AbeBooks' Reading Copy

In a feel good story today, a guest book which had been kept at the burial site of Lord Byron following his death to collect signatures, tributes and lamentations from poets and guests has just been found at a church sale in Savannah, Georgia, USA. The woman, who bought the book for $35, has given [...]

Oxfam has released a list of authors whose books most often darken the doorway of their shops, a list of books most often given up for adoption. Once again Dan Brown is shown no love. Reads like a supermarket checkout counter eh? The most donated authors to Oxfam shops (with last year’s position in brackets): [...]

In a misguided attempt to celebrate Bloomsday an Irish software developer has put the power of computing to the task of solving the age old James Joyce riddle of can you cross Dublin without passing a pub? The Belfast Telegraph reports: Using online maps, the Dubliner worked out an algorithm – a computer equation – [...]

So says a survey from the Crime Writers Association. Some of the more inventive ways to bump someone off included slicing them to death in an olive machine, being stabbed through the heart with a spangly stiletto or putting bees in a wicket-keeper’s inner glove leading to anaphylactic shock.

Sir Terry Pratchett was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2008 and is now been reporting that he has started the formal process which could lead to his assisted suicide at a clinic in Switzerland. He has been sent the consent forms requesting a suicide by the clinic, and claims that he planned to sign them [...]

Here’s a list of what was hot this past month from AbeBooks.com, AbeBooks.co.uk and the world of signed books from the month of February 2011. Top 10 bestsellers on AbeBooks.com 1. Jamie’s 30-minute Meals by Jamie Oliver 2. The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren 3. Night by Elie Wiesel 4. The Catcher in the [...]

South Riding by Winifred Holtby was first published, posthumously, in 1936. The story is about a young headmistress living in a fictional Yorkshire neighbourhood; and the book itself has lived a fairly innocuous life in the midlist for over half a century until last week when Andrew Davies three part mini-series began to air on [...]

Anne Robinson, the mistress of the killer put-down and one of Fleet Street’s most famous reformed drunks, is to front the BBC’s new flagship book show. Famous for presenting The Weakest Link, her new bookish chatshow will be a bit like Desert Island Discs (note to non-Brits, a famous person turns up and picks their [...]

Normally the prize is only given for fiction but in this one special case the Bad Sex Award judges bent the rules and are letting Tony Blair into the running for this little atrocity which made its way into the former Prime Minister’s autobiography A Journey: That night she cradled me in her arms and [...]

Our friends at BookFinder.com have released their annual “BookFinder Report” on the 100 most sought after out-of-print books in America. I enjoy looking at this list each year because it features everything I love about used book shops in one tidy list. A nice mix of nearly forgotten fiction, old manuals that are superior to [...]