Thoughts and experiences of those tactile, lasting, beautiful, timeless objects called ‘books’, including their ownership, production, sale, theft and loss. See also our sister page on book design and illustration, here.
My publisher, falsely so called…
Listening time: under 3 minutes.I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting to clear out his cellar of Thoreau's unsold books, which Thoreau had in any case had to pay for. So he gets them sent to his house, schleps them up several...
A capacious book thief
Steinbeck and Robert Capa spent a month in the Soviet Union. It took some time for Steinbeck to cotton on to the fact that his travelling companion was a closet biblioklept. I love the blithe insistence of innocence in Capa, even when caught book-handed, with that...
The history of books
An idea so intrinsic to reading books, particularly those you love and remember, that I had never consciously thought of it. Here, Michael Rosen describes his first encounter with a children's classic, and it made me recall early encounters with some...
A wilderness of books
This vast languishing resource was first brought home to me in Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, which highlighted a lemming-level of group-think compounded by ignorance of an entire 'other canon' of economic...
‘Do you prefer reading to cards?’ said he; ‘that is rather singular’.
Jane Austen – Pride & Prejudice
Department of Exceptions
‘All good publishers have a department of exceptions.’
Perhaps any institution worth its salt should have a department of exceptions: schools admissions offices, human resources departments, government ministries.
Trouble is,...
Book as mirror I
A great riposte, of course, and true to a large extent. Having dismissed a book, it sometimes happens that I come back to it later, even decades later, and wonder...
Publishers, monkeys, monkeys, publishers
I love the way Captain Flint sees his mission to find a monkey for the children as a refreshing change from tramping around London looking for a publisher for his...
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 vocabulary, and I remember a series of plays set in...
Stash it in the safe
The business model of publishing doesn't seem to have been very attractive then, whatever you think of it now. Thoreau makes several comments about dealing with publishers. Imagine a stack...
How to speak to an editor
Clearly, authors are simply too humble in approaching editors. This is how it should be done, straight to the point and don’t forget to pay me. In this story, the...
Books hidden, books found
Armenians seemed to be particularly adept at averting bibliocide. Some cultures, threatened with bibliocide, committed books to memory. The Armenians, apparently successfully committed to memory the whereabouts of hidden books and...
A wilderness of books
This vast languishing resource was first brought home to me in Erik Reinert's How Rich Countries Got Rich ... and Why Poor Countries Stay Poor, which highlighted a lemming-level of...
Rules and readers
Many of us have been in situations where vague ‘conventions’ are cited, the unwritten rules governing this or that realm. Sometimes I have sensed that ‘convention’ was a fig-leaf for...
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 committed readers and it has long been a tradition to...
The delusional business of book selling
This lovely, zestful, imaginative novel has one of the protagonists finding a job in a bookshop. He tentatively shares with his boss the fact that he seems to be seeing...
The history of books
An idea so intrinsic to reading books, particularly those you love and remember, that I had never consciously thought of it. Here, Michael Rosen describes his first encounter with a...
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