I’m into porn. Cookbook porn. It’s a terrible habit. I have the basics: Betty, Julia, Fanny. I have the stuff that’s a little off: Nigella, Bobby, even a Canadian named Laura. Then there are the extremes: Silver Palate, Babycakes, Death By Chocolate. It’s a guilty pleasure. I savor each cookbook as it arrives in the … Read more
by Jas Faulkner It might seem like a needless bit of sophistry to contemplate the evolution of the definition of “book.” We all know what makes up a book, right? Say the word, “book” and the immediate association for most is still an aggregate of leaves bearing printed information, bound together with front and back … Read more
Clicking on Turner Classic Movies the other day, an unfamiliar film starring Bette Davis crossed the screen. It had been on for at least 20 minutes, and I hate entering a film after it’s begun, but it caught my attention because Davis was a small town librarian who apparently was in trouble for defending the … Read more
On a warm June day eight years ago I received a phone call from the director of a summer school program. I had worked as a librarian in the program for three years and assumed my application had been accepted for the upcoming summer session scheduled to begin in two weeks. The director apologized as … Read more
Books don’t come with the piracy warnings that appear at the start of movies, enforcing the message that they are to be bought not borrowed. Books are made to be shared, and despite the fact that bad borrowing etiquette can make people angry when books don’t get returned quickly enough, or they come back tattered and … Read more
by Jas Faulkner Fifteen years ago I was browsing in the graphic novels section at Media Play, a now-defunct retailer in Madison, Tennessee. I had just picked up a trade paperback of Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, when a young girl who had stepped up to look through the same shelves said, “That’s a good one.” … Read more
On September 3, 2013 Kindle announced a program they call Matchbook. This will allow people who have bought print books from Amazon since 1995 to obtain an eBook copy of the book, assuming that the publisher/author of the book has chosen to participate in Matchbook. The prices they quote for getting the eBook copy range … Read more
