Photo: Tom Reed/The TimesThese days, the opening of a bookstore anywhere on the planet is cause for a celebration but the opening of The Next Chapter Bookstore in Gainesville, GA is truly a remarkable event.The bookstore is the latest outreach program from Our Neighbor, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of physically handicapped men and women. It is the brainchild of the organization's founder Marty Owens and a volunteer and former bookseller D’ete Sewell. The store is staffed by young adults with disabilities.Photo: Scott Rogers/The Times On how the store came about, Sewell says “We had nowhere for these...
The Library in Disarray: The Paintings of Wendy Heldmann
The something that you're looking for, 2008. Acrylic on canvas.16" x 18"Wendy Heldmann lives and works in Los Angeles, a city where many exist in a constant state of earthquake awareness. She has created two striking series of works, of course and never and barricades + libraries, that take the orderly world of the library and turn it upside down.We just keep taking turns, 2008. Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 20" Heldmann's post-disaster world is void of humanity. The books are rearranged naturally, landing and resting wherever the last tremor or collapse leave them. A striking reminder of the underlying...
The Rise of the Digital Book Cover
Tintin and The Secret of Literature—The Digital Book Cover "I went from assuming the cover might someday disappear completely, to believing that it could take on a whole new life" said Charlie Orr in a post he did back in May on the blog The Hypothetical Library.As he pondered the digital explosion of content delivery that is currently underway in the book world he "couldn't decide what was worse, the poor quality of covers when the e-books included them, or the fact that most e-books on the Kindle and other e-ink based readers didn't bother with them at all."This was enough...
R.B. Kitaj’s Covers For a Small Library
The Death of a Book Collector
On July 31st Irwin Toby Holtzman, one of the more prominent book collectors and library supporters of the second half of the twentieth-century, passed away. Over the years Holtzman built numerous collections and the fruits of his labor can be found in 15 libraries around the world.Here's a sampling of a few of his collections and where they now live:-The University of Michigan received his William Faulkner collection.-The British Library received his John Osborne collection.-The University of Illinois received his American Indian collection.-He donated the greatest collection in private hands in the world of Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, in addition...