This is the scene inside a warehouse in Bristol, UK. The warehouse used to be the home of Bookbarn, Amazon.UK's largest supplier of secondhand books. Now it's a biblio-wasteland.

After their lease was up Bookbarn moved out leaving millions of books behind. The landlord then decided to invite the public in to take whatever they wanted. Ashley Nicholson, the director of the property, said 'We thought it was a sensible idea to give people the opportunity to come along and choose themselves a book or two and help us clear the warehouse." The thought of free books had people coming from far and wide. Nicholson added 'The response has been unbelievable since we opened it to the public. It's like a swarm of locusts."

Is such a tragic scene a direct result of the race to the bottom pricing mentality of the penny sellers that infect many of the online marketplaces? Where value is sucked out of many perfectly good books until they are rendered 'worthless'. What a shame.

Do you think they'll get their security deposit back?

More at the Daily Mail online

Note the Bookbarn is not to be confused with Bookbarn International
COLUMBIA, SC--Forgive me, please, for using a dateline, but I'm an old newspaperman, and since I'm in the field, as it were, at the South Carolina Book Festival, using one in this instance seems perfectly appropriate.

matthew_bruccoli.jpg This posting will be fairly brief, because it's not quite noon on Saturday morning, and I have a presentation to make in a couple hours, offering a tribute to the late Matthew J. Bruccoli, who died last year at 76. I wrote about Matt on a number of occasions--first in Fine Books & Collections, later as a featured profile in my 2005 book, "Every Book Its Reader" (p. 193-208). Matt was a lot of things--scholar, writer, teacher, editor, publisher, consummate collector of F. Scott Fitzgerald and other twentieth-century authors--but most of all, he was, in his own words, "a bookman." (Charles McGrath once described him in the New York Times as the "senior packrat of American letters.") In the course of our many conversations, Matt and I became good friends, so I was more than happy to accept an invitation from the good people here in South Carolina to talk about him at a festival he helped establish thirteen years ago.

Those who enjoy a Lazy-Boy recliner as their favorite reading chair yet wish it were more mobile, stylish, and even more thrilling than usual, will be pleased to learn that Russian industrial designer Irina Zhdanova has dreamed up a solution so that comfy reading on the move, with zero fuel costs, avant-garde looks, AND built-in thrills and bookshelf is now a reality.

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Clearly the photographer who imagined the reader seated in the photo didn't capture the essence of the Rolling Reader, which is essentially an amusement park ride as envisioned for the thrill-seeking text-junkie unwilling to engage motor neurons in pursuit of sensation. As depicted, however, the reader is seated in a very uncomfortable position: Slouched, with no back support, this person is headed for Sciatica City.

No, the optimal way to use the Rolling Reader is to drape one's length along the cushioned inside rim in lazy, languorous, louche, decadent bum mode (I may be projecting personal behavior here, but you get the idea). While all the big, heavy books are shelved at the bottom for low center of gravity and ballast, a little body English will be all that is necessary to get you moving.

How many times has this happened to you: You're reading on the couch and so comfortable that you dare not move a muscle lest the spell be broken but if you don't have a handful of popcorn Right Now! you may spontaneously combust? Yes, it's only twenty steps to the kitchen but for the seriously sedentary ambulation is overrated.

Problem now solved: Just roll yourself from the living room to the kitchen and back again (don't forget to bring the bag of popcorn back with you).

A few basic necessities are conspicuously absent: Brakes, and for those who wish to read al fresco on city streets, seat belts. It'd probably be a good idea to stuff the bookshelf tight with tomes before putting the rolling reader into gear; flying first editions are not a pretty sight. Use the bike/reading lane. Don't forget to use hand signals when turning, a quick thrust of the glutes to one side or another all that's necessary for left-right maneuvers.

And while it should go without saying, please have reader's insurance should you be involved in an accident.


I have a secret. 

Can I trust you?  I've pulled a fast one on the folks at Fine Books & Collections.  I am not a mysterious special collections librarian.  I'm a mysterious museum curator (huge difference) who has his fingers in a lot of pies.  I like a lot of pie.  I am also involved in several bibliophilic ventures, projects and yes, even revolutions that I talk about on my blog, The Exile Bibliophile, because it's basically my imaginary friend. 

I'll outline some of these ideas and projects in the weeks to come and thought I'd introduce myself.  I'm so excited about this new project for Fine Books & Collections, all my dust jackets are getting fresh Brodarts in case anyone drops by.  Seriously, drop by.  After all, I'm that other guy.  I don't reek of globe-trotting ozone, I don't have multiple book fairs within spittin' distance or coffee dates with Pulitzer Prize winners.  I'm like you.  A bibliophile quietly collecting, praying my wife doesn't use her superpowers to destroy me.  See, just like you. 

I knew I could trust you.
The new Crawley library opened in West Sussex relatively recently. It contains some striking architectural/artistic elements...notably remarkable textual trees.  
'The striking, cracked trees, 14 in all, are situated throughout the library building and are installed vertically, flush to the floor and ceiling to resemble supporting, structural pillars. Each tree is, in fact, a real oak trunk and displays carved passages of text from literature within the library, the typeface of each passage chosen carefully to suit the nature of the text - which is where Why Not Associates comes in.
"We worked with the selected passages of text, choosing typefaces and designing the layout," says Why Not's Andy Altmann of the studio's role in the making of the Crawley Trees. "Because there were 14 trees to do, all of us in the studio got to do one." 
... 
The text to adorn the trees was chosen by the users of Crawley library, thanks to research done by Anna Sandberg. "She was another key collaborator and did all the workshops with the people [of Crawley] to point us in the right direction in terms of sourcing textual content," says Young. "She also put hundreds of questionnaire postcards in books all over the library and we got hundreds of replies naming favourite books and passages and thoughts about what was good literature"'

Thanks to boingboing for the headsup.
There is a fun little interview with William Smith, owner of Hang Fire Books over at BoingBoing. William specializes in "vintage paperbacks and lurid pulp fiction from the 1940s-60s" while also carrying general stock. His blog is great as he posts wonderfully lurid pulp covers with pleasing regularity. [Also, you should not miss his current post on the annotated sleaze that arrived recently. Thesis research?!?].
You read that correctly.

If you're a gamer, a regular player of video games, then you may already have heard . . .

Video game company Electronic Arts announced a couple of months ago that it plans to make a video game version of Dante's Inferno.    

Those of us bibliophiles who prefer books to all other forms of entertainment may be stunned at this news. A major player in the video game industry plans to make a cutting edge game out of a 14th century epic written entirely in verse? Could there be a more ridiculous idea than re-interpreting this masterpiece as a visually-oriented game in which the player, and not the author, determines the final outcome of the story?
Philip Jose Farmer (1/26/1918-2/25/2009) passed away in his sleep this morning. As posted on his website, [h]e will be missed greatly by his wife Bette, his children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, friends and countless fans around the world. 

He won his first Hugo Award in 1953 and his last in 1972 ["To Your Shattered Bodies Go"]. In the first few years of 2000, he one the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award [lifetime achievement, awarded at the Nebula Awards Ceremony], the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement and the Forry Award for Lifetime Achievement.

He will be missed by many...
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I am very pleased to introduce our newest voice, Deborah Coltham of Deborah Coltham Rare Books. Deborah is a specialist dealer in Antiquarian Medicine and Science based in the High Weald of Kent, UK. While this is her first foray into the blogosphere, she brings a wealth of knowledge and a quick wit and I am very excited that she has agreed to join our motley crew.

As stolen from her site: 
After graduating from St Andrews University in 1994 with an MA Honours degree in English Literature and Medieval History, I joined the leading London firm of Pickering & Chatto Ltd as an apprentice to the Head of the Science and Medicine Department. After succeeding the role in 1998 and enjoying many years of successful trading, I set up Deborah Coltham Rare Books in July 2006.

Having agreed to post here, she is now on a short holiday, time no doubt to be spent pondering her first post. With that, we shall let the suspense build... 
Richard Brathwaite. Ar't asleepe husband? London, 1640. ©Folger Shakespeare Library

Whatever your relationship to sleep is the latest exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library, To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, is worth staying awake for.

The "exhibition explores the ethereal realm of sleeping and dreaming in Renaissance England, from the beliefs, rituals, and habits of sleepers to the role of dream interpreters and interpretations in public and private life."

In addition to a sampling of Shakespeare and Milton and books like
Thomas Tryon's A treatise of cleanness in meats and drinks, of the preparation of food, the excellency of good airs, and the benefits of clean sweet beds the exhibit also includes other tangibles like nightclothes, gemstones, recipes and ingredients for curing nightmares and inducing sleep.

Sleep disorders are nothing new but who knew what lengths people went to keep nightmares at bay. Carole Levine, co-curator of the exhibit, shares a few strategies of the day, like "rubbing the blood of a lapwing on your temples, putting an ape's heart under your pillow, or even worse to find -- a dragon's tongue soaked in wine." Yikes.

One can only imagine what Sigmund Freud, who read some of the books displayed, would have thought of this homage to the Renaissance
night.

The exhibition is both comprehensive and enlightening and has a strong online component as well which includes The Dream Machine which provides
Renaissance-era dream interpretation.

There is an audio tour available online but without the corresponding visuals it seems the weakest link of the online offering.

Exhibit Details:
February 19-May 30, 2009
Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm

Co-Curated by Carole Levin of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Garrett Sullivan of Pennsylvania State University.

Marsha Dubrow has a good review of the exhibit at Examiner.com