NY Antiquarian Book Show

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

Thanks A Lot, Justice Administration

Thank you so much for protecting us from Apple’s attempts to monopolize the e-book industry. Sure, they set e-book prices and colluded with publishers to do so. And, maybe from the short term view of the consumer and U. S. government, that is a very bad thing. As if monopolies are non existent except for … Read more

Fantastic New York Times Editorial on amazon Trickery

Richard Russo interviewed several best selling authors about the recent amazon trickery, and the results were comforting, at least. The authors, including, Scott Turow, Stephen King, and Dennis Lehane all found amazon’s tactics less than a stellar business practice. However, the comments to the article were typical in the ‘oh you elitists’ and ‘poor amazon’ … Read more

Book Mania or I'll Eat Some Other Day

What have you done, and what would you do, short of commit a crime, to attain a certain book you can’t live without. I mean, you really don’t think that life would nearly be as wonderful if you don’t buy the book sitting on the desk, or up in the bookcase, or in a shaded … Read more

Rex Stout and Me (sort of)

Sometimes serendipity enters a book collectors life. When I worked for A&E mysteries.com as their bookclub moderator, I  wrote articles and interviewed authors etc., but I also had conversations via comments, just like here. I noticed on one mystery board, a woman was asking anyone who may have info how she could sell a collection … Read more

The Mystery League: Great Crime Fiction or Only Super Deco Dust Jackets?

All Carved Up: Performing Autopsies on the Great Bodies of Crime Fiction When I first decided to write an article about this short-lived publishing house I believed that reading the 30 titles published between 1930 and 1933 would be an easy, delightful task. After trudging through about five, I amended my expectations to scanning all … Read more

Pulp Vixens

Politically correct or not, I love the artwork on old paperbacks, magazine covers, and dust jackets depicting barely clad babes. I go as far as to collect them. And I find I’m not alone, by a long shot. I belong to flickr, the website for sharing photos. But besides pictures, there’s an underground section filled … Read more

The Imminent Murder of The Book

Books as we have known them since Gutenberg printed the first bible;  paper, glue, boards, cover artwork, all the physical attributes will soon disappear the way the dodo did. The latest news of the Borders bookstore chain losing their fight to stay alive, hammers one more nail in the coffin filled to the brim with hardcovers, … Read more