AbeBooks' Reading Copy

Perhaps it’s mean and base of me, but I really enjoyed this article that I found on The Examiner. It lists 50 examples of authors trash talking each other’s works.  Reading a highly articulate slam from one of the century’s greatest authors against another literary titan is something I find very amusing – perhaps because they would all write circles around me.  I find it most funny if you imagine all of these authors sitting in a large circle, with each author taking a turn a telling the next in line just how bad their prose is.  I think it would go something like this …

Mark Twain on Jane Austen: I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

William Faulkner on Mark Twain: A hack writer who would not have been considered fourth rate in Europe, who tricked out a few of the old proven sure fire literary skeletons with sufficient local color to intrigue the superficial and the lazy.

Ernest Hemignway on William Faulkner: Have you ever heard of anyone who drank while he worked? You’re thinking of Faulkner. He does sometimes — and I can tell right in the middle of a page when he’s had his first one.

Tom Wolfe on Ernest Hemingway: Take Hemingway. People always think that the reason he’s easy to read is that he is concise. He isn’t. I hate conciseness — it’s too difficult. The reason Hemingway is easy to read is that he repeats himself all the time, using ‘and’ for padding.

John Irving on Tom Wolfe: He doesn’t know how to write fiction, he can’t create a character, he can’t create a situation…You see people reading him on airplanes, the same people who are reading John Grisham, for Christ’s sake….I’m using the argument against him that he can’t write, that his sentences are bad, that it makes you wince. It’s like reading a bad newspaper or a bad piece in a magazine….You know, if you were a good skater, could you watch someone just fall down all the time? Could you do that? I can’t do that.

You can read more examples on the original Examiner article.

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.

I was crawling the blogosphere looking for something interesting to tell you all and I couldn’t choose between three stories, so I decided you could enjoy all three. The first comes from the UK where The Belfast Telegraph reports that a publisher offered pop music superstar Adele a giant stack of money to produce a memoir; the paper goes on to say that Adele rejected the offer because (and this is the part I really like), she feels she’s too young to write a proper memoir. The Telegraph’s story appears to be based on information from an unidentified source so make of it what you will; however if this is even partly true it is nice to hear of a young star taking a memoir seriously.  It nearly caused a stroke when I found out that then-17-year-old Justin Bieber* was publishing a memoir two years ago.  So good on you, Adele – first you nailed the Skyfall Bond theme song and now you’re saving publishers from themselves.

Speaking of Bond, the next story comes from The Independent (care of Moby Lives) and relates to an early draft of Ian Fleming’s Casino Royale that was made public this weekend as part of the book’s 60^th anniversary. It was ‘discovered’ that Fleming initially had his protagonist introduce himself as James Secretan to those outside of the secret service.  It’s a good thing he changed it because “The name’s  Secretan, James Secretan” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.  Could have been a multi-million dollar mistake there; also we never would have seen all these great covers.

And lastly, the Fine Books Blog points out that a set of Victorian vampire-killing tools is coming to auction. How great a conversation piece would this be? The blog explains that “Some believe that kits like these were sold to European travelers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to protect themselves from the undead, while others view them as souvenirs that cashed in on the popularity of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, first published in 1897.”

*I apologize for their being two Justin Bieber references in consecutive days on this blog. We will try to never let it happen again.

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.

If you are an aspiring or amateur writer in British Columbia you may want to keep the weekend of May 24 – May 26 open because Salmon Arm will become the province’s literary hot spot as the Shuswap Association of Writers presents the 10^th annual Word on the Lake Readers and Writers Festival. 

The festival promises to be well worth the trip to B.C.’s scenic lakeside town as it brings together a talented group of artists to produce a series of workshops and presentations.  This year’s presenters include Governor General’s Award winner George Bowering, YA/romance author Eileen Cook, and Mona Fertig of Mother Tongue Publishing. Admission to the festival also gives you a 20-minute one-on-one “blue pencil” session where a presenter of your choosing will review some of your writing and offer editing and advice based on their years of experience.

A full weekend pass is only $180, if purchased before May 13, and includes access to all workshops, presentations and signings as well as a Saturday lunch and Sunday breakfast.  Passes can be purchased by completing a registration form on the festival website.

If you can’t make it to the festival the Shushwap Association of Writers also has writing contest open to all BC residents, with the chance to have your work published in the Word on the Lake’ 10th Anniversary Anthology

Presenters at Word on The Lake 2013 include:

Burning Water by George Bowering
George Bowering

Getting Revenge on Lauren Wood
Eileen Cook

Baychimo: Artic Ghost Ship
Anthony Dalton

Whiskey Bullets
Garry Gottfriedson

We Can Be Heroes
Scott Fitzgerald Gray

Outcasts of River Falls
Jacqueline Guest

Cheats, Charlatans, and Chicanery
Andreas Schroeder

Wolves
Daniel Wood

This afternoon The Orphan Master’s Son by Adam Johnson was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.  The book was described by the committee as an “exquisitely crafted novel that carries the reader on an adventuresome journey into the depths of totalitarian North Korea and into the most intimate spaces of the human heart.”

The Orphan Master’s Son is only Johnson’s third novel (after Emporium and Parasites like Us) but he has also published a number of short stories which have appeared in Harper’s, Esquire and various Reviews.  In addition to today’s Pulitzer prize Johnson has previously won the Debut Writer of the Year from Amazon.com in 2002, and was recently awarded a National Endowment for the Arts.

As with most Pulitzer Prize winning books, sales for The Orphan Master’s Son are expected to climb in coming days.  AbeBooks.com has already seen a spike in the sale of signed copies of The Orphan Master’s Son on AbeBooks.com directly after the award was announced this afternoon.

Other finalists for the Fiction prize were  What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank  by Nathan Englander and The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. In other awards Sharon Olds won the poetry award for her collection Stag’s Leap and Devil in the Grove: Thurgood Marshall, the Groveland Boys, and the Dawn of a New America by Gilbert King was given the non-fiction prize.

AbeBooks is all about the business of books, including book-related ephemera: in this case, art. Many authors have tried their hand at drawing or painting, and many artists and illustrators drew and painted long before they became successful or famous. To the lucky collector who finds one, nothing is more priceless or precious than a unique and irreplaceable piece of artwork by a much-admired hand.

Watercolor and pencil, sketches and doodles, each of the pieces below is a rare and unique treasure, waiting to become the crown jewel in a beloved collection. From Arthur Rackham and Dr. Seuss to Edward Gorey and e.e. cummings, enjoy the skill and beauty of original art.

Original Artwork from Famous Folks

It’s been 70 years this month since Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s masterpiece of innocence, simplicity and wonder Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) was first published. Few books or stories have managed to capture the sense of joy and honesty of children, of mystery in the universe, and of the beauty of simple acceptance, nearly as effectively as the story of The Little Prince. It really must be a staple on any bookshelf, but particularly in households with children.

In honor of the anniversary, Flavorwire put together a slideshow of (to their minds) The 25 Books Every Kid Should Have on Their Bookshelf. Here is the list they came up with:

1. The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
2. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
3. The Pushcart War by Jean Merrill
4. The Sweetest Fig by Chris Van Allsburg
5. Matilda by Roald Dahl
6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
7. Dealing with Dragons by Patricia C. Wrede
8. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
9. A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. Le Guin
10. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
11. Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
12. Half Magic by Edward Eager
13. Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M. Barrie
14. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
15. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
16. Madeline by Ludwig Bemelmans
17. Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
18. The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
19. The Giver by Lois Lowry
20. The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne
21. The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf
22. Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
23. Lizard Music by Daniel Manus Pinkwater
24. I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith
25. Oh, The Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

Which of those do you agree or disagree with? What do you think they missed? For more great suggestions for children’s books, be sure to look at 30 Books for a Six-Year-Old, and 50 Books for an Eleven-Year-Old.

Measuring only about four inches and bound in a simple embossed leather covering the books of the Little Leather Library are absolutely Spartan in design. Max Sackheim,Harry Scherman and Charles and Albert Boni knew they would need to be thrifty if they were going to successfully launch a publishing house in the middle of World War I. Opting to publish classic titles which were in the public domain the new firm kept their costs down and produced these tiny classics at a price point the common man could afford.

Initially launched in 1916, the Little Leather Library churned out millions of copies seven short years. However, longevity was not in the cards; by 1925 publication of the Little Leather Library had ceased. Today the books may not be worth all that much in a dollars and cents calculation, but as a collectible they are absolutely charming.

Find out more about the history and books of the Little Leather Library

At the height of the Great Depression, New York’s Phoenix Press was churning out pulp fiction as fast as it could print the books. Murder, mayhem, mysteries and molls – you will find them all in this selection of classic pulp literature, worth exploring for the remarkable vintage cover design as well as the stories.

The times were hard but at least the books were entertaining. Check out this collection of classic pulp from Phoenix Press.