Finding desirous books can be quite serendipitous. For example, last Saturday at a very large book and ephemera show in Allentown PA, I found three titles I never dreamed of locating within a reasonable budget, and certainly not in person. Maybe through bookfinder’s ABE., or Biblio, but on a table or shelf right in front … Read more
I saw Notting Hill a few years ago. I’m sure at this point everyone knows that Hugh Grant’s character is the owner of a travel bookstore. A store that sells only travel books. When I first saw Notting Hill I thought it was a hilarious idea. How could that possibly survive these days? I can … Read more
At the annual New York Antiquarian Book Show, even the paper within a bookseller’s catalog, has a refined air. A fragrance if you will, of expensively printed sheets of paper, beautifully bound with my favorite illustration from In Powder and Crinoline by Kay Nielsen’s hand.Within its pages are detailed descriptions of tomes I’ve never heard … Read more
I awoke to a friend on a writer’s list asking us to support author Charlaine Harris, of the Sookie vampire/mystery books, because someone in Germany who read the final title in the series posted a spoiler online. On Ms. Harris’ facebook page, there are a 1,369 comments. Most, from my quick calculation, positive towards Ms. … Read more
How do you accept payments? In Toronto there are a multitude of booksellers of different types and sizes: some are huge multi-story stores with thousands of books, DVDs, and music; others are small storefronts whose square footage can be measured in tens of feet. Then there are the individuals who set up on a street … Read more
If Van Gough had Prozac, would he have explored creative worlds only he saw? If Tennessee Williams had been born in a time where homosexuality was universally accepted, would he have poured out A Streetcar Named Desire? If Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, every other depressed tortured writer and artist had Effexor, or Wellbutrin or any other anti … Read more
It’s been a while since the news was overrun with stories on the H7N9 bird flu – but not so long ago the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Chinese government were convincing folks not to panic…yet. But if you spent as many hours translating microblogs from Mandarin as some amateur epidemiologists do, you’d be … Read more
In crime fiction, bad acts are the norm. Violence both civilized and grotesque make up the themes within. Not much seems too far fetched to the reader because there is a unwritten agreement between the reader and writer –ignore improbability and simply enjoy. The concept of evil, that the murderers within the pages are of … Read more
