When Cynthia Gibson, a bookseller in New York, casually mentioned “non-existent books” in a recent note I presumed she was referring to deascensions from Milton Berle’s joke library:The Old Man, the Bull, and the Boat. Hemingway’s melding of his two favorite pastimes, deep sea fishing and bullfighting, set within the confines of a small dingy. The fish are biting. The bull is charging. Drama and suspense ensue.Tom Jones in Vegas. The sequel to Henry Fielding's novel of a foundling follows our randy hero to the nadir of his existence as a tin-eared troubador singing eighteenth century songs to highly aroused...
Subversive Book Asserts Rule By Law, Not King
In 1644, Samuel Rutherford, a Presbyterian theologian, published Lex, Rex, the now excessively scarce, enormously important treatise on limited government and constitutionalism. Only four copies have fallen under the hammer within the last thirty-five years.Lex, Rex is the first treatment of rule by law, not by men, based upon the separation of powers and covenant between king and subjects, (foreshadowing the social contract). It laid the foundation for the later thinking of political philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. As such, this volume sowed the seeds for modern political systems, including that of the United States."The title, Lex, Rex, is...
Miss Lonelybooks, Revisted
As one who has braved JDate, aka desperatehebrews.com, I know why the caged bird swings in hope. The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books provide opportunities for the bookish and alone to meet. But Americans and the British have completely different styles when it comes to personal ads. We Americans commodify and market ourselves with can-do! go-get ‘em! spirit that weighs heavily. We’re singing the lyrics from Best Foot Forward to the tune of Sinatra’s One For My Baby, One More For the Road, a torch song beneath the bright, snappy prose composed to wring...
Drive a Book Into Another World
The following poem was recently posted to Slate with a podcast reading by the author.To Read by Michael McFeeHe held the opened bookin both hands, at arm's length,as if he were a student driverpracticing steering this Model ABCthat resisted his touch,that he could tell he wouldn't knowhow to control once it started,not yet able to ease his gripor surrender his frownand learn to let the sentences unwind,letting their momentumcarry him down the waiting road,Stopping and starting his wayinto a world of words.__________Poet Michael McFee directs the Creative Writing Program at UNC-Chapel Hill. The author of ten books of poetry and...
Free Kindle For Tweeters
To promote the release of her new book, Perseverance: True Voices of Cancer Survivors, author Carolyn Rubenstein and publisher Forge Books, a division of Macmillan, are giving away a Kindle wireless ebook reading device on Twitter each day from August 18 through August 21 to four lucky tweeters.This will be an interesting exercise in marketing books, using an ebook reader to promote the sale of an actual book and whether the strategy will cannibalize sales of physical copies of the book. Ms. Rubenbstein’s website page for the promotion has a link to Amazon which is offering both the hardcover and...