Welcome to Twitter & Verse, a new weekly offering featuring Book Patrol’s most popular tweets of the last week with a sprinkling of poetry.
‘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 bookseller implores crowd on final day of business http://ow.ly/qdCj1
& VERSE
Haunted Houses
All houses wherein men have lived and died
Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
Along the passages they come and go,
Impalpable impressions on the air,
A sense of something moving to and fro.
There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.
The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.
[…]
So from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.