AbeBooks' Reading Copy

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 [...]

Last month I was in San Francisco and visited three booksellers who sell on AbeBooks. This is the video of what I saw in the Brick Row Book Shop, the Argonaut Book Shop and the Russian Hill Bookstore. All three are well established part of the Bay Area’s literary scene. The Brick Row Book Shop [...]

The Guardian reports that HarperCollins is planning to publish a book about Agatha Christie’s ‘gap’ year. The crime writing author took a year-long trip in 1922 and visited Hawaii, Canada, USA, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. The book, The Grand Tour, will collect the previously unpublished letters and photos along with postcards, newspaper cuttings [...]

Car salesmen (and women) should be lining up outside the house of Canadian author Louise Penny, especially if her new book, A Trick of the Light, is a bestseller. She buys cars based on color alone, according to the Globe & Mail, but I’m sure she’s not the only one. I once asked Chuck Palahniuk [...]

Friday’s Guardian saw today’s travel writers picking their favorite travel books. Lots of wonderful travel books here – Love and War in the Apennines by Eric Newby, Destinations by Jan Morris and The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. I’m currently working my way through The World 1950-2000 by Jan Morris – last [...]

Here is the latest video review from AbeBooks – The 8.55 to Baghdad by Andrew Eames. This book is about travel and Agatha Christie. Strictly speaking, it’s a travel memoir where the author follows in the train tracks of Christie who traveled from a sleepy suburb of London to Iraq where her second husband worked [...]

If you ever visit our neck of the woods – Victoria, British Columbia that is – we urge you to visit Russell Books on Fort Street in the heart of downtown Victoria. AbeBooks and Russell Books have a long relationship as they were one of the first four booksellers to sell on AbeBooks back in [...]

Last night I started reading something off the top of my ‘to read’ list – The World 1950-2000 by Jan Morris – and this morning I see Bookslut has a feature about her work as a travel writer but also a historian. Morris is my favorite travel writer and this collection of her writing is [...]