"I saw her running at me, shrieking, with a whirl of fire blazing all about her." -Charles Dickens, Great Expectations If we had a Book Patrol Hall of Fame photographer Juliette Tang would make it in on the first ballot. She describes her attraction to books: When people ask me why I take so many photos of books, I always give the same straightforward response. Books capture my imagination. It’s a short answer. It’s also an honest answer. But, I can elaborate. Reading them, taking photos of them, writing them, writing about them, and just having them near me, everything to...
Horror writer’s ‘Death Collection’ to be unveiled at Northwestern
Northwestern University is set to unveil a collection of death related goodies courtesy of noted horror novelist and screen writer Michael McEachern McDowell. McDowell wrote dozens of novels and the screenplays for Stephen King's novel "Thinner" and director Tim Burton's movies "Beetlejuice" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas." He also wrote episodes for such television shows as "Tales from the Darkside" and "Alfred Hitchcock Presents." Needless to say McDowell was very qualified for such an undertaking. The hanging of the co-conspirators in the Abraham Lincoln assassination in Washington, DC. The collection is comprised of 76 boxes of material featuring everything from...
Mapping a Literary City
Using turn of the century maps of London as a jumping off point the designers of Dorothy devised this literary street map. The map features "over 600 books from the history of English Literature (and a few favourites from further afield)" It also features a handy A-Z key listing all the books featured along with the author's name and the date first published. They are offering 2 versions of the map: A limited edition 4 colour litho print on 120gsm Keaykolour China White uncoated paper or an open trade edition. I want to live on Charing Cross Road near the bookshop :-) Images courtesy...
Twitter & Verse
Welcome to Twitter & Verse, a new weekly offering featuring Book Patrol's most popular tweets of the last week with a sprinkling of poetry. Twitter 'Sadistic' Amazon Treated Book Sellers 'The Way A Cheetah Would Pursue A Sickly Gazelle' | @businessinsider http://ow.ly/q4DnO "There are few more exciting places to contemplate the evolution of library design than Seattle’s Central Library" http://ow.ly/q8NcN How Amusing, Barnes & Noble Is Now Amazon's Biggest Publishing Problem | @Forbes http://ow.ly/qdxK3 A bookman’s tour of California: 9 days, 14 stores - buys 20 books | @ivdailybulletin http://ow.ly/qcbP9 “Buy from bookstores or they’ll disappear!” Frustrated Japanese...
Some LitCrawl Love
Last week I had the pleasure of being able to attend Seattle's second annual LitCrawl, A three hour blast of literary goodness featuring over 60 authors reading at 19 different venues. Unfortunately family life prevented me from crawling all night but from what I did catch it is safe to say that, at least here in Seattle, the printed word has lost none of its luster. The energy was fantastic, the turnout out was impressive and the reading I went to was quite memorable. Cooper Canyon Press hosted Poets with Candy featuring Matthew Dickman and Ed Skoog. "Come for treats,...