These little BBC Motion Gallery videos offer a glimpse of London 50+ years ago and now.
This simple, but engaging video is the first in the developing series of the Rare Book Feast, a series dedicated to the timeless nature of the printed book. I’ve sold a number of copies of this wonderful atlas over the years, but never fully appreciated the complexity and art of the book.
photo by Dolev Gotlib
More than 200 cafés and coffeshops around Israel have joined a brilliant project called “Same Old Story”, which recycles abandoned and donated books . Dolev Gotlib founded the project to pass books along in an ecologically friendly way, to keep them out of landfills and to support the Israeli organization, Shekulo-Tov (Full Good), which helps to integrate people with disabilities into the employment market.
The cafés and coffeeshops choose the amount and genre of books to stock and Shekulo-Tov workers are responsible for checking the inventory and restocking the book shelves.
When donated books are too worn for resale, “Same Old Story” finds creative uses for them. Book bindings are used to make journals, diaries, notebooks and wallets.
Gotlib plans to expand the project throughout Israel and hope that the “Same Old Story” model will be adopted in Europe and the United States.
As a bookdealer I’ve had my fair share of bizarre and wacky questions or comments from book browsers and buyer. Writer and part-time bookseller Jen Campbell has taken to compiling some of the odder comments on her book blog, This Is Not The Six Word Novel.
When she’s not writing, Jen works at London’s marvelous Ripping Yarns, which focuses on secondhand and antiquarian titles, with an emphasis on Children’s literature.
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Some of us have been waiting decades for our promised flying cars ( and jet packs) and now they’ve finally arrived.
It’s been a bumpy road for the Terrafugia company in its development of a “roadable aircraft” over the past seven years, but its Transition Aircraft just received its special exemptions from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on 6/30/11 clearing the way for commercial sales in 2012.
The exemptions allow the dual-use vehicle, which can be driven on US roadways but can also take-off and fly under the FAA Light Sport Aircraft catagory.
The Transition will sell for about $250,000 and fly for 460 miles. If you’d like one, just plonk down $10,000 deposit to get on the waiting list.
Shaun Usher, who curates the brilliant Letters of Note blog, which gathers all sorts of fascinating correspondence, postcards, memos,faxes and telegrams, has published a wonderfully amusing letter from the late, great John D. MacDonald. The novelist referenced his early history as an aspiring writer in a satirical rejection letter to magazine editiors who solicited him for stories to publish.
This is for those of us with a desk drawer full of rejection letters.
Usher also edits the terrific blog Letterheady, which is, as the package indicates, all about letterheads.
Brooklyn artist Rachel Kwak created this clever mash-up of poetry, animation (cut-outs, stop motion, replacement) and music based on A E Houseman’s poem, A World I Never Made.
Just back from MOMA to catch the final days of the fabulous German Expressionist show and was surprised to hear about the passing of American Abstract giant Cy Twombly.
Travel Between The Pages 