"In order to hate imperialism you have got to be part of it." - George Orwell What a better way to celebrate the 110th birthday of George Orwell than to kick off a campaign to fund a film version of Orwell's seminal essay, Shooting an Elephant. With the permission of the Orwell Estate in hand Juan Pablo Rothie wants to bring the essay to the screen and has started a Kickstarter campaign to make it happen. First published in 1936 the essay recounts his time as a colonial policeman in Burma when he was faced with a situation where he literally shot an...
Operation Book Drop
When they first started selling books over 80 years ago they went by the name of Zion Bookstore and sold used Mormon material. Now they are Utah's largest and oldest independent bookseller and sell new, used and rare books in many fields. After a name change and as part of a new move and a branding campaign the bookshop that went from Zion Bookstore to Sam Weller's Books is now Weller Book Works. One of the things they did to raise awareness of the changes was Operation Book Drop. Almost 900 books were wrapped in 7 different graphically pleasing jackets...
Behavior of the Book Buyers
A recent Bowker study on Trends in Consumer Book Buying has been visualized by the folks at Random House. Note that for the printed book crowd the bookstore is still the number one place to discover new books.
Story Hour in the Library with Joyce Carol Oates
[youtube]http://youtu.be/za1hmF5kXJ4[/youtube] Oates visits the University of California at Berkeley for story hour. It all started with her grandmother’s gift of a copy of “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Then at 14 she gave her a typewriter and the rest, as they say, is history. By the time Oates was in college she was practicing her craft by writing novel after novel, then throwing them out and starting over! With over 40 published novels to her credit and too many literary awards to fit on the mantle odds are Oates can read and tell a mean story. Joyce Carol Oates – Fiction in the...
Living with and sharing 35,000 books
The Johnson family has been collecting and accumulating books since the late 19th century. In 1899 the first family library was built by Thomas Moore Johnson (1851-1919) to house his 8,000 books. It is little wonder that with a library of that size he was known as the “sage of the Osage” (the house and library were built on the Osage River). Now there are two family libraries and 35,000 books.The three generations of Johnsons did it the right way. Collecting “rare books” was never the intention. Collecting books that fell within their diverse areas of interest was the mantra and it...