Miscellaneous

Happy Birthday Oscar Wilde

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Oscar Wilde

 

 

October 16th 2012 marked the 158th anniversary of the birth of one of my favorite writers – Oscar Wilde.  Oscar Wilde was certainly one of the wittiest men who ever lived.  He is remembered for many things. He enjoyed great fame and success as a writer of short stories, plays, poems, prose and essays.  Of his short stories he is best remembered for “The Picture of Dorian Gray” which is one of my favorites.  If you take the time to read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” you owe it to yourself to read the annotated , uncensored edition of the work which was recently published by The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press and edited by Nicholas Frankel.  (ISBN 978-0-674-05792) .  I started reading the popular press version of “The Picture of Dorian Gray” last year and immediately upon publication of the uncensored version I bought a copy and read both versions at the same time.  The original work was first published in the July 1890 edition of Lippincott’s magazine.  It had a stormy beginning.  It was condemned as being “unclean and vulgar”.  Most of the versions of the work that were published omitted much of what Oscar actually wrote.  The Belknap Press edition provides an accurate rendering of the story as it was actually written. We are greatly indebted to the editors for restoring this version to the popular press.

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A Small, Lost Library

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by Jas Faulkner

Over the past few years, I have been involved with a number of programs that involved giving away books or “releasing” them in areas where they would hopefully find new homes or at least the attention of another reader until they were passed on.  As someone who loves books and owns her own personal library, it is hard to imagine a home without books.

I know they exist.  As a child, I saw a few of them when visiting the homes of classmates.  There was something rather sterile about those houses.  The perfectly turned out living rooms with blond wood furniture, windows and glass front doors that shone seamlessly, devoid of nose prints from dogs and fingerprints from little brothers just never felt welcoming to me.   My parents were sometimes dismayed that my favourite babysitter was a rather scattered elderly woman who lived in a timeworn Victorian house with her grown daughter, a half-dozen dogs who had the run of the place inside and out and bookshelves jammed into odd corners with old, odd bits of furniture nearby to settle in for a good read.

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Choice

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electronic readers comparedA philosophical president of Random House publishing, Gina Centrello, concedes that the industry is changing fast. She seems comfortable about it. It’s her contention that yes, e-readers will be a predominant way people receive their books, but that real books, with pages between covers will also remain. Her belief is that the best of both worlds will exist, and this is fantastic for the consumer because they now have choice. Up until now, the poor person who wanted to scan War and Peace– (my example)- had to lug this heavy clumsy thing whenever they needed to extract quotes for a book report, to make it look as thought they’d read it. In their back pocket folded into near oblivion is the Cliff Note. A Cliff Note on the other hand is skinny and practically featherweight-doesn’t matter–it too will be available on a e-reader, no doubt. She seems positively cheery about the prospects the future brings.

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New York Is Book Country No More

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One of the celebrated posters announcing the book fair.

New York hasn’t been book country since the tragic day of 9/11,  in my opinion.  Because of the security risks, a tradition died.  Every year the city would have a street fair full of books, authors, publishers, and people wandering up and down a particular part of Fifth Ave in late Sept. Although the fair did try to reestablish itself for a couple of years, after moving to The Village, and then Central Park, it lost much of its luster and girth and finally petered out.

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A Little Lily Dale Tale

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After I wrote the article about spiritualism books, I thought a more detailed description of the one town full of mediums may be interesting and amusing to some, so I am posting this memory of my experience. I hope you enjoy

My husband and I visited this teeny town on the extreme western end of NY State during our road trip.
The houses are slightly tilted worn pastel gingerbread Victorians decorated with various angel statues, twinkling lights, and dead people.

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Live Nude Texts!

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by Jas Faulkner 

When I was in college, there was a girl on my floor whose mother managed a Waldenbooks in her hometown.  Whenever the mom visited, bearing a cache of food and supplies for her daughter, she would also bring  two or three boxes of paperbacks that had been stripped of their front covers for everyone to dig through.

Being a thoughtful sort of person who understood what it was like to love books and have every bit of one’s disposable income go towards ugly, overproduced and underedited required texts; she made it as easy as possible for people to find books they would love.  Every box was packed one layer thick with the spines facing up so there were no surprises.  Sometimes the spines of the books were reinforced with clear packing tape.  I figure it was busy work for slow times in an already neat as a pin store.

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Is There Such a Thing as Writer’s Block?

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Because if there is, I’ve caught it. Not that I’m a writer, per se, not like published novelists, revered historians, hate-mongering extremists–oh wait, they aren’t ‘writers’ either. They just spew stuff out, it splats onto the computer screen, some greedy publisher knowing crazy sells puts it between cardboard, and voila! They’re labeled writers. It slays me when Bill O’Reilly ‘writes’ a history of Lincoln–with some obscure name attached on the bottom. He did pen a suspense novel, I have an inscribed copy to prove it. Did I read it? No. The ghost on that one was truly invisible.

The best foodstuff in the local stadium known as a supermarket.

But I digress. (Those thoughts did increase my word count though.See below.) I’ve been attempting to enthuse about some subject related to books, book-selling, collecting, eating–no the last is what I’d rather do instead of thinking about what I’m not writing. Eating a nice big bowl of Campbell’s tomato with basil soup. I nearly passed out when I saw the price of one damn can of soup! How are people surviving? Families? No increase in salary, but food prices keep a’goin on up. I guess others have seen the price of soup climb over the years–they are the ones making the trek to the ‘local’ supermarket–or just market, nothing super there, push a squealing cart in each cramped, can tottering aisle, wait for years checking out behind foreign language screaming kids (which language? Pick one, you’ll hear it in NYC) and then stumble carrying 80 pounds of cat litter, and 15 bottles of soda by the 24 hour fruit market, realizing some oranges would be nice, so pause, put down two of the bags, while navigating around  a precarious pyramid of small tangerines, only to find an elbow has dislodged turnips which fall like giant puple raindrops and roll down slanted cement, tripping passerbys, finally coming to rest in the line of traffic. They’re just another casualty in the Naked City. After retrieving kicked deflated  bags, oranges idea soured, they play bumper car for the final blocks–‘whoops, sorry,’  ‘hey, watch where your’e going, that was my former eyeball you just poked’, the 5 floor walkup materializes, and the arduous Mt. Everest climb begins until panting and too exhausted to  eat, they’ve reached the rarified top floor, sans penthouse.

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Identifying First Editions

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If you sell books either in a store or online for any period of time sooner or later you will be called upon to do a task that can prove to be very valuable to your bottom line – determine if a book is a first edition.  Determining whether or not a book in your … Read more