click to enlarge Each Halloween Americans spend $950 million on candy; we buy 20 million pounds of candy corn alone. Beside the dress up and the pumpkins many of our kids experience their biggest sugar rush and crash of the year. And as fun as trick or treating is Halloween night often ends ugly for them and for us! The sugar meltdowns wipe out all the fun we had getting ready for the big night.…
Continue readingThe city of Oakland has implemented a new tax on sellers of used goods that, in effect, now places the used bookshop in the same realm as the pawn shop. The tax, which is based on the state’s Secondhand Dealers’ law; a 50-year-old law written to help police locate stolen goods, will cost bookshops at least $600 a year and force them to fingerprint employees and “keep meticulous, detailed notes of every item they buy…
Continue readingBanned Books Week is scheduled for September 26th- October 3rd, 2009. Every time we think that banning books in the United States is a thing of the past, we are sorely reminded that there are still many who believe that removing books from book stores and library shelves will make the social issues that the books represent go away and that the world will be a better place. The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression…
Continue readingNew exhibit at the Edward Gorey House Museum. “Edward Gorey’s Creatures, Real and Imagined” “The exhibit shows many of Gorey’s original pen and ink, watercolor, and preliminary pencil illustrations for books of his own creation, and for other noted authors. Special books such as Gorey’s only pop-up book, The Dwindling Party and the three-dimensional accordion book The Tunnel Calamity are highlighted.” I wish there was a more comprehensive online component for the exhibit.Review in The…
Continue readingC. Max Magee of the Millions is building some Literary Soundtracks at Pandora. So far he has 3 stations in the bag. George Packer on George Orwell’s “Down and Out in Paris and London” via The Book Club at The New Yorker. “Excellent Book Covers and Paperbacks” at Smashing Magazine. A visual feast featuring 61 of their favorite cover designs. “The Lost Books of The Stone Reader” via Omnivoracious. A look at this 2002 documentary…
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