John Updike Collection Up For Grabs

One of the largest collections of John Updike material in private hands has hit the market.

The collection, which was amassed over a 30 year period consists of:

126 Signed works,

267 “A” items representing almost 90% of his primary publication titles,

Extensive “B” items and numerous other appearances, including a 29 year (1980-2009) run of his “New Yorker” work.

Two signed letters from Updike and multiple uncorrected proofs.

Highlights of the collection include:

1. Dance of the Solids, inscribed.
2. Earthworm, first and second state.
3. Lovelorn Astronomer.
4. The Angels.
5. Bath After Sailing.
6. Rabbit, Run, First Edition.
7. A Rabbit Omnibus, twvo volumes signed.
8. Chaste Planet, signed.
9. Couples, first edition review copy
10. Dog’s Death, framed and signed.
11. Carpentered Hen.
12. Flying to Florida, signed by Updike and Roth.
13. Happy Birthday, Kurt Vonnegut.
14. Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu, signed.
15. Hugging the Shore, with TLS by Updike to Doris Grumbach
    (literary editor of “The New Republic”) laid in.
16. Review copy of Parini’s Robert Frost with copious notes by Updike for his New Yorker review, and also includes a poem written by Updike on the inside back cover.
17. The Indian.
18. January, limited signed edition.
19. Poem Begun on Thursday, October 14, 1993, signed broadside.
20. Query, inscribed.
21. Radiator, signed limited issue in wrappers.
22. 75 Aromatic Years of Leavitt & Peirce.
23. Sixteen Sonnets.
24. Warm Wine.
25. Witches of Eastwick, uncorrected proofs (first and second state)
26. English Train Compartment, broadside.

The collection, out of Portland, Oregon, is being offered by Charles Seluzicki Fine & Rare Books. All items are in Very Good or better condition. A complete list of material included in the collection- over 500 books and broadsides plus a generous sampling of periodical appearances- is available upon request.

Asking price: $60,000. Serious inquiries only.

Meet Ninomiya-kun, the Book-Reading Robot

It is 1 meter tall and weighs in at 25 kilograms, it is the brainchild of Kitakyushu National College of Technology and Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

He "reads by training its camera eyes on printed materials placed on a special book stand. Character recognition software installed on a computer in the robot’s backpack translates the text into spoken words, which are produced by a voice synthesizer"

Here it is reading some fairy tales:




After a little more tweaking "the robot will be ready to read books to children and the elderly for a living"

Now that is one glorified audiobook. Shouldn't it be reading from a Kindle?

More at Pink Tentacle
Story at Daily Yomiuri (in Japanese)

Thanks to American Libraries Direct for the lead

On Spines and Memories

"Scan your bookshelves. Consider the spines. Connect one to a specific memory. It's easy."

This is how, noted designer and creative director of Marquand Books, Ed Marquand kicks off his short essay On Spines and Memories, the first volume in a new series by Marquand Editions.

On how important a spine's design is to the whole of the book Marquand says "The spine becomes the most familiar part of a book after it is slid into a bookcase, but it is often designed in haste"

The series will feature essays from writers, publishers, curators and the like and will focus on the various aspects of books and publishing. Each book is printed letterpress and is hand-bound

On Spines and Memories is printed in an edition of 500 copies printed with less than 200 being offered for sale as most sent as gifts to friends of the author/publisher. Delivery offered two ways: the traditional well-packed method or sent without packaging with publishers mailing sticker on fore-edge and rear board.



Buy the book here

To be notified when future publications in this series become available please click here

Kindle Sighting

The picture above shows a book reader existing peacefully with a Kindle reader while they ride the bus.

With all the hype surrounding the Kindle I have yet to see one in public and this is one of the first images I've seen of one out in the world. And to boot it was taken on mass transit. Is mass acceptance far behind?

Image via Narisa Spaulding (@narisas) of Seattle

Thanks to @emersonsalon for the lead

ABC's of Book Collecting : Americana

AMERICANA

Books, etc., about, connected with or printed in America, often, but not exclusively, the United States of North America; or relating to individual Americans: as distinct (properly, though nowadays not invariably) from books by American writers. The Columbus Letter is a piece of
Americana, as describing the discovery of the continent; the Bay Psalm Book, as the first known book printed in what is now U.S.A.; and Thomas Paine ’s Common Sense, as one of the influential documents of the War of Independence. Poe ’s The Raven, on the other hand, is not Americana, nor is Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn or Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers might be considered borderline cases, for if they are primarily outstanding works of American literature, they are also classically descriptive of the countryside and life of the people.

A currently fashionable sub-category should be mentioned: Western Americana. This embraces any piece of manuscript or printed matter documenting or deriving from the great westward expansion of the United States in the 19th century, from Lewis & Clark and the Louisiana and Gadsden Purchases down to Buffalo Bill and Frederic Remington. More local enthusiasms are reflected in other neologisms, such as Texana or Californiana.

Since Canada, Mexico, Central and South America are just as much part of the hemisphere as the United States, and since their ana have keen collectors, the implicit limitation in terms like ‘Latin Americana’ is beginning to break down. This catholic view has been enhanced by the publication, begun under the editorship of the late Mr John Alden, of European Americana, a catalogue of generous comprehension, as applied in the collection of the John Carter Brown Library, Providence, R.I.


Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts














Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

Tom Bloom's Illustrations for Between the Covers

In was sometime in the late 1980's when Tom Congalton, the proprietor of Between the Covers Rare Books, and cartoonist, book collector Tom Bloom struck a deal. They agreed to swap books for art. Now, some 20 years later, Tom Bloom's illustrations have graced the covers of over 100 catalogs for BTC. His work has also appeared on numerous lists issued by BTC and is a seminal element of their website.

Bloom's work has also regularly appeared in The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, and The Village Voice. His cartoon illustrations have also appeared numerous times on the front page of The New York Times.


Bloom's work has become as much a part of the BTC brand as the Modern First Editions they specialize in. The relationship is reminiscent of the one Edward Gorey developed with the Gotham Book Mart.




Dan Gregory has begun to document this relationship with a series of galleries featuring Bloom's work for BTC. In addition to the images for each catalog he provides a brief history of the catalog itself. He also notes that many of the catalogs did not have names until after Bloom's illustrations arrived.



Here's to the next 20 years of this amazing collaboration!


Previously on Book Patrol:
The Return of the Bookseller Catalog

ABC's of Book Collecting : Almanac

ALMANAC

A calendar, usually in pocket-book (more rarely sheet) form, augmented
with Saints’ days, fair-dates and astronomical and meteorological
data; a bestseller from the start and protected by jealously guarded
patents, the different titles, hot rivals in the 17th century, were all
finally swallowed up by Dr Francis Moore’s Vox Stellarum, familiarly
known as ‘Old Moore’s Almanack’.


Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts















Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

Liz Moody's "Burgeoning Blossoms/Fairy Tales" at the Shooting Gallery

Brightest in the Garden #1, 2008

The work of Liz Moody is featured in the inaugural exhibit at the Shooting Gallery.

From the artist's statement:

Liz Moody is inspired by her mother's old vogue dress patterns, the magic and texture in the pages of vintage children's books, and the profusion of blossoms when spring finally arrives in the Northwest. Liz uses acrylic paint, India ink, collage, and pastel to build up layers of texture in each piece. She loves brilliant, saturated color and playful organic shapes that reveal small mysteries of text and paint.

The show, titled "Burgeoning Blossoms/Fairy Tales," showcases Moody's multi-layered work which combines text, collage and paint and connects the power of fairy tales on a child's fertile imagination with the profusion of blossoms that accompany each spring.

Andersen's Fairy Tales, 2008

These "small mysteries of text and paint" are worth seeing.

the Shooting Gallery lives inside newly opened Wallflower Custom Framing in West Seattle. There will be artist's reception this Thursday June 11 from 6-9pm

More images at Moody's website
and at imagekind

BoysRead.org is on a Mission to Transform Boys into Lifelong Readers

Here are the cold facts:

America's boys are the most violent in the industrialized world.

50% of all minority male students drop out of school.
87% of boys play explicitly violent video games.
92% of convicted violent felons are male.

BoysRead.org is an organization of parents, educators, librarians, mentors, author that believes that "male literacy is part of the solution."

In 2004 the NEA study, "Reading at Risk: a Survey of Literary Reading in America," found that reading by young men plummeted from 55 percent to 43 percent; by working to develop a lifelong passion for reading in boys, which includes teaching them about the realities of war, BoysRead.org hopes to reverse this potential catastrophic cultural trend.

Their website offers numerous helpful hints and resources to get and keep the boys reading.

We can't afford not to support them.

ABC's of Book Collecting : All Published

ALL PUBLISHED

This means that, despite appearances or an original intention to the
contrary, the volume or series described was not continued, and is
thus as complete as it ever can be in this form, given its (usually)
unexpected truncation.





Previous ABC's of Book Collecting posts














Carter, John & Nicolas Barker
ABC's of Book Collecting. 8th Edition
New Castle, Delaware : Oak Knoll Press, 2004

Buy a copy

Book Sculptors at BAM

Guy Laramée, Pétra (2007). Sandblasted encyclopedias, pigments
13 x 11.25 x 8.5 in. Courtesy Gallerie Orange, Montreal and the artist
Photo: Guy L’Heureux © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SODRAC, Montreal.

Wondering what to do with those old encyclopedia's or those obsolete white pages that keep landing in your driveway? Perhaps a trip to the Bellevue Art Museum might help.

"The Book Borrowers: Contemporary Artists Transforming the Book"is the latest installment in the Bellevue Art Museum's (BAM) ongoing Material Evidence series.

The show features work by some of today's leading artists working with books including pieces by Brian Dettmer, James Allen, Noriko Ambe, Long-Bin Chen, Jacqueline Rush Lee and Georgia Russell among others.

"The works in this exhibition reveal new and unexpected layers of meaning that go beyond the book as a source of information and offer a fresh look at its place in an increasingly digitally oriented world. The Book Borrowers is both a nostalgic homage to the book and a reflection on our current progression beyond it."

Alan Corkery Hahn. Dictionary. Courtesy Gallery IMA Seattle

This is the second stellar book-related museum exhibit in the Seattle area within the last 2 years; The Seattle Asian Art Museum hosted the seminal exhibit Shu: Reinventing Books in Contemporary Chinese Art in 2007.

Long-Bin Chen. Guan Ying with Flower Crown (Ming Dynasty), 2007
Manhattan white pages phone books. 22 x 12 x 13 in.
Courtesy of the Artist and Frederieke Taylor Gallery, NYC

Here's a video of Casey Curran's "The Whale" which is also featured in the exhibit.



The future looks bright for book infused art.

The Book Borrowers is on view at BAM through June 14th. For those of us on the Seattle side, this one is worth crossing the bridge.

Previously on Book Patrol:
The Book Gods of Contemporary Chinese Art