The unassuming-by-all-appearances softcover, Lunacy and Arrangement of Books as cleverly written by Terry Belanger brightened a dark, dismal, and chilly winter morning fairly recently and evoked a smile of sheer delight. (I usually glower rather fiercely and silently.) Although very modest and slender in appearance, it managed to cover quite nicely many strange and peculiar treatments of volumes -- from Samuel Pepys risers to make all the books level along the top edge to architectural failures in a reading room where large books couldn't be opened due to the low lighting fixtures.The writing is direct and contents presented without preamble...
Bookseller Killed by Falling Books
Law Chi Wah, owner of the "Green Text Book Store" in Hong Kong was killed when a shelf of approximately 20 boxes of books collapsed on top of him. The tragic accident occurred at a small wharehouse. He was found two weeks later buried under the fallen books.Thanks to Oiwan Lam for the lead. She also alerts us that: "Douban (zh) has set up a special page for this book martyr. His friends and acquaintances set up a blog (zh) in memory of him and his book store."The links above are the Google translated versions, both are originally in Chinese.
Book Art Gets a Room of Its Own
The exhibition is titled Sitting Room and is curated by Tom Sowden and Lucy May Schofield.The goal of the exhibit is to let the artists books "become the tactile and interactive objects that they are usually conceived as being. Take them out of glass cases, out of libraries and away from the artist’s book fairs, resituating them in an environment that was conducive to reading and engaging with the books."They attempt to re-create a "sitting room from a time when books were read rather than TV being watched...A space to relax, ignore work and absorb the books"The inaugural exhibition in...
AbeBooks Latest: Rare Books $10 and up
AbeBooks continues to amaze me. They act like a company with a borderline personality, courting the traditional bookselling community at every turn while doing all they can to push these same booksellers away.AbeBooks has recently announced that they are adding a new search feature to their Rare Book Room."We have added a feature to the Rare Book Room search that automatically pre-selects the price range to show only books priced at $10.00 and over."Now their same loose definition of 'bookseller' is being applied to 'rare'.Remember this is the company that still claims that "Rare and antiquarian booksellers make up the...
The Peace Symbol Turns Fifty
It was fifty years ago today that Gerald Holtom designed the logo for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. It signaled the beginning of the British peace movement and the beginning of it's reign as the global symbol for Peace. It is arguably the healthiest logo ever created and one of the few A-list logos not of corporate origin.To commemorate the anniversary Barry Miles has written Peace: Fifty Years of Protest.It is about "the story of the creation of the original symbol and of how it has been used over the past five decades by peace activists around the world." It...