In 1922, Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey was the toast of Paris. He was feted and fawned over, the women obliging, the men in awe.Champion for three years, he was used to celebrities wanting to put the gloves on and spend a fantasy few minutes sparring with him. A fighter who took all that occurred within the ring with extreme seriousness – it is not a playground1 - he nonetheless indulged many: he allowed silent film star Douglas Fairbanks to throw jabs and rights at him, knowing that Fairbanks’ smaller frame and lesser weight would not put much power behind his...
Reading On The Go
The New York Times is conducting a survey of reading habits while riding the subway, the results to be published tomorrow.For those, however, who live in areas without subterranean transit, we at Book Patrol seek your solutions to the reading à go-go issue.Books (novels, non-fiction, serious or popular), magazines, newspapers, scripts, poetry, crossword puzzles, laundry lists, the Lord’s Prayer – whatever you need to make it from point A to point B, we’d like to hear about it and your mode of transportation while doing so: bus, car, bicycle, ferry, skateboard, kayak, jitney, taxi, rickshaw, surrey-with-the-fringe-on-top, whatever.Post your responses to...
Top Ten Most Expensive Books Sold on ABE, July, 2009
ABE (Advanced Book Exchange) has just released its list of the top ten prices obtained amongst hundreds of thousands of books bought through them during the month of July. They are the rarest or most collectible of books offered and sold.10. Sefer Tehilim by Sebastian Munster, a Basel printing of this 16th century work by the German Hebrew scholar. $3,464.9. The Bible, an edition limited to 75 copies, printed by the Nonesuch Press of London in 1927. $3,7508. Histoire de la mesure du temps par les horloges by Ferdinand Berthoud, a book on time measurement by the Swiss watchmaker, published...
The 6 O’Clock News with William Shakespeare
The Bard of Avon as Elizabethan talking-head anchorman?"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, lend me your ears - you wont believe what's goin' on! But if I tickle you, will you not laugh?Jon Lajoie is a Montreal-based comedian who, after graduating Dawson College’s theatre program in 2001, became a hit man to supplement his non-existent income from acting. “Between 2001 and 2007 [he] assassinated (in a ninja-like fashion) an estimated 40,000 people, and an estimated 9,000 fish. (In early 2004, demand for assassination was low, so for three months he held a part-time job as a fisherman)."That averages out to 15.65 human and...
Religious and Spiritual Books Bring Zing Back to Delhi Book Fair
The woes of the recession have turned into wows at this year’s Delhi Book Fair.Attendees are grabbing religious and spiritually-themed books off the shelves as if they were Kali, the multi-armed Hindu goddess of time and change, and redeemer of the universe, who has, apparently, redeemed an Indian book market hit hard by the global recession.Books on the philosophies and meditation techniques of spiritual gurus, general religion, self-help guides and Indian mythology are leading sales at the Delhi Book Fair, now in its fifteenth year.Just Say No To Crime and FictionThe boom in religious books trade at the fair, say...