After months and months of tumult St. Mark's Book Shop has landed in its home and it's a beauty. The space, designed by Clouds Architecture Office, will give St. Mark's a fighting chance as it navigates the new book landscape. From the project listing on Architizer: The perimeter of the space is wrapped with full height shelving, freeing up the interior as a flexible use space. Variously stacked display units provide table display space while doubling as informal loose seating for readings and events. A windowed office space is created by pinching and pulling the shelves in towards the center of the...
Introducing the Kindle Flare
[youtube]http://youtu.be/fDBzQkWeQ5g[/youtube] The Onion has the scoop on Amazon's latest release, the "Kindle Flare," a new tablet that will "loudly and repeatedly" announces the title of the book you're reading. A spokesperson for Amazon says "the Kindle Flare’s repetitive shouting will appeal to fans of print, who miss the ability to display a book’s cover to strangers." It also offers the revolutionary new technology "auto-explain" for the user who has a little shame about their reading choice. "Auto-explain" offers a rationalization for the book you're reading while also boasting about a high-brow title that you also like. God bless the Onion. h/t Poets and Writers.
Wahida Clark: The Queen Of Street Literature
Wahida Clark started writing while in prison serving a ten-and-a-half year sentence. One of her jailhouse friends who helped her along was none other than Martha Stewart. Clark, now with thirteen novels in the bag, sat down with Vibe to chat about her new book Blood, Sweat & Payback and her new publishing deal. Buy: Powell's | Amazon
The End of an Era: On the Closing of Wessel & Lieberman Booksellers
When I approached Mark Wessel in late 1992 with the idea of opening up a bookshop little did I know the profound effect it would have on my life and the impact it would have on the Seattle book community and beyond. Now some 20+ years after we opened the shop will close its doors. All good things come to an end. The end of the road for Wessel & Lieberman does not alter the fact that I remain bullish on books and bookshops. The wear and tear of nearly twenty years of running a bookshop in an urban core takes...
Straightjacket by Joseph DeCamillis
Joseph DeCamillis is a self described life-long reader. He was on the creative writing path when the art bug got him and he's never looked back. For the last 10 plus years his focus has been on book inspired art. One jewel is his autobiographical Straightjacket, an assemblage of hardback book covers and various items of deconstructed clothing. DeCamillis had two criteria for choosing the books used: 1. Reading the book had a major impact on his personality at some stage of his life 2. Title and/or subject of the book connects to some piece of his past. His tag line for the piece is...