cost over $1200 but a great alternative is the [...]

The Russians find it very funny that the head of the Man Booker judging committee is Britain’s former spy chief, according to this article in Prospect Magazine. I make a fatal mistake: I begin to explain that the chair of the judges is Dame Stella Rimington and that she is an ex-head of the security [...]

My acting talents have gone from strength to strength since we started making videos. In this one, you’ll see an Oscar-nominated ‘walk across the parking lot’ from me and then lots of useful information about a great book called Vespa: Style in Motion (it’s basically a biography of the famous Vespa scooter). Watch out for [...]