No. 146 June 2007
HAVE YOU READ?
Recent articles of interest
Compiled by Howard Greaves, chair of the Alcuin Society.
The Bookseller/Diagram Prize for the Oddest Book Title of the Year. The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification, by Julian Montague. In second place was Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan, by Robert Chenciner.
"For everyone who has ever seen an abandoned supermarket trolley and wondered how it got there, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America is an indispensable guide," said Joel Rickett, deputy editor of The Bookseller. "The book is a labor of love and apparently took the author six years to compile. We are delighted to reward a brilliant piece of niche publishing again this year." The Web site (www.bookstandard.com) contains a hilarious list of winners for the years 1978-2004
New York Times Book Review, March 25, 2007
The Papers Chase: How Glen Horowitz made literary artifacts the new real estate.
A profile of the 'Manhattan rare-book dealer…who in recent years has come to dominate the rareified market of literary archives'. As well as mega-sales of the works of major literary luminaries to such institutions as the Morgan Library, The New York Public Library and the British Library, some may deliciously remember him as the dealer who purchased some personal papers of Franklin Roosevelt for $3.3 million in 1999 which he sold the following year to Conrad Black for $8 million.
Quill & Quire: Special Report on Book Design, April 2007
Looking for Better Covers: Time,money, and top-tier freelancers all in short supply for many publishers.
The sad truth is that there are no formal programs for book-design in Canada. Unquestionably, a number of excellent book designers exist, some of whom - Kelly Hill of Random House, Canada, Jessica Sullivan of Douglas & McIntyre, and Karen Powers, of Kids Can Press are interviewed for this survey . And remuneration compares poorly with the advertising field. Perhaps such design instruction exists, instead, for internet-based media. Andrew Steeves, co-owner of Gaspereau Press in Kentville, Nova Scotia writes on the necessity of choosing typefaces carefully and Reg Beatty, a Toronto book design teacher, considers the differences in the cover designs of six different editions of Alice Munro's Dance of the Happy Shades.
New York Times, January 18 2007
A House Build Around a Tower of Books
The architects renovating the five-story Boston townhouse of dealer in rare books on art and architecture Elmar Seibel, were challenged to let the collection of 14,000 books determine the design. The staircase, for instance, became wrapped around three stories of books. The article's photos show an enviable biblio/domestic environment.
Forbes, December 25 2006
Entrepreneurs: Chapter Two
An account in a perilous time when 200 small bookstores are closing each year and the U.S. book industry's sales were down 1.6 percent from last year, of the hand-over of the direction of the much-loved and enormous Powell's Books of Portland,Ore from father to daughter. In 2006 it netted an estimated pretax 2 percent on sales of roughly $50 million…..fifty times the sales when the present owner took over from his father in 1982.
The Economist, March 24 2007
Not Bound by Anything: Now that books are being digitized, how will people read?
Google is digitising possibly 10 million books a year (the total number of titles in existence is estimated at 65 million) starting with the contents of a number of academic libraries in the United States and Oxford's Bodleian. It is now being conceded that the eventual format of some genres may actually be more suited to paper… "people want media suitable for unhurried reading in beds and bathtubs and on beaches."
Globe and Mail, Review, April 18 2007
Typecast: A whole movie about a typeface?
The ability to choose from the many type-faces on personal computers has greatly increased awareness of fonts and may explain the enthusiasm for the film Helvetica. "In the film, director Hustwit focuses on the personalities of several modern designers, who reveal themselves as charming, articulate and analytical, and are sometimes refreshingly self-deprecating about their fixation with typography"