Nick's Picks: Five Winners
Looking for some stocking stuffers? Here are five beauties I particularly recommend, with more to follow in the weeks to come.

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Venice: Pure City, by Peter Ackroyd; Nan Talese/Doubleday, 403 pages, $37.50. Writing about the life of a city as if it were a living, breathing organism is a specialty of the estimable English writer Peter Ackroyd, his "London: The Biography" of a few years back being an exemplar of the form; with "Venice: Pure City," he offers a worthy companion. As a place seemingly set apart from the rest of Italy--Venice is a cluster of islands in a lagoon, really--the city's insularity has given it a degree of independence. "The Italians do not really think of Venice at all," Ackroyd writes, "it belongs to some other realm of fancy or of artifice." His blend of detail and atmosphere is always in perfect balance, his narrative skill apparent in every chapter.

Nick's Picks, Peter Ackroyd, Simon Winchester, ballet, villages of Britain
The Presidential Memoir

Jonathan Shipley

Jonathan Shipley is a freelance writer living in Seattle. He’s written for the Los Angeles Times, Gather Journal, Uppercase, and many other publications.

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George Bush's new memoir is out today. There's no telling how well it'll sell. What politicians have the most books sold? The Daily Beast has roll call of the 20 bestselling politicians (hint: Obama's on the list).

Of course, Bush isn't the first president to write his memoirs. The Daily Beast also offers up a brief history.

From the piece ...

The first memoir written by a former president to combine historical merit and real commercial success is considered to be Ulysses S. Grant's. Though Grant is viewed as one of this nation's lesser presidents, the Princeton historian Sean Wilentz said that his tainted legacy was largely the work of Southerners in the early 20th century. In fact, Grant was a hero in his own time, the savior of the Union, and in 1880, there had even been talk of running him for a third term.

But by the early 1880s, his popularity had not saved him from being nearly broke. So, perhaps sensing an opportunity, Grant's close friend Mark Twain started a publishing firm, with his nephew in charge, specifically to publish Grant's memoirs. Completed days before his death in 1885, they barely touched on the presidency, focusing instead on the Civil War. "He wanted to write about it authoritatively," Wilentz said. "There were lots of records left from the war, but he wrote a very terse and elegant account of the war that he fought, from where he stood."

It made Twain and Grant's widow some real money. Then, the book was forgotten. It took two unlikely people to revive it half century later: Gertrude Stein and the literary critic Edmund Wilson.
Memoirs, Politics
Happy Birthday, Bram
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Today is the birthday of Bram Stoker, born in 1847. The Irish writer is best known for his gothic novel, Dracula, and in celebration of that, here's a snippet from one of Ian McKay's recent auction reports on an inscribed first edition of Stoker's classic that sold for $77,770:

Not only is this copy clean and bright, but it is inscribed by the author to Mrs. W. S. Gilbert--wife of the chap who wrote the librettos to the Savoy Operas of Gilbert & Sullivan.

At the time, some mild controversy attached to the nature and extent of the friendship between the Stoker and Gilbert households, or--to be more direct--a certain curiosity regarding the frequent meetings between Gilbert and Stoker's young wife, Florence, the Dublin beauty who had once been courted by Oscar Wilde, whilst Stoker, a theatre manager, was busy at work. [see full report here]

Dying for more Dracula? Check out his homepage.
auction report, bram stoker, dracula, first edition, ian mckay
Nikki McClure - A Book Artist Interviewed

If you don't know the work of artist Nikki McClure, based in Olympia, Washington, you should. It's nothing short of stunning. 

Using an X-ACTO knife, she cuts detailed pictures from single sheets of paper. Her artwork has appeared in journals, note cards, and, more recently, in her own books (like the one pictured to the right). 

Recently, Portland's fabled Powell's Books interviewed McClure about her art and her inspirations.

From the piece...

Megan: Where do you find inspiration? If you're really stuck, what do you do?

McClure: I usually sweep the floor. [Laughter]

It actually needs sweeping. You just finished the picture, so you leave your room. And the next time you come, there's always something to do, right? There's sweeping the floor.

But inspiration is like... It's everywhere. It's food. It's moss. It's mushrooms. It's the bird that just flew away from my feet. I find a lot of inspiration just... It's just life. Life's so beautiful. It's every needle on the fir tree, all the leaves. It's a way to kind of capture it and honor it, and hold on to memories, too. I feel like I'm kind of compiling our family scrapbook and sharing it with the world. It seems to resonate with people even though it's so personal to me, but I really love making pictures of events in my life. I'm kind of recording it, marking it. But the inspiration is just in the day, though sometimes it's hard to wake up. [Laughter] I like sleeping in.

Book Art
Boston Beckons

Booksellers and book buyers are gearing up for next weekend's book bonanza in Boston. The ABAA's 34th International Antiquarian Book Fair runs from Friday, Nov. 12-Sunday, Nov. 14 at the Hynes Convention Center in the Back Bay section of town. More than one hundred rare book dealers will be there with their best wares, including this lovely first edition of Gentleman Prefer Blondes by Anita Loos, inscribed to editor Ray Long, who suggested the title for the book. Offered by Babylon Revisited Rare Books & Yesterday's Gallery in East Woodstock, CT. 

What else is on the slate? One of the high points will surely be the keynote address presented by Michael Suarez, director of the University of Virginia's Rare Book School, at 1:00 on Sunday. His talk is titled "The Ecosystems of Book History: Local Actions, Global Analysis." Also, the Northeast Document Conservation Center is offering a workshop on "How to Cure Smelly Books ... and Other Common Problems for Book Collectors" on Saturday at 1:00. For more information, and to see the exhibitor list (Bauman, Between the Covers, Bromer, Brian Cassidy, Lux Mentis, Maggs, Oak Knoll, William Reese, Royal Books, Ken Sanders, Veatchs, John Windle, and more, oh so many more!) visit the Fair's website. 

But that is not all, bookish friends -- while you're in town, there are other events for book collectors and book lovers to consider, including the Boston Book, Print & Ephemera Show on Saturday the 13th at the Park Plaza Castle (just five blocks away from the Hynes Center). The following day, Skinner holds its annual fine books and manuscripts auction, where a rare contemporary broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence will be up for grabs.

antiquarian book fair, book auction, book collecting, book collector, book conservation, book dealer, book fair, book history, bookseller, declaration of independence, ephemera, hynes center, manuscripts, michael suarez, rare books, skinner, smelly books
Frances Burney Changes Hands

250px-Frances_d'Arblay_('Fanny_Burney')_by_Edward_Francisco_Burney.jpgSome of you may recall Maureen E. Mulvihill's essay on the auction of the Peyraud Collection just about this time last year ("Literary Property Changing Hands"). Fanny Burney was one of the stars of that collection, and Dr. Mulvihill has again taken up her pen to give us a detailed account of the special Burney items that 'changed hands' at that Bloomsbury sale in May of 2009. Her essay "Bedazzled by Burney," commissioned by The Burney Letter, can be downloaded in full at the Burney Centre website. 

bloomsbury auction, burney centre, burney letter, fanny burney, frances burney, paula peyraud, maureen e. mulvihill, maureen mulvihill