Who can afford to collect photoplays these days? I checked out a link that ABE sent me. It has a super page full of gorgeous dust jacketed books representing early cinema. Most novels made into films at the time were called photoplays, and published by Grosset and Dunlap, a company known for producing reprints of … Read more
One of the amazing incidents I encountered when a bookseller for a major mystery store in Manhattan, was introducing one author to another and watching their interaction. Sometimes authors arrived at their current profession via other routes, ones where they may have gained success and fame, and now are trying their hand at writing. As … Read more
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
After Lou left Lorry’s Book Company, one of many times–this one sticking, he disappeared from the book world, and mine, for years. I’d no idea where he was, what he was up to, if he was surviving in a world he seemed to shun, or hide from. Not that he was a total recluse, at … Read more
I had a recent conversation with a few writers about the common practice of writing a nice bunch of things about another person’s book. You’ve seen blurbs–on the back of paperbacks, mostly, but also on dust jackets. Hypothetical example; a new book by Denis Lehane has just been published, and fellow writers, Michael Connelly, Ridley … Read more
For some odd reason I’m posing questions lately. This one popped into my head as I ran my finger down a to be read pile, to chose something, because my Peter Robinson crime novel has disappeared. And right there, is an answer. I like Mr. Robinson a great deal, as a person, and certainly as … Read more
A link from author Laura Lippman had me intrigued, so I clicked, and had a great gut laugh. Two men got into an argument ‘over literature’. The teeny article had no specifics as to what the argument entailed. Which got me thinking, what aspect of the literary world would I be so het up about, … Read more
It happened again. I found a title with divine illustrations that I could afford, and ordered it from ABE or another seller on the bookfinder website. I eagerly mutilated the box tearing tape and cardboard in my haste to see the promised art. A Mother Goose naturally, this one illustrated by Edna Cooke, a new … Read more
