Diane Plumley You know, I honestly used to enjoy buying certain books from this giant non taxing paying Walmart in the ethernet sky. That was before slave labor was discovered, and the foisting of kindle on the masses began. This new development takes the slime bucket award. Mysterious Galaxy, a fantastic indie bookstore featuring mystery and science … Read more
I didn’t realize that biblios had such a broad range. While researching, I found rare manuscripts and letters, and even scraps of writing on paper were considered part of the genre. A few titles fit very neatly. Here’s one–The Vivero Letter, Bagley, Desmond, 1968– A letter dating from 1539 and the conquest of Mexico by Cortes … Read more
Rereading articles about last September’s London riots, I became bemused over the point many newspapers and blogs made about the lack of looting and book burning during the violence. All had theories of why this was so. One–the rioters respect books, therefore didn’t touch them. I think we can rule that one out immediately. Some … Read more
I ran across an article about challenges the Canadian libraries and school libraries faced for the year 2010. Despite lagging a year behind in their statistics, the outcome was quite pleasing to me, as someone who has written so much on banning books from school and public libraries in the US. Report of the Annual … Read more
Anne Anderson’s House That Jack Built is worlds apart from a Victorian’s book plate, or Art Deco vision, or a Golden Book’s mid century idea of what the perfect abode would look like in Mother Goose Land. Because of these differences it’s like a birthday, or holiday whenever a collector finds a new version of … Read more
I thought I’d throw this little snippet up because the wonderful posters about banning books are all gathered onto one page, and it’s amazing what books were banned over the years. Some of the slogans are dead on, perfect expressions of the need for freedom to read, whatever we want. Anyhoo–if interested : http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150354437251662.342497.20181651661&type=1
An interesting article once again explores the impact of print on demand books. A offbeat attitude is displayed by the author of the article, Clive Thompson. It’s his contention that PODs will lead to *more* physical books, not less, actually he thinks in 20 years we will all be ‘neck deep’ in them. It’s what … Read more
I’ve revamped, redone, reorganized and generally changed the way I’m going about listing and writing up the Best 100 Mysteries of All Time. Although these titles are still in the list–they no longer are numbered. I have put the entire list up, in alphabetical order, thereby keeping what book comes in at what number, undisclosed, … Read more
