Archive for January, 2009
« Previous EntriesVery rare and expensive books - eye-candy for Bibliophiles
Friday, January 30th, 2009Stumbling around this afternoon, I came up with an interesting search, revealing a pretty fascinating gallery of very rare and expensive books on Biblio.com.
Shown to the left isn’t actually a book, though it was found in the search above. Its a portrait of e e cummings mother - by e e cummings - which can [...]
Award-Winning Author John Updike Dies at 76
Tuesday, January 27th, 2009Pulitzer prize recipient and prolific author John Updike passed away today at the age of 76. Updike died from lung cancer.
He is famous for the Rabbit series, a quartet of novels written over a 30-year period which centers around the title character Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom. Other works include The Witches of Eastwick, Couples, and [...]
2009 Award-winning children’s books
Monday, January 26th, 2009The ALA (American Library Association) announced the winners this morning for three prestigious awards to childrens’ authors.
John Newbery Medal
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman - “Neil Gaiman’s eagerly awaited middle-grade take on Rudyard Kipling’s THE JUNGLE BOOK features Nobody, a boy raised by graveyard inhabitants instead of animals. Having escaped his family’s murderer and wandered [...]
Rare Book of the Day - Yoshida Hiroshi
Friday, January 23rd, 2009Yoshida Hiroshi: Print Maker
by Ben Bruce Blakeney
I have a thing for Japanese art, and especially print-making and wood-block prints, because of the precision and complexity involved. Hiroshi was a talented artist and this particular item won’t burn a hole in my pocket if I want to add it to my collection (hint hint to my [...]
Statuettes in Sight for Movie Adaptations
Thursday, January 22nd, 2009Several of the 2009 Academy Award nominations include books that were adapted for the silver screen. To catch up on your winter reading before the Awards, check out these titles:
Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman: Best Art Direction & Costume
The Reader by Bernard Schlink: Best Picture, Actress, Director, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography
Revolutionary Road [...]
Selling Used Childrens’ Books Is Not a Crime!
Friday, January 16th, 2009Many of us in the US book selling community have been concerned about recent legislation that was intended to offer new safety standards for children’s products.
The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) was created to address concerns about harmful substances, such as lead, found in children’s toys being sold in the US. The [...]
Rare book of the day - Tender is the Night - First Edition
Monday, January 12th, 2009Oddly, although its one of my favorite early twentieth century books and I’ve spent 12 years working in the book world, I don’t remember ever having seen a first of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night in a dust jacket - until this morning. This beauty offered for sale by Joshua and Sunday [...]
Booksellers penalized by credit card industry
Thursday, January 8th, 2009We’ve been receiving increasing reports from booksellers that they have been receiving somewhat menacing letters regarding PCI compliance from credit card processors, listing all the potential penalities for non-compliance, such as the following excerpt from one such letter:
Not terribly startling, except this is the first many booksellers have really heard of PCI/DSS compliance. In the [...]
Rare book of the day - Signed Albert Einstein
Wednesday, January 7th, 2009 A gorgeous, signed copy of Einstein’s canonical book, Relativity!
One of the more interesting books that passed through my wife and my hands when we owned a bookstore was a first edition of The Evolution of Physics by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, signed by both authors on the ffep. That was probably one of [...]
Blogging from beyond the grave
Tuesday, January 6th, 2009The Orwell Prize has taken blogging to a new place and time. The British prize annual British prize for excellence in political writing takes its name from writer George Orwell. Beginning in August of 2008, the Orwell Prize has taken an innovative approach to presenting Orwell’s diary in the form of daily blog posts.
Published [...]