Books & Mags

14 Inventions NOT Available at Aunt Em’s House

by

  By Carrie Bailey Context changes things. In 1907, the concept of a clockwork man was innovative, a device before its time. In fact, Frank L. Baum created his character Tik Tok before the word “robot” was first used to describe “a machine resembling a human being and able to replicate certain human movements and … Read more

Library Voyeurism: Admit It. You Do It, Too!

by

by Jas Faulkner

library2welOne of the advantages of the current technology available for photo sharing is the ability to find details that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. Thanks to less expensive digital imaging and social media, we have all seen recent pictures of ghosts, Big Foot, Chupacabras, Elvis, Tupac, and fiends deeply buried in our couch cushions.

Through the pictures we scan and then expand we have discovered the lost libraries of our friends, our family and our childhoods.

We all do it.  We see a picture of a book case int he background and our first impulse is to try to read the titles on the spines. Photos from my own late sixties to early seventies childhood reveals as much about my parents’ aspiration for me and my brother as it does about their thirst to continue their educations.

Read more

The Glass Room-Should or Shouldn’t It Be a Best 100?

by

  The Glass Room  Edwin Rolfe and  Lester Fuller  1946 “In 1946 the phrase first appeared in the murder mystery novel Murder in the Glass Room (by Edwin Rolfe and Lester Fuller) as “you can never tell a book by its cover.” Wow, that fact, I just found, may tip the book onto the list! We’ll … Read more

Enter ManBookRead – Gentlemen Only

by

We have a new contributor at The Bookshop Blog, something just for the guys. Here’s some info: ManBookRead is a men’s book club that was established to unite men around America (and beyond) under one interesting, quality, and genuinely awesome book each month. If it helps to use an example, think of Oprah’s Book Club … Read more

The Wit and Wisdom Of Dorothy Parker

by

Dorothy Parker and the Round Table of sophisticated New Yorkers held an alluring atmosphere in my adolescent mind. So much so, I hunted down obscure texts by Robert Benchley, and Alexander Woolcott,  two of the mainstays. The literati of the twenties were probably looked upon as obnoxious snobbish decadent do-nothings, by those in the hard … Read more