A Fewer New (er) Books We Like and a story of what can happen at a bookshop

Tomorrow is "Buy Indie Day", the latest foray in the seemingly never-ending quest to help the independent bookseller. Why should we care? It's all about the intangibles. We can't compete on price but the value of what else is offered cannot be duplicated by the chain or online experience. Here's a little example:

In 2007, Wessel & Lieberman had an exhibit of the work of Briony Morrow-Cribbs. Amy Stewart was in town with her husband, then editor of Fine Books & Collections magazine, Scott Brown for the Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair. While in town they stopped by the shop. The visit introduced Stewart to the work of Morrow-Cribbs and here we have their first collaboration.


Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities by Amy Stewart. Etchings by Briony Morrow-Cribbs. Illustrations by Jonathon Rosen. Published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009.



Greenscapes: Olmsted's Pacific Northwest by Joan Hockaday.

"Meticulous, intensely observant, industrious, and visionary, [Olmsted] left a legacy that is still enjoyed daily by people across the Pacific Northwest."


The Early Louis Sullivan Building Photographs by Crombie Taylor and Jeffrey Plank. Published by William Stout Publishers, 2001.

"Reproduces for the first time a treasure-trove from the architects’ archive, which document Sullivan’s pivotal structures and interiors. This is the most extensive survey of Sullivan’s building photographs ever produced."

View all the offerings on our '21 New (er) Books We Like' table

Anselm Kiefer's "Hortus Philosophorum"

Verunglückte Hoffnung, 2008. Lead and pottery. 51 1/4 x 67 x 78 3/4 inches

The Rome branch of the Gagosian Gallery is currently featuring an exhibit of new work by German artist and Book Patrol favorite Anselm Keifer. The exhibit is titled "Hortus Philosophorum"

The exhibition includes a group of eight sculptures that "evoke some of the central themes in his work deriving from his assiduous study of poetry, mythology, and cultural history." Each of the sculptures incorporate Kiefer's signature lead books.

Danae, 2008. Lead, gold granules and aluminum sunflowers. 53 1/4 x 63 x 149 1/2 inches

"By constructing elaborate scenographies that cross the boundaries of art and literature, painting and sculpture, Kiefer engages the complex events of history, the ancestral epics of life, death, and the cosmos, and the fragile endurance of the sacred and the spiritual amid the ongoing destruction of the world."

More images here

Previously on Book Patrol:
The Book , Anselm Kiefer and the Universe
Anselm Kiefer and the Book
Searching for a German Identity: Anselm Kiefer's Homage to Paul Celan
Anselm Kiefer Moves into the Louvre

The Wasilla Public Library Before Sarah Palin

Remember the storm surrounding Sarah Palin and her book banning crusade at the Wasilla Public Library. It turned out to be one of the bigger issues of her campaign.

20 years before Palin thrust the Wasilla Public Library into the national spotlight Edith Olson wrote a book The Library and I. A History of the first twenty-five years of the Wasilla Public Library.

Olson was the librarian at the Wasilla Public Library from 1938-1958. When she arrived their was no library building and the library consisted of two bookcases in the hall of the school house. The library held 350 books, when she left, 20 years later, there were 9,000 more.

Read the first two chapters on Scribd

Buy it at W&L

Wessel & Lieberman Digest

C. 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 that is a must see for us bookish types. I just watched it and loved it.

Do you suffer from Library Anxiety? New book out “Library Rx: Measuring and Treating Library Anxiety” offers help for afflicted undergrads.

Bookseller adds Twitter as a sales channel. @cheepreads is "offering good reads one tweet (CHEEP!) at a time" Can better books be far behind?

New Sherlock Holmes exhibit at the University of Michigan featuring items from the Parker collection“Clues Beyond Sherlock Holmes: The Arthur Conan Doyle Collection at Michigan.”

"Online sales help and hinder local bookshop" a look at how the folks at Jackson Street Books in Athens, GA are making their way in the current landscape.

Reporter pulls 18 books from the shelves of Seattle library to test levels of lead. 2 contain toxic levels via KIRO. A reasoned response to the sensational aspect of the story at The Common Room

"UW Press dabbles with Kindle, Amazon print on demand" University of Washington Press will offer 100 titles on Book Surge and 25 on the Kindle

Public Collectors : Share Your Collection with the World

Public Collectors is the brainchild of Marc Fisher. Its goal is to allow "large collections of materials to become accessible so that knowledge, ideas and expertise can be freely shared and exchanged," and is "founded upon the concern that there are many types of cultural artifacts that public libraries, museums and other institutions and archives either do not collect or do not make freely accessible."

Tremendous potential here for the book world. Creates an opportunity for collectors to add their wares to the public domain allowing the gems of their collections to be accessed by scholars, researchers and other interested parties.

Now if we can get some of these collectors or other like-minded souls to partner with libraries and special collections to help them get their backlog processed we would really be on to something.

Highlights:

Documentation of Bibles Stolen From Hotels

Artists' Books: Collection of Anthony Elms, Chicago, IL, USA

Artists' Books & Ephemera Collection of Philip von Zweck, Chicago, IL, USA


Thanks to manystuff.org for the lead

The WisdomTree Bookshelf by Jordi Milà

click to enlarge

"The WisdomTree is for people who see books as a source of knowledge and emotions and not simply as decorative objects. Its fluid and organic shape is inspired by growth of a plant. The books that represent the fruit of knowledge are supported by pieces covered in leather." - Jordi Milà

More images at Contemporist

Rebound Designs by Caitlin Phillips

Earth Day, 2009.

Nell Greenfieldboyce's feature Judging a Book (Bag) By Its Cover on NPR's All Things Considered gives us a glimpse into the world of Caitlin Phillips.

For five years now Phillips has been transforming discarded books into functional purses.

Why purses?

"The book kind of pretty much decided what form it was going to be," she says. "The spine becomes the bottom of the purse, because I keep the cover completely intact." She adds handles and a vintage button to match."

Highlights:

Book most often requested - Pride and Prejudice

Books out of bounds-

Phillips "won't cut up the Quran, although she will sometimes cut up a Bible, especially if it's a custom order from someone who wants to commemorate a well-loved copy that has fallen apart after years of use" and "For a long time, she wouldn't cut up Fahrenheit 451, "because the irony was just overwhelming, to cut up a book about destroying books."


Phillips' natural inclination leads her more toward the preservation than the altering of books. "Growing up, Phillips read constantly and was taught to treat books as almost sacred. She would never write in the margins or dog-ear the pages" then "a job at a used bookstore taught her that every year, huge numbers of out-of-date or damaged books are just tossed in dumpsters." Now 500-750 books a year are reclaimed by Phillips.

The NPR piece also includes a video of Philips at work and a 3 minute podcast.

More at Rebound Designs

Earliest Known Dust Jacket Found at Oxford

click to enlarge

A librarian digging through the archives at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford has found the earliest known example of a publisher's dust jacket. The dust jacket, which had been separated from the book it was created for, was found bound with other booktrade ephemera.

It belonged to:

Friendship's Offering for 1830. London: Smith, Elder, & Co., 1829

Mark Godburn has more on this historic discovery at his website, 19th Century Dust Jackets.

The previous record holder, discovered by John Carter in 1934, was a jacket issued in 1832 on the English annual, The Keepsake for 1833.

Image courtesy of Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Obama and Sendak on the South Lawn

Storytime was part of this year's White House Easter Egg Roll festivities. Here's a 5 minute video of President Barack Obama reading Maurice Sendak's "Where The Wild Things Are" on the South Lawn of the White House.

The first lady and children followed by reading If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff and illustrated by Felicia Bond.

C-Span has more video here.

Event doubles as a tremendous plug for the upcoming film adaptation of "Where The Wild Things Are"

Here's the trailer for that:



Thanks to the LibraryThing blog for the lead

#amazonfail or how Amazon finally eclipsed Jesus

By now most of us have heard of the Great Amazon GLBT caper of 09. A herculean act of censorship that exploded in the Twittersphere and was subsequently blamed on a mere technical malfunction.

Above are the top 5 trending topics on Twitter as they appeared at one point on Easter evening.

Here's the anticipated Amazon PR spin:

amazonfails
Jesus summoned
Amazon reborn
Masters once again
What a great Easter


This one is just getting started.


More:
Edward Champion Amazonfail : A Call to Boycot Amazon

Peter Kafka Did Amazon Really Fail this Weekend?

Jeff Rutherford Using Twitter to Respond to a PR Crisis - Amazon.com Failed To Act

Kate Harding at Salon.com's broadsheet Amazon continues to fail

Ron Hogan at Galleycat #Amazonfail: A Personal Perspective

Bookshelves to Die In

William Warren's Shelves For Life :

a self-initiated project by the designer to further explore ideas of built-in sentimentality within our possessions. The aim is to make stronger emotional relationships with our belongings and encourage life-long use.

The shelves are CNC cut in oak veneered plywood to the customer's measurements. They are intended to be used throughout life as storage for personal belongings. On death, the shelves are dismantled and rebuilt as a coffin.

Shelves for Life was launched at the British Library during the Travelling Apothecary Show and simultaneously at Liberties as part of Design UK, during London Design Week, September 2006.

Thanks to Core77 for the lead

Altered Bookmark

click to enlarge

Altered books are one thing but altered bookmarks open up a whole new can of worms.

Back in November of 2007 the Book Design class from Cornish College of the Arts paid a visit to Wessel & Lieberman. One of the students, Mare Odomo, grabbed a bookmark and went to work.

I am not sure where the glove part comes from but; nonetheless, what a treat to see.


See more of Mare Odomo's work at Flickr

and here's an Altered Bookmark project for the kids via suite101.com

A Preview of the ABAA's New Website

Here is a sneak peek at the new and improved website of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA). The much needed and long overdue overhaul is being lead by Bibliopolis with an assist from the team at Biblio. It is set to launch in June.

When completed it will finally provide the ABAA with a solid foundation on which to build their online presence and will provide them the chance to compete with the other online marketplaces. I just hope it's not too late, for they have a lot of catching up to do and with the online landscape still in a state of flux just catching up might not be enough.

DIY : Letterpress

The folks at Boing Boing Gadgets turn their attention to the letterpress and offer instructions on how to build your own letterpress and screw press.

In case you haven't noticed while the "death of the book" scream permeates our landscape there has been a flat-out resurgence in letterpress printing; both on the gift shop and fine printing level.

The future looks bright for this segment of the book world.

Now get printing!

Red Alert: Book "Thieve" of the Day

This email recently arrived from the Seattle Stolen Book Network:

*********************
Subject: Thieve

Hey everyone,

Just busted this guy shoving books down the back of his pants. I don't have a
picture but he has long brown hair, skinny white guy. early 30's. He has some skin
condition so he has red spots. He looks at metaphysical and alt. health. 86 on sight-

Thanks

*******************

I don't know where to start with this one.


For you booksellers out there, past and present, what's your have favorite book "thieve" story?

Library at the L House

The L House comes to us via the Swiss-based architect, Philippe Stuebi Architekten GMBH and was completed in 2005.


"The three-sided glazing of the library in the ground floor is mirrored-glass. Depending upon time of day and conditions you can see the stored books or the reflected garden. The upper floors are implemented in bright lime rendering and the glazings in nature-anodized aluminum."


More photographs here

via

The Tipping Point at the Public Library

Image via Pink Slips are the New Black

So much for the trickle down effect as a sane economic and social policy.

As the woes of Wall Street make their way to Library Street the trickle down effect is quickly becoming the trickle death effect.

If your library is not in danger of it's hours or staff being cut due to the strained budgets of cities, counties and towns across the world then it is probably in danger of being overused and overstressed by the hordes of visitors reeling from the economic troubles of our time.

Either way is unsustainable and without quick action god only knows what will become of these community centerpieces.

The New York Times piece, "Downturn Puts New Stresses on Libraries," gives us a glimpse of deteriorating conditions most libraries are facing. First, there is an increase in violence in and around our libraries. Of course if we lose the safety fight, all else will fail. Then there is the increase in usage and the increasing needs of library patrons and staff.

Barbara Vlk, a librarian at the Arlington Heights, ILL. library says “More and more people are in need of help and direction" and adds "I’ve had people come in and talk for hours." Now one doesn't usually think of the library has a place to go to "talk for hours."

As for the librarians, "Many say they feel ill-equipped for the newfound demands of the job, the result of working with anxious and often depressed patrons who say they have nowhere else to go" and some libraries have even hired therapists to help the staff!

It's not looking much better in the UK. John Harris' piece in the Guardian, "Our libraries are at risk - just when we need them most" reminds us of the danger of underfunded libraries. "Thirty-odd years of underinvestment has often led to libraries becoming so shabby and poorly resourced that warnings about their supposed unpopularity become self-fulfilling prophecies."

The library as social service center is far from a new concept. It is; however, the type of social services that are most in demand that has changed.

Previously on Book Patrol
The Library as Shelter, 11/06
The Library Asylum, 04/07