On the culling of books
I have long put off writing this post because I have an aversion to it. A while back I bought...
Hoovering up ideas
There's such a zest to this account of the Armenian approach to dealing with invaders: translate everything you can get...
Wishing you a happy jólabókaflóð!
This lovely word is Icelandic for 'Christmas book flood'. As you may know, Iceland is home to the world's most...
Publishers, monkeys, monkeys, publishers
I love the way Captain Flint sees his mission to find a monkey for the children as a refreshing change...
Marcel and me – memories of childhood
I grew up with Marcel. That is the French author Pagnol (1895-1974) was a part of our domestic library and...
My publisher, falsely so called…
I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting to clear out his cellar of Thoreau's...
A wilderness of books
This vast languishing resource was first brought home to me in Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and...
Worse than cocaine
If you were traversing the Soviet Union it was better to be caught with a kilo of cocaine than a...
Tales from Australia and Oceania
This book cover and related illustrations are from a wonderful old French series of tales and stories from around the...
Book as mirror II
One of the most reassuring and surprising insights I found in reading Harold Bloom's literary criticism, was the realization that...
Department of Exceptions
‘All good publishers have a department of exceptions.’
Perhaps any institution worth its salt should have a department of exceptions:...
Fuel for the body or mind?
Book burning, or bibliocide, is usually something we associate with ideologues, political or religious, fearful of the free flow of...
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