Let us introduce you to Lily King, one of the many booklovers on staff here at AbeBooks. Lily works in the Customer Support department as our Communications Specialist. She has been an AbeBooks employee for seven years, and a voracious reader all her life.

More a fan of reading than collecting, Lily loves the freedom books give her, as well as the ability they give her to see parts of the world she’s never seen, through the eyes of those that have. From Sri Lanka to Texas, from Africa to her own Canadian backyard, discover the books that make Lily feel at home, even when far away.

Enjoy.

A lithograph of Anne Frank by Marc Chagall.

Debate broke out in the AbeBooks marketing department this morning over whether the world is judging popstar Justin Bieber too harshly for his most recent gaffe.

On the off chance that you have managed to avoid the new thus far, here it is: the 19-year-old Bieber reportedly visited Anne Frank House in Amsterdam while touring. He apparently found the experience very moving, and sought to capture his feelings in the guestbook. His written comments therein included his feeling honored to be there, finding her courage inspiring, and – unfortunately – that he hoped that if Frank were alive today “she would have been a Belieber”. A Belieber is a nickname for a Justin Bieber fan. Why do I know this? I am 35. Perhaps because he is Canadian? I digress.

Social media unsurprisingly went berserk once the story was out, with some calling the remarks callous and ignorant, and indicative of proof that Bieber has a low IQ. Others rushed to the singer’s defense, pointing out that Anne Frank, despite the circumstances of her life and her death, was herself a typical young teen girl, and may very well in fact have been a fan, had she lived in the Bieber era.

Around here, the general overall feeling is one of embarrassment and pity for Bieber. He’s 19, and therefore, bound to use poor judgment and act rashly, and say things without thinking. But he is also a global sensation, and subject to intense constant scrutiny by those slavering to be first to report on his every slight misstep. Which is, of course, exactly what happened. I think the biggest goof here is that no older, wiser, more savvy adult, say a PR person, agent or handler, stepped in to review the wording and help Bieber craft a more suitable comment.

Even the representatives of Anne Frank House have issued a statement in Bieber’s defense, pointing out that a 19-year-old, world famous celebrity could have done anything with his time in Amsterdam on a Friday night, but chose to spend it learning about the Holocaust.

Anne Frank died of Typhus in a concentration camp at age 15. She had been in hiding from the Nazis with her family for two years before they were betrayed. The Diary of Anne Frank details much of the experience of those two years, and has given personal insight into the horrors of that time to readers worldwide.

Some of the examples include a 1976 letter from Ray Bradbury to Robert Heinlein (“…will continue to be grateful for the help you offered when I was so poor & needful!”), an 1858 correspondence from Charles Dickens to George Eliot (“…The exquisite truth and delicacy, both of the humour and the pathos of those stories, I have never seen the like of; and they have impressed me in a manner that I should find it very difficult to describe to you, if I had the impertinence to try…”), and one from 1937 that Virginia Woolf wrote to Olaf Stapledon (“…ometimes it seems to me that you are grasping ideas that I have tried to express, much more fumblingly, in fiction.”), among several others.

But my favorite has to be this letter written in 1964, by a then 16-year-old George R.R. Martin, to comics legend Stan Lee.

Dear Stan and Don,

After receiving and reading my subscription copies of FF #32 and AVENGERS #9, I have finally come to the decision to have both mounted in bronze and set on a pedestal in the center of my living room. Although the F.F. is “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine”, I must admit that on this occasion AVENGERS #9 was slightly the better of the two. This is not to say that F.F wasn’t up to par, but rather that the Avengers was–er–breathtaking, shall we say? What a story! It was beyond words; the fast-paced action, solid characterization, and that terrific ending all gave it that extra oomph and catapulted into the great class. Stan, old boy, you can put another notch in your pen for this masterpiece….

George R.R. Martin, 36 E. First St.
Bayonne, N.J. 07002

Love it! If this kind of written correspondence of yesterday is your cup of tea, be sure to check out our Literary Letters feature. And if you are a fan of mutual admiration of well-known folks, learn about Association Copies – books inscribed by famous people to other famous people.

It’s a shame that authors don’t pose with their pipes anymore. Pipes are such a useful accessory when you need something to occupy your hands while some tiresome photographer is trying to take your picture. Dan Brown, who seems to wear tweedy sports jackets, would perhaps be a good pipe smoker.

Our little gallery of authors posing with pipes includes some very famous names.

At the top we have English author JB Priestley with his typewriter, then Argentinian novelist Julio Cortazar (who is happy to go shirtless while puffing smoke across the room), followed by author and diarist Harold Nicolson, then American writer and screenwriter Wallace Irving, scientist Albert Einstein, thriller maestro Raymond Chandler on the cover of The Life of Raymond Chandler by Frank MacShane, and finally the young Evelyn Waugh depicted in an oil painting on the cover of Ninety-Two Days, his travel book from 1934.

Ordinary authors have publicity shots, writers with a bit of gravitas, like Waugh, have paintings.

February’s top sale was a rare set of the only 18th-century French translation of Shakespeare, which went for $16,816. It’s a 20-volume set, so works out to about $840 per volume.

Other items of note include an autographed copy of a book detailing the discovery of DNA, and a 1952 book about handmade Japanese paper, including specimens from the eighth and ninth centuries.

See the whole Top 10 Most Expensive Sales list

The Google doodle today (February 25th, 2013) pays homage to American artist of the macabre and ridiculous, Edward Gorey, who would have turned 88 today. Gorey was a funny mix of the delightfully innocent and childlike and the eerie, dark and crawly.

Once you’ve seen a bit of Gorey’s work, it becomes instantly recognizable. His art was full of rich, strange characters. Pipe-thin men and women in fancy dress, cats in clothing, fantastical, mythical creatures (including one that looks like a cheerful leech with butterfly wings), treacherous villains and much, much more. One of his earliest and strangest creatures was The Doubtful Guest, a moody and stubborn creature that resembled….Read more about the Eerie Glory of Edward Gorey.

Even internationally, E.L. James’ publishing phenomenon, the Fifty Shades trilogy, dominated 2012.

According to Flavorwire, these are the bestselling books in 10 countries around the world.

Indonesia

The Rainbow Troops by Andrea Hirata has supposedly sold over a million copies in Indonesia.

The UK

Nothing too surprising on the list of bestselling books in the United Kingdom – it includes a lot of J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Stephenie Meyer, and Stieg Larsson. The Fifty Shades trilogy by E.L. James also factor pretty heavily, as do The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon.

China

In 2012, five of the top bestsellers in China were Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera, On China by Henry Kissinger, Peter Hessler’s River Town, and Soulstealers: The Chinese Sorcery Scare of 1768, by Alden Kuhn.

Norway

The surprise top seller for two years running in Norway is a literary translation of the Bible, which makes the Bible read more like a novel. The publishers, who in a country the size of Norway were hoping for sales of 25,000-75,000 copies the first year, instead sold over 150,000.

India

Some highlights of the bestselling books in India: Corporate Chanakya by Radhakrishnan Pillai, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: A Novel In Cartoons, by Jeff Kinney, Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, by Walter Isaacson, The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, and 2 States: The Story Of My Marriage, by Chetan Bhagat

Australia

In terms of fiction, the Australian bestseller list was topped by All That I Am by Melbourne-born Anna Funder, which won the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Mexico

The Fifty Shades trilogy occupied three of the top seven bestelling slots for Mexico book retailers in 2012. Other names present included Paulo Coelho, Angeles Mastretta, Stephen Chbosky and more.

Brazil

The best-selling book in Brazil’s history is Agape, a self-help volume written by Brazilian Catholic priest Marcelo Rossi, which sold 7.7 million copies in the first 21 months after its publication. Just before Christmas, the publisher released Agapinho, an illustrated version of the book aimed at kids, which — surprise, surprise — topped the children’s best seller chart for 2012.

France

The Fifty Shades trilogy dominated in the land of wine and cheese, too (those books really get around…).

Other best-sellers this year were Joël Dicker’s La Verite sur l’affaire Harry Quebert, Jean Echenoz’s 14, J. K. Rowling’s Une place a prendre (The Casual Vacancy), and Patrick Modiano’s L’Herbe des nuits as well as Toni Morrison’s Home and Philip Roth’s Nemesis.

Russia

The big contenders in Russia were The Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya, Pineapple Water for the Fair Lady and S.N.U.F.F. by Viktor Pelevin, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami, and The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco.

Apparently, patients in the UK who are suffering from non-severe mental health issues, such as anxiety and mild depression, will be getting a new prescription from their medical practitioners – for books. It’s called The Reading Well: Books on Prescription scheme.

Doctors will be sending patients to the library (that’s much cheaper than a pill, no?) with a prescription for one or more of 30 titles such as The Feeling Good Handbook, How to Stop Worrying and Overcoming Anger and Irritability.

There is a related program that suggests patients read positive “mood boosting books“, such as Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden and Cider with Rosie, to help combat depression, and feelings of negativity or hopelessness (we’d also like to humbly offer up our list of Feel-Good Reads for good happy books).

All this is brought about by The Reading Agency, a charity located in London, whose credo is Because everything changes when we read.

I’m inclined to heartily agree. Nobody seems to be suggesting that the books – whether the self help “prescribed” books, or the mood-boosting selections – are a replacement for drug therapy, talk therapy or other more conventional treatments.

In more serious cases, or if the patients find no relief or comfort in the readings, those options can be next steps. But with sky-high numbers of people suffering from mild to moderate mental health concerns, this is a reasonable, easy, and cheap to free first step toward feeling better and keeping one’s head afloat.

We put together our own list of 21 Classic Adventure Stories a few years back – let’s see if there’s any overlap.

Charlie Fletcher’s list:

1 and 2. The Secret of the Unicorn and Red Rackham’s Treasure by Hergé

3 and 4. Treasure Island and Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson

5. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

6 and 7. Puck of Pook’s Hill and Rewards and Fairies by Rudyard Kipling

8. The Sword in the Stone by TH White

9. The Lord of the Rings by JRR Tolkien

10. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A good list, to be sure, and some absolute essentials on there (the Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling especially), but a lot of repeat authors and a lot missing. Still, I’ve never read The Sword in the Stone, and now have something to add to my ever-growing-and-threatening-to-topple to-read pile. Fletcher’s own book, Far Rockaway, sounds intriguing and exciting as well. It tells the story of a young girl, who upon being hit by a speeding fire truck, wakes to find herself in a bizarre land populated by the characters of all the books her grandfather used to read to her. She must fight for her survival in the strange world her subconscious manifests, even as her body in the real world fights for her life.

Here are another 21 exciting adventure books, to appeal to kids and adults alike.

Saramago was a Portuguese writer from humble origins who wrote so well he rose to literature’s pinnacle. Blindness is his best-known work, but he wrote dozens of books during his life, many rivaling the power, depth and resonance of that work. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998, and died in 2010 at the age of 87.

If you haven’t read any Saramago, you are in for a treat. Read more about José Saramago and see the selection of books he authored.