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By: Scott Laming,
on 5/4/2009
Blog:
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bad mothers,
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If there is one person who personifies selflessness, un-wavering love
and caring the first to come to mind should be your mother. She cradled you for your fist nine months and
held your hand though all the challenges life could throw at you. Like with all true heroes books are littered with examples of hundreds of miracle moms from the classic Hester Prynne in the
Scarlet Letter, who taught her daughter it's not shameful to have pride in one’s
self, to the more contemporary Mrs. Wesley the super poor super mom who took in
Harry Potter like he was her own son.
However not all the mothers in literature come out smelling like
roses. Abandonment, abuse, and adultery
are the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the bottom of the barrel of fictional mothers. To help you forget that time
your mom forgot your birthday BookFinder.com has compiled a list of the 10
worst mothers in fiction.
The 10 worst mothers in Literature
10. Jeanettes Mother from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
The main character is a young girl named Jeanette, who is adopted into
a fundamentalist religious community. As
Jeanette grows up she discovers that she is a lesbian and finds love and
happiness with another local girl. When
her psychotic mother finds out she publicly condemns the girl in front of their
church/town and proceeds to tie the girl down and attempt two lengthy
exorcisms, one via a 14 hour beating and another 36 hours locked in a parlor
without food.
9. Sarah from Little Children by
Tom Perrotta
Sarah joins the ranks of the litany of literary mothers who neglect
their children to focus the self gratification of an affair. While defiantly not the only woman in
literature to commit this motherly sin she is getting singled out, I can only
have ten on the list.
8. Gertrude from Hamlet by
Shakespeare
The fact that she marries her brother in law, who killed her husband,
is proof that she`s nuts but what really makes Gertrude a certifiable psycho is
that despite all the adultery and killing she tries a little too hard to show
compassion to Hamlet giving the kid a serious Oedipus complex.
7. Jocasta from Oedipus the King
by Sophocles
Speaking of Oedipus... Everyone in this story is too stupid and selfish
for words and Jocasta is no exception. Too
proud to kill her child to protect her kingdom, too stupid to not sleep with
someone who is half her age when the gods have proclaimed she will commit
incest, and soulless enough not to track down who killed her husband; she and
the rest of her family are the perfect pawns to entertain the Greek gods.
6. Sophie Portnoy from Portnoy`s
Complaint by Philip Roth
Alexander Portnoy is a deranged neurotic mess who, unable to enjoy sex,
continues to seek release with more bizarre and deviant acts. To Find the root of Alexander`s issues one
doesn’t have to look to far beyond his smothering, flirting, fussing mother who
wouldn’t even let him use the bathroom without overseeing what he had
accomplished.
5. The mother/stepmother in
Hansel and Gretel by Brothers Grimm
She convinces her woodcutter husband to leave their kids out in the
forest to die. The children display
intelligence and cunning to make it back to the house when the woman gets her
husband to trudge them off even deeper into the forest. Child labor would even have been a more motherly option, I mean it was practically
fashionable in the 19th century.
Abandonment = bad mothering, at least she snuffs it in the end.
4. Norma Bates from Psycho by
Robert Bloch
While most of her emotional abuse and tirades
about the evils of women and sex go on behind the scenes in this novel, the
emotionally crippled murderous fruits of her labor take center stage. Norma Bates defines the role of the psychotic mother in fiction
3. Margaret White from Carrie by
Stephen King
Mother of Carrie White, Margaret was religious fanatic who believed
nearly everything was sin and became physically and emotionally abusive to her
daughter in an effort to get her to conform to her devout lifestyle, usually by
locking her in a closet until she prayed for forgiveness. That kind of mother would send anyone into a
telekinetic fury.
2. Petal from The Shipping News
by E. Annie Proulx
She leaves her husband shortly after his parents commit suicide and
runs off with her lover, but not before selling her daughters to a black market
adoption agency... her only redeeming quality is that she gets killed off in a
car crash so early in the book.
1. Corinne Dollanganger from
Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews
After Marrying her father’s half-brother Corinne Dollanganger is
widowed, and forced to return to her astringed family home with her four
children. Her mother agrees to her
moving back on the condition that Corinne hides the (illegitimate) children
from Malcolm, her husband and Corinne’s father, until he dies. Instead of working it out on her own she
stuffs the children into an attic for years where they are generally ignored
and become malnourished, delusional, incestuous and develop every social
abnormality in the book. Oh yeah she
also tries to kill them off.
Honourable mention goes to Viviane Joan from Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood by Rebecca Wells
Viviane (Vivi) really is a good mother but vanity gets the
best of her when she sees an interview with her daughter (Siddalee) in
Time magazine where Siddalee expresses her opinions of an unhappy childhood. Vivi proceeds to act like a four year old and
goes berserk and launching a war against her daughter, refusing to talk to her
and even taking down family photos.... way to suck it up and control the ol ego
for the family Vivi. Vivi would make
this list except that by the end of the story both her and her daughter once
again see eye to eye and really Vivi is just guilty of caring too much.
Printeresting has a great post on a company using a 150 watt CO2 laser to create business cards/marketing material.
Per Meatcards.com:
Unlike other business cards, MEAT CARDS will retain value after the econopocalypse. Hoard and barter your calorie-rich, life-sustaining cards.
As some of you know, we occasionally bring LM branded brownies to book fairs...clearly will now have to think about branded jerky (or not).
ABAA dealers Jeffrey Marks and Peter Stern have just released a statement regarding what appears to be at least 15 forged Hemingway inscriptions. These are apparently of extremely high quality and there is evidence that there are other "high point" inscriptions being offered. Forewarned is forearmed.
Their release follow, reprinted with permission from P. Stern:
Jeffrey H. Marks Rare Books and Peter L. Stern & Co., Inc. would like to caution our colleagues and the public regarding what we believe to be a substantial fraud involving forged Hemingway inscriptions. We purchased three of these last year from a European colleague but had only catalogued one, which we subsequently withdrew from sale. Four more showed up at the recent New York fair with European colleagues who had recently purchased them in Italy. Careful examination of these by Jennifer Larson and others revealed clues that led us to conclude that they, along with three we had in stock (but which were not with us in New York), contain forged inscriptions apparently by the same hand.
On being informed of this conclusion, our colleagues did not display these at the fair. We have found several similar inscriptions elsewhere (now, better late than never, that we know what to look for), for a total of at least 15 books. We are concerned that more such books have either been sold or are being offered for sale. We have some reason to believe that there are additional forgeries purporting to be by Fitzgerald, Salinger, Faulkner and others advertised for sale, although whether these are the products of the same forger remains undetermined. Thus far, we have no evidence of these being other than of recent manufacture.
We are seeking the cooperation of our colleagues to investigate the source of these forgeries. As required by the ILAB Code of Ethics, as well as by our own standards of conduct, we have always unconditionally guaranteed autographs as genuine. We have never provided "authentication" for so much as a single scrap of paper. That said, we are willing to examine any inscriptions that our colleagues might feel queasy about, and will provide our opinions so long as it is understood that, should we suspect these to be forgeries, we will be furnished with full and complete details of their origin.
Peter L. Stern
Jeffrey H. Marks
The Iranian/Brit who stole leaves from an untold number of books at the British Library and the Bodleian Library has had his sentence cut in half by the Appellate Court...and his deportation order was reversed.
Mr Justice Blake, giving the court's judgement, said: "This was not a case of someone stealing to improve his library then preventing scholars from accessing those books in the future. All the books have been recovered and so have the pages.
Apparently, the court was swayed by his "charitable work". Sad commentary...good thing he did not steal beer from the market, the penalty would undoubtedly be harsher.
For other elements of this tale, please see
this and
that.
By: Scott Laming,
on 4/24/2009
Blog:
Bookfinder.com Journal
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Appeal Pocket Series,
beginer book collecting,
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Emanuel Halderman-Julius,
Five Cent Pocket Series,
Henry Halderman,
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I just received a neat email from Jason, one of our blog readers, about his website where he discusses the Little Blue Books series which was published by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius and his son Henry J. Haldeman. Its quite a good page and provides a lot of neat information.
Haldeman was a newspaper man who wished to publish small low priced paperback books for the working class. The books were to be cheap and small enough to fit into ones pocket (~3.5"x5"). In 1919 he purchased Appeal to Reason publishing and raised his start up capital by by appealing to the companies 175, 000 person subscriber list asking them to pledge $5 each to receive 50 future publications. 5000 of the readers took him up on the offer and he was in business.
Over the course of the companies existence (1919-1978) the Halderman's printed thousands of editions amounting to hundreds of millions of copies. The Little Blue Books was just one of several different series the Haldemans produced, others included: The Appeal's Pocket Series, People's Pocket Series, Appeal Pocket Series, Ten Cent Pocket Series, Five Cent Pocket Series and the Pocket Series.
I find this type of publication fascinating. They became desirable because they were cheaply produced and therefore were well within the price range of the working class. Because they were cheap they were used, abused, and discarded which is what has made them collectible. This same phenomenon occurred with Victorian era Yellow Backs as well as the 1920s-50s pulp paperbacks... I'm sure there are more these are just the first two that came to my head.
Yellow-backs Little Blue Books Pulp Novels
This is also a great type of book for a beginner collector because even with moderate means one can begin to put together a very nice collection without spending a mint (although it is still easy to get carried away).
If you want a more in depth review on Halderman and Little Blue Books I recommend Jason's website, it has lots of really good information, or search for Little Blue Books on BookFinder.com
[Now reading: The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga]
I suppose I was half correct with my Pulitzer guess on Friday.... Updike didn't win but one of the outsiders did.
Elizabeth Strout's collection of 13 tales about a retired schoolteacher named Olive Kitteridge has taken top spot as the Pulitzer Prize winner in the fiction category.
Also nominated in the category were The Plague of Doves by Louise Erdrich and All Souls by Christine Schutt.
Following the release/success of Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the Usual Suspects over at Stinque started an open source "Zombie Bible". This project has been progressing nicely and, according to their recent post, stands as second in an onslaught of similar project. Upcoming works, per the post:
- The Portrait of a Lady and Vampires (Henry James and Laurell K. Hamilton)
- Crime and Punishment and Werewolves (Feodor Dostoevsky and Stephen King)
- War and Peace and Alien and Predator (Leo Tolstoy and Jeff VanderMeer)
- Silas Marner vs. The Lizard Men (George Eliot and Paul Di Filippo)
- Three Men in a Boat and Sea Serpents (Jerome K. Jerome and Connie Willis)
- The Demons at the Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad and John Shirley)
- Moby Dick vs. Cthulhu (Herman Melville, H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth and Brian Lumley)
- Portrait of the Artist as a Young Terminator (James Joyce and Aaron Allston)
I do think this is the first of many...we shall see which roll out first. I'm just annoyed I did not think of Moby Dick vs Cthulhu.
We are about
to begin a new era in baseball, this month the first games will be played at
the new Yankee stadium. Very few other
sports complexes compare in the depth of history associated with simple bricks
and mortar. Called The Cathedral of
Baseball, the park served the Yankees from 1923 to 2008 and was the home field
for baseball greats Joe DiMaggio, Reggie Jackson, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and
of course the Bambino, even the ballpark itself has been called The House That (Babe) Ruth
Built.
I found some neat books (and photos) for the memory of the old Yankee Stadium...
The first is Jackie Robinson's disputed steal in the 1955 world series and the second is the 1948 fight between Jersey Joe Walcott and Joe Louis and third is a program from the Yankees 1942 World Series appearance against the St. Louis Cardinals.
I could not resist posting this about The Codex Seraphinianus. For anyone who does not know it is a very strange book of art... or science fiction, its really tough to say. It appeared on the BookFinder.com report this past year as the 8th most searched for book in the science fiction, fantasy and horror category, and now you can see why it's so popular.
The book is an encyclopedia about an alien world, written in an alien [many say false] language. AbeBooks has written a comprehensive review of this fascinating book, with heaps of photos.
You can check out the whole feature here.
The Codex Seraphinianus is quite rare and expensive but there is a reprint edition published in Italy that is much more affordable.
Stinque posted some Selections from the London Review of Books classifieds for March 12, 2009. The list included:
Fanciable sylph, 52, seeks diversion.
Leading the ever clever TtWS to post:
Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket
6:46 PM • TUESDAY • MARCH 24, 2009
I dunno, I think a tryst with a fanciable slyph, 52, would be kinda delightful if I were in her age range and inclined that way.
Compelling the Wrong Coast Legal Eagle to query:
SanFranLefty
6:54 PM • TUESDAY • MARCH 24, 2009
@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket:
Is a slyph a slutty sylph?
And here our exchange takes a turn to the wonderful, as TtWS responds, a mere 30 minutes later:
Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket
7:32 PM • TUESDAY • MARCH 24, 2009
@SanFranLefty:
Surely a “slyph” is a slut of a sylph,
Sure as “soot” after sweeping is “toos”,
Or the sleeve of a sluice can combine to make sluve,
and the sound when a cat flees is “mewve”.
If we dun ourselves in to the spelling of words,
or dole them out only by what they might mean,
We miss out on some funderful combomakeshuns,
And our use of the language is lean.
So celebretype words of the neolodge sort!
And forgive me my lapses in art,
and if my lackodaise use of orthograpy hurts,
I apolomake stryght from my heart.
SFL, clearly smote, responds:
SanFranLefty
7:37 PM • TUESDAY • MARCH 24, 2009
@Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket:
Wanna play Scrabble?
TtWS, recognizing genius as well as crafting it, responds:
Tommmcatt the Wet Sprocket
7:39 PM • TUESDAY • MARCH 24, 2009
@SanFranLefty:
That was a practically perfect response in every way, darling.
My day is made. It can not get better. I am going to bed.
As an avid dog lover I thought it was only fitting that my first blog post be on National Puppy Day. Happy National Puppy Day! My name is Shauna Stewart and in addition to walking, training and playing with my two dogs I am responsible for marketing here at BookFinder.com.
Below are a few books to help you along with your puppy parenthood. Happy training!
The National Museum of Health and Medicine [part of the National Library of Medicine] has just created a massive archive of medical illustrations and photography. Best yet, it is *all* free and housed at flicker.
Per a very good
Wired article:
An Army archivist is undertaking a massive project to digitize and make public a unique collection of rare and sometimes startling military medical images, from the Civil War to Vietnam.
This previously unreported archive at the Army-run National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., contains 500,000 scans of unique images so far, with another 225,000 set to be digitized this year.
Mike Rhode, the museum's head archivist, is working to make tens of thousands of those images, which have been buried in the museum's archive, available on Flickr. Working after hours, his team has posted a curated selection of almost 800 photos on the service already.
"You pay taxes. These are your pictures," Rhode said. "You should be able to see them."
It is a remarkable collection. All images are being provided for free under a Creative Commons Attribution license. I look forward to see how this project evolves.
The Times Online has just posted three rather good lists of Novels. I offer the bare lists for your consideration...there is a bit of supporting theory at TO.
10 Literary one-hit wonders
- Harper Lee - To Kill a Mockingbird
- Margaret Mitchell - Gone With the Wind
- Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights
- J.D.Salinger - Catcher in the Rye
- Oscar Wilde - The Picture of Dorian Gray
- John Kennedy Toole - A Confederacy of Dunces
- Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
- Anna Sewell - Black Beauty
- Boris Pasternak - Dr Zhivago
- Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things
10 Cursed second novels- Something Happened- Joseph Heller
- The Almost Moon- Alice Sebold
- Barbary Shore- Norman Mailer
- The Little Friend- Donna Tartt
- Marabou Stork Nightmares - Irvine Welsh
- Thirteen Moons - Charles Frazier
- Shirley- Charlotte Bronte
- Valperga- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
- Walking on Glass- Iain Banks
- Dead Babies by Martin Amis and That Uncertain Feeling by Kingsley Amis
10 Spectacular second novels- Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
- Ulysses - James Joyce
- Midnight's Children- Salman Rushdie
- Vile Bodies - Evelyn Waugh
- Oliver Twist -Charles Dickens
- Girl With a Pearl Earring -Tracy Chevalier
- The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
- Life of Pi - Yann Martel
- The Beautiful and Damned - F.Scott Fitzgerald
- The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot
Additions? Subtractions? What the hell are they thinkings?
Every red blooded bibliophile will eventually admit that at one point they have dreamed of owning, or at least working, in a bookstore. The idea of getting to spend ones days bustling though the smell of the stacks, handling old books, and being able to recommend a book that makes the customer’s week are a fanciful notion. But is this actually how it happens, or is it just the romantic fantasy we bibliophiles hold on to about the professional bookseller.
If you ever wanted to know what it was like to work in a bookstore but aren’t ready to jump in head first here are a few reads that might help paint the picture for you.
Top 10 books about bookselling
1.Books: A Memoir by Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry’s novels are barely mentioned. They just don’t seem that important to him. Books: A Memoir is a book about being a bookman, being a book scout, being a used bookseller. Countless authors stress the importance of literacy and bang on about how books must never die, but how many open bookstores and get their hands dirty at the sharp end of this business – flogging used books?
2.The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee
In The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, a Book Sense selection, Lewis Buzbee celebrates the unique experience of the bookstoreé He shares his passion for books, which began with ordering through the Weekly Reader in grade school to a fascinating historical account of the bookseller trade—from the great Alexandria library to Sylvia Beach’s famous Paris bookstore, Shakespeare & Co. Rich with anecdotes, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop is the perfect choice for those who relish the enduring pleasures of spending an afternoon finding just the right book.
3. The King's English by Betsy Burton
Burton opened her bookstore in Salt Lake City in 1977, and this book explains the trials and tribulations of running an independent bookstore. From competition from national chains, censorship under the Patriot Act, strange twists in reading tastes, and even stranger tastes in visiting authors whose lists of demands read like those of rabid rock stars.
4. The Haunted Bookshop by Christopher Morley
Unlike the previous suggestions The Haunted Bookshop is a novel set in Brooklyn just after the end of World War I. The story juxtaposes a pair of middle-aged bookshop owners and two young lovers with a nest of German saboteurs, but more importantly for this list, the novel has a great insight into the bookseller’s trade.
5. Sixpence House by Paul Collins
This is Paul Collins account of his move, with his family, to the Hay-on-Wye book town (1500 residents and 40 bookstores) from San Francisco and the adventures he finds there.
6. Bookstore: The Life and Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co. by Lynne Tillman
The behind-the-scenes story of one of America's greatest bookstores, narrated by Lynne Tillman and the customers, employees, and famous writers who frequented it.
7. An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books by Wendy Werris
This book is another memoir in the life of books and bookselling. Werris got her start in 1970 selling books at Pickwick Bookstore in LA. She talks about her time with small presses and independent bookstores.
8. A Gentle Madness: Bibliophiles, Bibliomanes, and the Eternal Passion for… by Nicholas A. Basbanes
Not directly about Bookselling per say but any conversation where books about books are talked about Nicholas Basbanes will eventually come up. Basbanes has written no less than eight books about books, book collecting, bookstores, libraries and book culture and his works provide a great insight into the world in which booksellers live.
9. Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach
In 1919 Sylvia Beach "opened an American bookshop in Paris called Shakespeare and Company. The shop became a publishing house for a majority of The Lost Generation. This book talks about how this little shop came to publish James Joyce`s opus Ulysses.
10. Left Bank waltz : the Australian bookshop in Paris by Elaine Lewis
Elaine Lewis left her home in Australia to open the first Australian
book shop in Paris. Elaine hosted events, book readings and encouraged
an exchange of ideas and a love of literature, as well as midnight
swims in the Seine! But when some bumbling and nasty French bureaucrats
threatened to close down the shop, Elaine and her many staunch
supporters were faced with a battle against the establishment that
quickly became stranger than fiction Left Bank Waltz is the spirited
story of an Australian woman's courageous decision to follow a dream
... I didn't include them on this list since they are not about bookselling per say but there is also a neat series of detective novels by author and bookseller John Dunning about a bookseller and ex-policeman named Cliff Janeway who solves crime. Start with Booked to Die and work your way though the series.
How Good a Bookman Are You?
Publication unknown, October 21, 1968
By Charles B. Anderson
Anderson’s Book Shop
Larchmont, New York
This is a test designed to determine your bookman’s I.Q. A score of 20 right should entitle you to consideration as the editor of the next edition of “The Bookman’s Glossary”; 18 or 19 right makes you a super-bookman. If you get 16 or 17 right, you are a top-flight bookman; 14 or 15 right, a competent bookman; 12 or 13 is fair; 10 or 11, a conditional-pass. No matter what your score, you can add to your bookman’s vocabulary and background by owning and referring frequently to the latest edition of “The Bookman’s Glossary.” (Bowker).
(1.) incunabula
a. pirated editions
b. early medieval manuscripts
c. writings of the Incas
d. books printed before 1501 A.D.
(2.) half-tone
a. a line-cut
b. a photo-engraving
c. an en-space in type measurement
d. a semi-quaver
(3.) Bodoni
a. an Italian antiquarian
b. a typeface
c. an Italian bookseller known as “Bold-face Bodoni”
d. a Swiss printer of chap-books
(4.) bibelot
a. a decorative book
b. a small Bible
c. paraph
d. vellum
(5.) bowdlerized
a. pied (as type)
b. expurgated
c. illegible
d. laminated
(6.) perfect binding
a. glued binding
b. extremely durable binding
c. hand-tooled leather binding
d. side-stitching
(7.) colporteur
a. a traveling book agent
b. an American song writer
c. a French pamphleteer
d. a medieval songbook
(8.) palimpsest
a. hieroglyphic or cuneiform writing
b. folio editions of the 16th and 17th centuries
c. papyrus made from Nile River reeds
d. parchment written upon two or three times
(9.) fore-edge painting
a. the illustration on the front of a book jacket
b. pictures painted on the outer edges of a book
c. the actual illumination of a manuscript
d. a color process in printing known also as fourflushing
(10.) font
a. a hairline rule
b. a base for pamphlet binding
c. the manufacture of foolscap paper
d. an assortment of type
(11.) bibliophile
a. a bookseller
b. a Slavic bible
c. a collection of rare bibles
d. a lover of books
(12.) intaglio
a. one of six basic principles of printing
b. an Italian flat-bed press
c. a seraglio
d. an object pressed into the cover of a book
(13.) hornbook
a. an encyclopedia
b. a book about musical instruments
c. a primer
d. a dictionary
(14.) Jean Grolier
a. an early French bibliophile
b. a French encyclopedist
c. a 19th century French-Canadian publisher
d. the founder of Librairie Hachette
(15.) Grub Street
a. “Publishers’ Row” in London
b. Rotten Row in London
c. literary hacks
d. book-worms
(16.) holograph
a. sans-serif
b. a manuscript wholly in the handwriting of its author
c. a manuscript for which the author receives no royalties
d. silk-screen printing
(17.) recto
a. an expression used by printers meaning “O.K. to print”
b. the correction of a printer’s error
c. the right-hand page of a book
d. the last page of a book
(18.) Mathew Carey
a. a type designer
b. an early American bookseller and publisher
c. a partner in the early American publishing firm of Carey-Thomas
d. a Scottish publisher
(19.) Pica
a. a serif
b. twelve-point (type size)
c. a stencil
d. a tight-fisted bookmaker
(20.) variorum edition
a. any book of varied contents
b. a book of the hours
c. any anthology
d. a book with notes by various editors
Answers: 1, d; 2, b; 3, b; 4, a; 5, b; 6, a; 7, a; 8, d; 9, b; 10, d; 11, a; 12, a; 13, c; 14, a; 15, c; 16, b; 17, c; 18, b; 19, b; 20, d.
Thanks to Brad Johnson for this.
As you may remember from this years BookFinder.com Report the book A Lion Called Christian became an internet sensation this year when Anthony Bourke's , the books author, reunion with his pet lion received millions of hits on Youtube which caused the general masses to seek out the now out of print book A Lion Called Christian.
The book was the sixth most popular out of print title on BookFInder.com last year and had been out of print since 1972. After the spike in interest publishers rushed A Lion Called Christian back into print, making a lot of people who didn't want to buy a collectible edition quite happy indeed.
So now you can see Anthony Bourke on Oprah tomorrow to re-tell his 40 year old story.
As you may remember from this years BookFinder.com Report the book A Lion Called Christian became an internet sensation this year when Anthony Bourke's , the books author, reunion with his pet lion received millions of hits on Youtube which caused the general masses to seek out the now out of print book A Lion Called Christian.
The book was the sixth most popular out of print title on BookFInder.com last year and had been out of print since 1972. After the spike in interest publishers rushed A Lion Called Christian back into print, making a lot of people who didn't want to buy a collectible edition quite happy indeed.
So now you can see Anthony Bourke on Oprah tomorrow to re-tell his 40 year old story.
The new Crawley library opened in West Sussex relatively recently. It contains some striking architectural/artistic elements...notably remarkable textual trees.
The striking, cracked trees, 14 in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text – which is where Why Not Associates comes in.
“We worked with the selected passages of text, choosing typefaces and designing the layout,” says Why Not’s Andy Altmann of the studio’s role in the making of the Crawley Trees. “Because there were 14 trees to do, all of us in the studio got to do one.”
...
The text to adorn the trees was chosen by the users of Crawley library, thanks to research done by Anna Sandberg. “She was another key collaborator and did all the workshops with the people [of Crawley] to point us in the right direction in terms of sourcing textual content,” says Young. “She also put hundreds of questionnaire postcards in books all over the library and we got hundreds of replies naming favourite books and passages and thoughts about what was good literature”
Philip Jose Farmer (1/26/1918-2/25/2009) passed away in his sleep this morning.
As posted on his website, [h]e will be missed greatly by his wife Bette, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends and countless fans around the world.
He won his first
Hugo Award in 1953 and his last in 1972 ["To Your Shattered Bodies Go"]. In the first few years of 2000, he one the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award [lifetime achievement, awarded at the Nebula Awards Ceremony], the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the Forry Award for Lifetime Achievement.
He will be missed by many...
Among the new things happening over at Fine Books and Collections is a new "group" blog. I am very pleased to say that I was involved in drafting the first crop of bloggers and I think it is off to a great start. The intent is that everyone will post about once a week, which should provide for some steady, interesting posts with a variety of voices and focus areas. Though there are a few asks still jelling, the crew as it stands includes the following:
A riotous crew, if I do say so myself...and I do. I'm hoping to announce one or two more bloggers in the near future. So
head over and read some interesting posts by people who write better than I.
I am by no means what one might call a film buff, but to my un-trained eye I did find this year’s Oscar nominations to be a bit lopsided. I'm not sure if it's just my memory but it seems that each year fewer and fewer films are actually recognized, meaning the bulk of the nominations are stacked on an ever shrinking set of films.
My wife suggested that perhaps studios are just pushing more and more
of their overall budget into trying to create a bigger blockbuster than the next studio (all eggs, one basket) and so all of the best performances come from the same films, however I think that there are just less good scripts being written and adapted leaving the judges to pick the couple gems out of the dregs.
I sometimes feel the same way about publishing, in that the bulk of the books I want to read were written decades ago. Why publishers keep pumping out half baked memoirs when there are so many cool out of print books in their back lists that could be whisked back onto the shelves for the poor souls who have not yet found BookFinder. I'm not suggesting a kybosh on new books but I KNOW there are some very cool old tales that
could happily be retold.
What got me on this rant was The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It leads the way in Oscar nominations, and was first written in the 1920s. It was first published in Colliers magazine and subsequently in the AnthologyTales of the Jazz Age which came out in 1922 and then fall out of print (in English) until 1991 when Eastern Press published a collector’s edition.
This little tidbit of information prompted me to issue my highly personal, mostly
random, list of ten books from the 1920s that would be better than most new books.
Adam's Daughter by John Carruthers
Cover alone would sell the tale of this young girl trying to right the wrongs of her activities
Gabriel Samara Peacemaker by E. Phillips Oppenheim
A novel about Russian immigrants who are living in New York and
plotting about how to make Russia a republic. Oppenheim has written somewhere near 150 novels, and even graced the cover of Time in 1927. Stir in a little star power and this has blockbuster written all over it.
The House of the Three Ganders by Irving Bacheller
Bacheller was a writer and journalist who was responsible for bringing the likes of Rudyard Kipling and Arthur Conan Doyle to American readers though his Syndicate that provided articles to Sunday papers around the US. (Only OOP in the US)
Right off the Map by C.E. Montague
Montague was Guardian journalist before writing this Science Fiction
Novel involving a dystopic future in England.
On Doing What One Likes by Alec Waugh
Alec has been credited with inventing the cocktail party, offering his guests rum swizzles rather than tea, acts like that make me think I should read what this man has to say. Alec is elder brother of the better-known Evelyn Waugh.
Sweard's Folly by Edison Marshall
He wrote The Vikings, Yankee Pasha and Treasure of the Golden Condor but Seward`s Folly has been out of print since 1924.
The Hotel by Elizabeth Bowen
This book is about the interactions of several upper class Brits staying at a hotel on the Italian Riviera in the 1920s, the hotel did come back into print for a time in 2003 in the UK but has once again fallen out.
The Diamond Necklace by Fred Jackson
Jackson was best known as a screen writer. This was his first mystery novel, which has been out of print since 1929.
Dark Hester by Anne Douglas Sedgwick
Story of two women in the English Countryside dealing with love, suffering and the like...
The Girl From Hollywood by Edgar Rice Burroughs
Since Tarzan has been pretty much beaten to death, it would be nice to have someone look at some of Burroughs' other work
I highly encourage you to submit any out-of-print gems that you think could trump
current blockbusters.
Charlie and I spend a lot of time talking about books. Specifically, what makes a book a book. It may be because of his predilection for reading (heavy!) thousand-page fantasy novels, but he's been dabbling with hardware- and software-based ebook platforms for a while now. Charlie's last foray into the land of the e-book reading platform, the Sony Reader, was pretty much a failure. It sustained his interest for a while, but eventually never managed to fit into his workflow, due to bad desktop client software and lack of interesting content. Unusable as a book reader, then he tried to use it as a "computer-lite" to display RSS feeds; it worked up to a point, but was very inelegant, largely because of inherent device limitations.
Charlie's mental jump—from seeing the Sony Reader as an electronic book, to a portable computer text display device—reflects the same insight that Virginia Hefferman's son had, in her recent article on the Amazon Kindle:
"In their book 'Freakonomics,' Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt write that kids who grow up in houses packed with books fare better on school tests than those who grow up with fewer books. But they also contend that reading aloud to children and limiting their TV time has no correlation with success on tests. If both of these observations hold, it’s worth determining what books really are, the better to decisively decorate with them. The widespread digitization of text has complicated the matter. Will Ben benefit if I load my Kindle with hundreds of books that he can’t see? Or does he need the spectacle of hard- and softcover dust magnets eliminating floor space in our small apartment to get the full 'Freakonomics' effect? I sadly suspect he needs the shelves and dust.
Anyway, Ben doesn’t distinguish between my Kindle and a BlackBerry. My immersion in the Kindle is not (to him) an example of impressive role-model literacy. It’s Mom e-mailing, or texting, or for all he knows playing video games. In fact, the only time he describes what he and I do together as 'reading' is when we’re sitting with a clutch of pages bound between covers, open in front of us like a hymnal."
(more...)There's a social role for books, books that look and feel like books. I fully expect to buy an ebook reader sometime in the next few years (I'm rarely an early adopter), but I'm acutely aware of the fact that you lose things along the way. I've had long conversations with friends about the role of record cover art; those who grew up in the age of records have a very different relationship with it compared to those who saw cover art shrink down to fit cassettes, CDs, and iPod screens. I'm not ready to make a value judgment on how important cover art really is, but I do know that eighteen year olds seem to have a disproportionate amount of 60s-70s rock cover art posters on their walls, versus cover art from the 2000s. If nothing else, I fully expect to see some print editions of classic angsty lit in college dorm rooms in the 2040s.
For the last several years, I've been the webmaster for my friend Chitra Divakaruni, a mid-career novelist and poet. Her website talks a bit about her and each of her books. It's pretty simple, and hasn't changed dramatically in a long time.
Chitra has the paperback of her latest novel coming out soon, as well as a new book for young adults. This, along with the ongoing death of US newspaper book sections, has lit a fire under us, and we're trying to think beyond the website, embracing social media to better reach readers where they're at. We have a mailing list set up, and are syndicating tour dates on BookTour.com; a blog and an expanded Facebook presence are on their way. It's been exciting to see the kind of positive feedback Chitra's already been getting from readers able to connect directly to a favorite writer.
The New York Times recently ran a piece on the new business of big budget author websites, online book launches, and author promo videos. As much as I'm into this sort of thing, some of the tactics just seem excessive. Is it really worth spending $35,000 to launch a promotional website for a novel? Does a website for a book really need an original score? Apparently I'm not alone in my confusion; publishers, bullish as they are, also seem to be a bit fuzzy on the ROI. (The article does mention that in a specific study, 8% of readers had visited author websites in the past week; by extension, 92% hadn't.)
How are your purchases swayed by author or book websites?
The Guardian article's basic argument is that nearly all players in the book world, collectors, dealers and libraries/special collections all tend to be as quiet as possible regarding losses. This, added to the tendency toward personal fiefdoms and the strong aversion to sharing data, allows miscreants and thieves a much "safer" playground within which to work.
This is a very interesting issue and one that deserves deeper thought and, possibly, an attempt at a data[base] driven solution. I lack the time to run with this at the moment...but we shall return to it in the future.
Thanks to
JG for the heads up.
They met when in their late teens and were dating each other's best
friends. They remain friends to this day. She "knew at 16 that he was
going to do great things...and kept everything he ever sent me." The
collection provides a look at a little known side of one of the
cultural icons of the 20th century (and a remarkably talented
catoonist). All is packed and ready for
San Fran.
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Credit where credit is due:
http://locusmag.com/2009/April1_Mashups.html
Cited in the original, but not your link.
I'd lay odds on the Stephen King volume being a success, but by the time the rest come out, the fad will have passed.
Except the Zombie Bible, of course. That lives forever.