This week’s Of Interest takes us from a rare book on Peking to an anthology of one line poems to a collection of songs inspired by books with a sprinkling of newer books that have caught our fancy.
First a few headlines:
Seems like the burning of books is a hot topic these days – Pro-Russian demonstrators are burning Ukrainian-language books “in small bonfires in the street” http://ow.ly/uRGOL
In what might a first – Vandals torch a Little Free Library near an elementary school in Tuscon, Arizona http://ow.ly/uR7R5
and in what might just be the most nearsighted, wackiest story in some time Forbes posted this story – Why There Should Be A Starbucks In Every Local Library http://ow.ly/uRGCG
and finally this image of VW bus transformed into a library clearly was one of the highlights of our week:
Now some books:
Zurich: Scalo Publishers, 1999. First Edition. $250.
Profusely illustrated with color photographs of models showing up for work.
- Jean Prouvé. Prefabrication: Structures and Elements. Edited by Benedikt Huber and Jean-Claude Steinegger
Praeger Publishers, 1971. Hardcover. First American edition. $85.
Text in German, French and English. // Chapters on ‘Building Structures,’ ‘Methods of Moulding.’ and ‘Framework of Life;’ with individual sections discussing types of jointed frames (shell, shed, propped, vaulted, centre core, stool, plastic ‘types’) as well as ‘the houses of Abbé Pierre,’ ‘collective dwellings,’ the Meudon houses,’ ‘tropical houses,’ ‘school buildings,’ ‘furniture’ and ‘public buildings.
- Peking the Beautiful. Comprising Seventy Photographic Studies of the Celebrated Monuments of China’s Northern Capital and its Environs Complete with Descriptive and Historical Notes by Herbert C. White
Shanghai: The Commercial Press, 1927. First Edition. $4500.
Complete with seventy tipped-in photographs (+ a frontispiece), a few of them in color. In the original richly embroidered blue silk binding
First book from the ‘Poet Laureate of Deep Ecology’
Origin Press, 1959. First edition. SIGNED. $1350.
Cincinnati, OH: The Signs of the Times Publishing Company, 1922. $100.
With 109 Alphabet Plates and 100 Layouts.
- “But Is It Poetry?” Anthology of One-Line Poems Edited by Duane Ackerson
[Pocatello, Idaho]: Dragonfly, 1972. First edition. $45.
Anthology of one line poetry, including Bill Zavatsky, Ray DiPalma, Charles Simic, Michael Benedikt, Albert Goldbarth, William Matthews, Ethel Fortner, D.S. Long, Greg Kuzma, Cathey Ackerson, Peter Cooley, Felix Pollak, Richard Lebovitz.
Empyrean Press, 2003. $90.
Broadside, published in an edition of two hundred copies; this copy is one of twenty-five numbered “OS” (out-of-series) copies.
Printed on the occasion of the Truman Capote Award presented to the author in Iowa City, September 25, 2003.
Newer Stuff:
Printer’s Blocks by Jessica Spring. Springtide Press, 2013. $500.
One of forty numbered copies, containing twenty-eight 1-1/2″ square cubes, entirely letterpress printed. Housed in a custom aluminum box with the title printed on the top.
“Printer’s Blocks is an ‘abecedarium’ composed of vintage wood type and printer’s blocks letterpress printed on Magnani Revere and formed into cubes
Home Burial by Michael McGriff. Copper Canyon Press, 2012. Signed $15
“The poems in Michael McGriff’s second full-length collection, Home Burial, reverberate as they pass through a landscape of old-growth forest, ramshackle farms, moonlit water, lumberyards, and mini-marts.
Wrolstad, Greta. Night is Simply a Shadow. Portland: Tavern Books, 2013. $30
Greta Wrolstad’s long-anticipated first full-length collection. From the expansive opening poem, “Notes on Sea and Shore,” to the final “Fontaine de Vaucluse,” Wrolstad navigates the metaphorical intersection of internal and external landscapes
William Shakespeare and Others: Collaborative Plays. Edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. $39.95.
The first edition in over 100 years of the fascinatingly varied body of plays that has become known as “The Shakespeare Apocrypha”
Kate MacLeod at Ken Sanders Rare Books A collection of songs inspired by books.
Waterbug Records, 2014. $15.
“The songs on this recording were all inspired by books I’ve read. I composed these across a thirty-year span from 1982 to 2012. These songs are different than songs that come solely out of my own thoughts and experience; they are more a digestion of what I’ve gleaned from reading and are also spontaneous responses. I think of books as part of our collective consciousness. They are our record of history and also a canvas for the imagination”
Previous installments:
Of Interest: Bambi, Book of the Dead, Chicago Crime, The Brooklyn Bridge and more
Welcome to ‘Of Interest’ : Fodder for the Book Enthusiast