Category Archives: Books

How Books Have Helped

Posted on July 5, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Washington D.C. is blessed with an abundance of excellent bookstores. One of my favorites has long been the wonderful Second Story Books in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. Now they have partnered with the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress … Continue reading →

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A Declaration of Independence

Posted on July 4, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Back in 1971 the computer was barely understood by the average person and the concept of an ebook didn’t yet exist, but when Michael Stern Hart, a technologist and futurist, was given access to the Xerox Sigma V mainframe at the University … Continue reading →

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Memorable Opening Lines

Posted on July 3, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. — F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925) I lost an arm on my last trip home. — Octavia Butler, Kindred (1979) Once … Continue reading →

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Lost But Not Forgotten

Posted on July 2, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Amelia Mary Earhart disappeared  83 years ago on July 2, 1937. She was an American aviator, author, and the second person–after Charles Lindbergh–and the first female pilot to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.  Earhart was also a best-selling author. … Continue reading →

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Simple Steps To Safely Purchase A Book

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

 

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The rockets came like locusts.

Posted on June 29, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Like many antiquarian book collectors, I tend to focus on old first editions and elaborately bound illustrated books. Doing so can result in overlooking wonderfully illustrated paperbacks and re-issues such as this terrific 1979 edition of Ray Bradbury’s science fiction … Continue reading →

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The rescue will begin in its own time

Posted on June 28, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

I was really impressed by this illustration for the June 29 issue of The New Yorker magazine by Matt Willey. It accompanies ‘The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time‘, a series of short pieces by Franz Kafka that have not been … Continue reading →

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Italian Old Style

Posted on June 27, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Frederic Goudy’s Italian Old Style typeface as published in the Lanston Monotype Machine Company’s Italian Old Style, A New Type by Frederic W. Goudy, designed by the eminent American typographer and type and book designer Bruce Rogers and printed in Mount Vernon, N.Y., in a second edition … Continue reading →

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Where We Are Now

Posted on June 26, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

 

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An Honor Without Irony

Posted on June 24, 2020 by Brian D. Butler

Last week, an outdoor sculpture honoring the iconic American author J.D. Salinger was dedicated on a hillside near his family’s ancestral home in Lithuania. The artwork celebrates the writer’s most acclaimed novel The Catcher in the Rye. Ironically, Salinger’s 1951 bildungsroman … Continue reading →

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