AbeBooks' Reading Copy » life http://www.abebooks.com/blog AbeBooks book blog Thu, 17 Jul 2014 22:48:11 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.3 New York man gets medieval on King James Bible http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2013/05/14/new-york-man-gets-medieval-on-king-james-bible/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2013/05/14/new-york-man-gets-medieval-on-king-james-bible/#comments Tue, 14 May 2013 17:08:08 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=19152 A retired interior designer from upstate New York named Phillip Patterson recently decided that he wanted to learn more about the bible, so for the past six years he has spent upwards of 14 hours a day copying out the passages of the King James bible line by line; in much the same way that it was done in the years before Johannes Guttenberg revolutionized the world with movable type. 

Patterson describes his approach to the project as more scholarly than religious in nature, however he does plan to spend the next year binding his 2,400 page manuscript before he will donate it to his local church St. Peter’s Presbyterian in Spencertown, New York. 

I think this is a fantastic project and will make an amazing artifact for St. Peter’s Presbyterian.  The look and feel of an autograph manuscript bible is something to behold.

Story from Fine Books Magazine

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Hand painted bookmarks http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2013/02/21/hand-painted-bookmarks/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2013/02/21/hand-painted-bookmarks/#comments Thu, 21 Feb 2013 18:07:13 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=18392 I recently got a chance to take a small vacation to the west coast of Mexico. My wife and have become big fans of a small town just north of Puerto Vallarta called Sayulita. We really enjoy it because it’s family friendly and touristy enough that we can get around with a small child and abysmal Spanish, yet you still very much in a small Mexican town. We had a very nice time, and if you ever find yourself in that part of Mexico it’s a very pretty place to spend some time. However with this great fortune came a great responsibility, I needed to find a little something to bring back to my co-workers who were still in the office. It’s not so much a rule but an unspoken tradition that when you have the fortune to go away somewhere exciting, you bring back a little treat. We usually end up going with food (chocolate is always well received) or something bookish; which is what I did on this occasion.

While walking though the Friday morning street market I found a booth with a lady who was making hand painted paper placemats and bookmarks; and for about a dollar a piece I was able to bring back a handmade bookish treasure for my friends… are they not beautiful?

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Quick Phone Booth Change – Into a Tiny Library http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/09/12/quick-phone-booth-change-into-a-tiny-library/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/09/12/quick-phone-booth-change-into-a-tiny-library/#comments Wed, 12 Sep 2012 17:41:19 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=17354 Move over, Superman – you’re not the only one who can perform a quick change in a telephone booth. According to the New York Times, an architectural designer from the Upper West Side is the real hero of this story. John H. Locke has devised a system by which he can quickly enter an empty telephone kiosk and fit it with shelves, then stock those shelves with books, then stroll away whistling, all within the space of a cool five minutes.

In 2011, Locke designed a special set of light, measured shelves that would fit perfectly into a common style of payphone booth in New York City. He assembles and paints the shelves at home, then waits for a quiet time to slip into a booth and conver it into a tiny library, filling the new space with books himself. He has completed four as of the writing of this post.

While the installations are eventually mysteriously dismantled and disappeared, the project has attracted its fair share of attention and admirers. Aside from the New York Times article, Locke has also been approached by citizens and companies and publishers wanting to be involved and to donate books to bolster the continuation of the installations.

An interesting aspect of the work is the encroaching obsolescence of the payphone. Who uses payphones anymore? But believe it or not, they are still a real source of city revenue:

Perhaps more important to the city, pay phones brought in $18 million in revenue in the last fiscal year. Of that, only about $1 million came from callers’ quarters; the rest came from advertisements displayed on the side of the phones’ cabinets. Since the agency would be loath to give up that money, it is considering the suggestions that it turn phone booths into touch-screen neighborhood maps; convert them into charging stations for mobile devices or electric cars; or use them as dispensers for hand sanitizer.

Learn more at John Locke’s web site.

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Mourning Maeve Binchy http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/07/31/17010/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/07/31/17010/#comments Tue, 31 Jul 2012 17:57:25 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=17010 Beloved and well-known Irish author Maeve Binchy has died at the age of 72 after a brief illness, according to The Guardian.  Binchy was celebrated for her humor, and her vivid depiction of life in Ireland, as well as the warmth in her writing around friendship and family. One of her best-known books, Circle of Friends, was adapted into a sweet film starring Minnie Driver in 1995. Ten years later, a film was made of her novel Tara Road, as well, starring Andie McDowell.

Her first novel, Light a Penny Candle, was released in 1982. She wrote 14 more novels throughout her career, with the most recent, Minding Frankie, released just two years ago in 2010.

People mourn her worldwide today, with fans and literary figures alike sharing their memories and thoughts via Twitter. Author Ian Rankin tweeted:

 ”Maeve Binchy was a gregarious, larger than life, ebullient recorder of human foibles and wonderment. I’m taking a drink to her.”

For those mourning not only the woman and the person, but also the skill and knowledge she takes with her, don’t worry – she did leave behind some secrets to share about being a writer, and how to write a good book.

“With writing, the secret is to set yourself down, and do not stand up until you have five pages written. And you do that again another day of the week. And then if you can do ten pages a week, then you have 520 pages at the end of the year. And you don’t give yourself time off for Christmas, or Easter, or Labor Day….”

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A Book Becomes The Best Graduation Present Ever http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/06/29/a-book-becomes-the-best-graduation-present-ever/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/06/29/a-book-becomes-the-best-graduation-present-ever/#comments Fri, 29 Jun 2012 17:59:00 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=16755 Brenna Martin, an 18-year-old living in Kenly, North Carolina, just graduated from high school. Upon graduation, her father Bryan Martin gave her a gift: a copy of the Dr. Seuss classic Oh, The Places You’ll Go!.

For those unfamiliar with the book, it is entirely characteristic of Seuss in terms of rhyme and scansion and all that good stuff, but it’s surprisingly devoid of ting-tanglers and whizz-whatsits. It’s actually fairly deep and serious, a lighthearted but meaningful poem meant to inspire a young person to be brave and take heart as they embark on a new adventure. It’s hard to read the poem and not be moved by it, as it so perfectly encapsulates what we’d wish and hope for the young people we love as they start to make their way in the world.

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!

You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.

That’s how the poem starts, and it goes on from there, not shying away from trials and tribulations, even touching on loneliness and challenges and fear and confusion and all the rest. In short, it is a perfect gift for graduation. And as a result, it has been rather done to death and as a result, perhaps that meaning has been somewhat diluted by the same message being handed to grads all over the place (yes, I know, I’m a cynic and a bad person).

So how did Bryan Martin neatly sidestep that issue, and create one of the most special and irreplaceable gifts a person can receive?

He bought the copy of Oh, The Places You’ll Go! 13 years ago, when Brenna was five. And didn’t tell her about it. And for the past 13 years, as he watched her grown through kindergarten, through elementary and middle school grades and on to high school, and watched her grow up and no doubt meet and lose friends, try things and succeed, try things and fail, and be afraid to try things, he has been secretly slipping the book to her teachers, her coaches, important people in her life, so that this book, already full of an inspiring poem by Dr. Seuss, was also full of deeply personal, encouraging messages meant for Brenna alone. So that when she opened the book, it became a time capsule of sorts, from people who had meant the world to her at different stages in her life, urging her forward and cheering her on. What an absolutely fantastic treasure for her.

I hope she’s got something good in mind for next Father’s Day.

More on MSNBC

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Yesterday’s Racist Books and Memorabilia – To Acknowledge or Ignore? http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/05/11/yesterdays-racist-books-and-memorabilia-to-acknowledge-or-ignore/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/05/11/yesterdays-racist-books-and-memorabilia-to-acknowledge-or-ignore/#comments Fri, 11 May 2012 21:02:26 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=16165

We look at many, many, many books in a day as part of the AbeBooks marketing team. They go as far back as ancient times, long before the printing press, and I see books from centuries ago every day. So it should come as no surprise that very often I end up reminded of the way things used to be, and how different – and in some cases, not different enough – things are now.

My specific case in point – the golliwog, and other stereotypical depictions of black Americans (or any ethnic minority, actually, but it’s a lot of the old golliwog books I’ve been coming across lately). The golliwog was a character who originated in children’s books in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Enid Blyton, for instance, had a golliwog character named Mr. Golly in her Noddy books, who ran the Toytown garage (he was replaced in later revised edition by the caucasian character Mr. Sparks). The word golliwog (originally golliwogg – the spelling evolved) is thought to have first come from the books of Florence Kate Upton (1873-1922), a children’s author who found one of the blackface-style dolls in her aunt’s attic, nicknamed it Golliwogg, and used it as the central character in her series of books. Ostensibly a black man, the golliwog was a cartoonish caricature with the classic big, white lips and wide eyes and fuzzy hair, looking much like Al Jolson doing “My Mammy” or a minstrel show performer, or any grotesque portrayal, usually by a white person in blackface makeup. The golliwog was popular enough to make it off the pages of children’s books and into the forms of rag dolls, toys, figurines and more.

I have no question around the idea of the golliwog (and other similar portrayals) as a racist and problematic portrayal – I think that goes without saying. But I found myself asking how to handle these items that still exist. They are for sale on the site, I come across them in secondhand stores and at garage sales. People collect them, for differing reasons, not least of which is their slow disappearance. So – do we reference them? Do we include them in our features about the appropriate era, region or subject matter? The truth of the matter is, books are used as a record of events, circumstances and history, as much as for entertainment or information. Our history is full of some shameful, dark, unforgivably unjust things. And ignorance. And backwardness. And we have the books to show for it.

These things happened. And not as long ago as we seem so fond of thinking. Is it better to take the “I won’t even dignify that with a response” approach, and refuse to acknowledge these painful pieces of history and hope that they fade further into obscurity, eventually to be buried? Or is ignoring them, sweeping them under the rug and smiling nervously – EVERYTHING’S FINE, NOTHING TO SEE HERE – doing a bigger disservice to the problem? Is it better to bring them out into the open, acknowledge the grief and problem still surrounding them and start a conversation?

Slavery, oppression, racism, and systemic, ingrained bigotry – it’s all such a sensitive, painful, delicate subject that it’s intimidating to even talk about it at all. It’s been made taboo. But that doesn’t mean it might not be a conversation worth having, and that silence might not hurt just as much.

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World Book Night http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/06/world-book-night/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/06/world-book-night/#comments Mon, 06 Feb 2012 21:16:16 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=15102 I absolutely love the idea of World Book Night, in which booklovers and readers go out into their communities and give books to people.

Read:

The goal is to have 50,000 people give a book to a stranger or to people you might know but believe aren’t frequent readers. Go to a coffee shop, a hospital, a park, a church, a community center, an after-work party, a local school, or even just give them away on your daily train ride. WBN will give you 20 specially-produced, not-for-resale World Book Night editions to randomly give away. There are 30 titles to choose from for all types of readers. Basically, if you love any of the books included in the program, you can get free copies to share with others. The list includes:

• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
• Kindred by Octavia Butler
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• Zeitoun by Dave Eggers
• The Stand by Stephen King
• The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
• Just Kids by Patti Smith

The purpose is to celebrate the love of reading, the love of a good book, and to share the ones we love the most. The full list of 30 books is a fantastic selection – some of my very favourites, and now I need to seek out the others on the list, of course. If you’d like to be one of the people giving out books, you have until midnight EST tonight, february 6th 2012, to register to give out books. Unfortunately, this is not available in Canada yet – only the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and Ireland. But what a wonderful idea. If and when it makes it to Canada, I will do everything I can to take part.

(via BoingBoing)

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25 Things Learned From Opening a Bookstore http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/01/25-things-learned-from-opening-a-bookstore/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/02/01/25-things-learned-from-opening-a-bookstore/#comments Wed, 01 Feb 2012 20:12:47 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=15050 As someone who has often wistfully dreamed of opening my own bookstore (with a lovely soft couch-and-cushion section with story hour for kids, free coffee for grown-ups, and a leave-a-book-take-a-book section for swaps..), I enoyed reading this blog post called “25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore”. It further confirmed my suspicion that not only have I been wistfully dreaming of opening a bookstore, I’ve also been unrealistically romanticizing the hell out of the idea. Still, for all the pitfalls and drawbacks and foibles and pain, it sounds like something I’d like to do.

Here is the list, funny and insightful:

1. People are getting rid of bookshelves. Treat the money you budgeted for shelving as found money. Go to garage sales and cruise the curbs.

2. While you’re drafting that business plan, cut your projected profits in half. People are getting rid of bookshelves.

3. If someone comes in and asks where to find the historical fiction, they’re not looking for classics, they want the romance section.

4. If someone comes in and says they read a little of everything, they also want the romance section.

5. If someone comes in and asks for a recommendation and you ask for the name of a book that they liked and they can’t think of one, the person is not really a reader. Recommend Nicholas Sparks.

6. Kids will stop by your store on their way home from school if you have a free bucket of kids books. If you also give out free gum, they’ll come every day and start bringing their friends.

7. If you put free books outside, cookbooks will be gone in the first hour and other non-fiction books will sit there for weeks. Except in warm weather when people are having garage sales. Then someone will back their car up and take everything, including your baskets.

8. If you put free books outside, someone will walk in every week and ask if they’re really free, no matter how many signs you put out . Someone else will walk in and ask if everything in the store is free.

9. No one buys self help books in a store where there’s a high likelihood of personal interaction when paying. Don’t waste the shelf space, put them in the free baskets.

10. This is also true of sex manuals. The only ones who show an interest in these in a small store are the gum chewing kids, who will find them no matter how well you hide them.

11. Under no circumstances should you put the sex manuals in the free baskets. Parents will show up.

12. People buying books don’t write bad checks. No need for ID’s. They do regularly show up having raided the change jar.

13. If you have a bookstore that shares a parking lot with a beauty shop that caters to an older clientele, the cars parked in your lot will always be pulled in at an angle even though it’s not angle parking.

14. More people want to sell books than buy them, which means your initial concerns were wrong. You will have no trouble getting books, the problem is selling them. Plus a shortage of storage space for all the Readers Digest books and encyclopedias that people donate to you.

15. If you open a store in a college town, and maybe even if you don’t, you will find yourself as the main human contact for some strange and very socially awkward men who were science and math majors way back when. Be nice and talk to them, and ignore that their fly is open.

16. Most people think every old book is worth a lot of money. The same is true of signed copies and 1st editions. There’s no need to tell them they’re probably not insuring financial security for their grandkids with that signed Patricia Cornwell they have at home.

17. There’s also no need to perpetuate the myth by pricing your signed Patricia Cornwell higher than the non-signed one.

18. People use whatever is close at hand for bookmarks–toothpicks, photographs, kleenex, and the very ocassional fifty dollar bill, which will keep you leafing through books way beyond the point where it’s pr0ductive.

19. If you’re thinking of giving someone a religious book for their graduation, rethink. It will end up unread and in pristine condition at a used book store, sometimes with the fifty dollar bill still tucked inside. (And you’re off and leafing once again).

20. If you don’t have an AARP card, you’re apparently too young to read westerns.

21. A surprising number of people will think you’ve read every book in the store and will keep pulling out volumes and asking you what this one is about. These are the people who leave without buying a book, so it’s time to have some fun. Make up plots.

22. Even if you’re a used bookstore, people will get huffy when you don’t have the new release by James Patterson. They are the same people who will ask for a discount because a book looks like it’s been read.

23. Everyone has a little Nancy Drew in them. Stock up on the mysteries.

24. It is both true and sad that some people do in fact buy books based on the color of the binding.

25. No matter how many books you’ve read in the past, you will feel woefully un-well read within a week of opening the store. You will also feel wise at having found such a good way to spend your days.

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The Bookstore Comes Alive at Night http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/01/09/the-bookstore-comes-alive-at-night/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2012/01/09/the-bookstore-comes-alive-at-night/#comments Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:12:55 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=14876 When it’s dark, and the last customer has left… the proprietor’s gone home, the lights are out and the door is locked…the books can shed the silly pretense of being inanimate objects, shake off the constraints of the day-to-day shelf, and get on with the joyous, celebratory business of being a book.

Love it. Beautiful.

via Bolen Books

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Charles Bukowski’s Letter – Terms for Poetry Reading http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2011/12/29/charles-bukowskis-letter-terms-for-poetry-reading/ http://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2011/12/29/charles-bukowskis-letter-terms-for-poetry-reading/#comments Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:38:26 +0000 http://www.abebooks.com/blog/?p=14795 I love how many literary letters have been turning up lately. There was the letter of advice from Harper Lee, the letter from Charles Bukowski to a library that banned his books, the unearthed illustrated Edward Gorey letters, and the cover letter from Hunter S. Thompson that he sent in along with a job application, to name a few.

Today gives us another beauty from Charles Bukowski, this time outlining his terms and conditions to give a poetry reading.

It reads:

“Hello Mr. Pini:

I rec. your letter from Springfield via Penguin. Today. All right. I am available for a poetry reading but don’t know if you have the stakes. It would take round-trip air (which I imagine would be a great deal from L.A. to Florida), plus $200. Somebody to meet me at the airport and take me back there. Also if I arrive a day early, someplace to stay that night, and if there’s a party after the reading (one of those beer-drinking talking things) then a place to stay that night. I don’t know about your funds. Auden gets 2,000 a reading, Ginsberg 1,000 so you see I’m cheap. A real whore. And maybe not too famous a whore? Anyhow, that’s it. If you can swing it, the sooner the better. Miller Williams of the U. of Arkansas says there is a standing offer of $300 for me to read there, so I could stop off there on the way if I can hook you for plane fare it would make the trip worthwhile. I promise not to be overly intoxicated at the reading. I quit my job at age 50, I’m 51 now and have been more or less on the literary hustle. That’s why I talk money like a pool sharp. It’s all survival; forgive me.

Anyhow, let me know what you think, yes or no…whatever.

I enclose an advertisement for myself…my first novel….wrote it in 20 nights. If you’re interested you can also get my latest book of poems, THE DAYS RUN AWAY LIKE WILD HORSES OVER THE HILLS, same press, same address, $4. I don’t have any extra copies of either.

I’m working on my 2nd. novel now, THE POET, but I’m taking my time. They say it’s 101 degrees today. Fine then, I’m drinking coffee and rolling cigarettes and looking out at the hot baked street and a lady just walked by wiggling it in tight white pants, and we are not dead yet.

hang in,

Charles Bukowski
5124 DeLongpre Ave.
Los Angeles, Calif. 90027

NO-I-6385″

via this isn’t happiness

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