Bookshelves

Stumbled onto this site when looking for something completely different:

The Fireside Post



The book shelves were custom built by me. Measurements were taken and shelves spaced accordingly – with the intention of maximizing space. By strategically aligning the shelves I was able to put about fifty more books on each four foot by six foot cabinet. What I did not realize at the time was that I was designing a wall of clutter. There is very little wasted space – but in hindsight it is quickly obvious that the book shelves look like a wall of clutter. About twenty of the books are in the category of self help. Two of those are about avoiding clutter.

I see myself here!!

Bookshelf Porn

A website that must have been designed with me in mind

Bookshelf Porn

Oh. and it's not Porn in that sense!

Books

Haven't been updating my book acquisitions here.

A varied assortment can turn up in the charity shops of the quiet Cornish backwater where I live.

Last Saturday's acquisitions were:

The Pianist. Wladyslaw Szpilman

Big Chief Elizabeth. Giles Milton

Last week, on the same day:

The Painter of Modern Life and other essays. Baudelaire

Coming to You Live. Dennis Norden et. al.
Smashing anecdotes on the early days of TV.

Biting the Wax Tadpole. Elizabeth Little
A short humorous book on linguistics. The Wax Tadpole is a literal translation of Coca Cola.

Last Month, various days:

Americans in Paris. Charles Glass
Not a charity shop item but from The Works cheap bookshop in town. An account of the lives of the American nationals living in Paris who decided to stay on through the German occupation. Bought for the account of Sylvia Beach's life in the original Shakespeare and company.

Paris Peasant. Aragon
Surrealist literature

Terror by Night, Classic Ghost and Horror Stories. Ambrose Bierce
by the author of The Devil's Dictionary

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Hunter S Thompson
With Ralph Steadman's illustrations.

Charles Lamb and Elia. Charles Lamb

Library. Matthew Battles.

The Essential Alan Coren. Ed Giles and Victoria Coren

Echo of the Big Bang. Lemonick

Elizabeth 1. Anne Somerset

Diary of a Cotswold Parson. Ed. David Verey
I am going to some of the places mentioned in this book. About 200 years after the diarist.

Minima Moralia. Adorno

The Battle. Richard Overy

Most about £1, some two for 99p

All I need is expanding shelf space! The joke used to be that I would buy the empty house next door and turn it into a library!

But I always bear in mind the fact that books are one of the few pleasures in life that the government don't tax. I bet e-books are taxed. Quick Google reveals they are.

Also because I buy in charity shops everybody benefits.

Hello again blog

First post of 2011.

Brief pause partly because the computer threw a wobbly between Christmas and the new year. Fortunately my knight in shining armour aka my son rode to my rescue.

Used my WH Smith giftcard to buy Bill Bryson's At Home.



Got several ideas for my Amazon gift card, Hybrid's Disappear Here and Johann Johannsson are at the top of the list.

An Amazing Concept

Chris Cobb, a local San Francisco artist did something amazing to a bookshop called Adobe Books- he arranged every single one of the 20,000 books by color. {Can you see this would be my fantasy?} The project is called "There is Nothing Wrong in This Whole Wide World" and is based on a simple idea:

"Even though there is so much to be unhappy about in this world, we should try to create something amazing and beautiful and interesting despite all of the problems." Chris Cobb

Chris and a team of 16 volunteers stayed up all night (ten hours, several pizzas and 30 bottles of water later) and arranged all of the books by hand. Inside every book there is a tag saying where it belongs.




Unfortunately this piece only existed until January 15th 2005

Link

More Books

A trawl through the charity shops in my home town yielded two cracking books.

Berlin: The Downfall 1945 by Anthony Beevor


Image source

And Dry Store Room No 1: The Secret History of the Natural History Museum


Amazon Image

The Beevor book covers the events inside and outside the bunker. I watched the German film Downfall a while ago. Bruno Ganz was excellent as Hitler.

In my opinion there are three films to see regarding the Second World War
Downfall
Schindler's List
Conspiracy with Kenneth Branagh

I haven't seen Cabaret for a while, but I think that should receive an honourable mention.

Schlindler's list is a very difficult film to watch, heartbreakingly so at times. That and Downfall convincingly portray a society where every social and cultural norm have broken down.

The Fortey book looks fascinating. The Natural History Museum is not just a cabinet of curiosities but a whole building. Now we are beginning to make scientific sense of everything and that adds another layer of interest.

Both £1.50 each. Bargain.

Another bookshop

This is Rod's books on the Barbican in Plymouth. I have to say it is the most chaotic bookshop I have ever visited.







I had to take these quickly with my mobile camera (which is why one is blurred). But they don't even begin to convey the clutter. The corridor was barely wide enough to squeeze through and the piles were above head height in some places, threatening to tumble on the unsuspecting customer at any moment! God forbid that you should wish to examine a book at the bottom of a stack!

Sadly, Rod's Books is no more. he has closed to concentrate on selling on the internet.

There is also The Book Cupboard



Books, properly organised on three floors. Thanks to Peterphotographic there is a shot of one of the upper floors.

Bookshops: Paris

The best bookshop in the world (or at least the best I've been to so far) is Shakespeare and Company in Paris.



I read Jeremy Mercer's Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs before a short trip to Paris and resolved to visit it. It was everything a good bookshop should be, crammed with books (thankfully, mostly in English) in a really interesting, quirky building. How many bookshops have an (admittedly dry) well?



I didn't take any interior pictures, I borrowed the image above from Rachael Leow's blog. It shows the section of floor covered by a random assortment of tiles and the epigrams which are scattered throughout the place.

Photo by Lui Brandt

It was a haven for writers in straitened circumstances, as Jeremy Mercer discovered when he left Canada after an episodic career as a journalist. It was possible to find shelter there amongst the books.

Article from the Guardian

Shakespeare and Company, a creative sanctuary. Long after Hemingway and the Beats, the Shakespeare and Company bookshop is still encouraging Paris to read and write

A haven for writers ... Shakespeare and Company bookshop, Paris.

Stephen Emms
I've been to Paris many times. But, while I invariably wind up at La Belle Hortense for a browse over a glass of red, I'd yet to sample the charms of legendary English bookshop Shakespeare and Company.

The first Shakespeare and Company, run by Sylvia Beach at rue de l'Odéon, was the base for Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the gang, but closed in the second world war. In 1951 George Whitman opened his own shop, Le Mistral, in a former 17th-century monastery overlooking Notre Dame. It became the base for Beat generation writers such as Burroughs and Ginsberg. He changed the name after Beach's death in 1962.

I stand outside. Its Seine-side location is idyllic, even on a freezing February morning, with workmen on ladders outside its bottle-green facade, mending the electricals, and a skeletal tree wreathed in a string of bulbs. Summer must be wonderful here: there are empty garden chairs strewn between trays of hardy books.

28-year-old Sylvia Whitman, George's daughter, has agreed to show me round. Signs at the entrance marked "Beat" and "Lost" are a reminder of both stores' heavyweight associations. A wishing well, around which a handful of customers shuffle, glistens with pennies.

Her father, Sylvia says, hoped to work until he was 100 but, forced to retire at 93, now lives on the second floor. He no longer gives interviews. We wander past shelves devoted to fiction, biography, art and French interest. "It's more organised that it looks," she says, with a laugh.

Paperbacks line red wooden steps leading upstairs to what Sylvia calls the "non-commercial" floor: a library in which you could lose yourself, with one rule: books mustn't leave the premises. Here, as on the ground floor, single mattresses lurk between the shelves, and, in the children's section, a bunk bed. It's on these that young authors sleep each night.

"We have six at any one time," says Sylvia, "generally in their early 20s. They come to write from all over the world while doing a couple of hours in the shop a day. Generally they stay a week to a month, but one English poet stayed seven years." Seven years – really? "If someone's reading and writing, we encourage that," she says. "It's a different life after closing time. They all come out of the woodwork! And for us, it's an organic cycle: aspiring writers tapping away upstairs and books being sold downstairs."

Everything here encourages creativity. A tiny enclosed bureau, lined with rugs and a blue painted chair, bears the sign: "Feel free to use the typewriter for your lovely writing/creative ventures." Notes from customers are scrawled in all languages. "A friend told me if I ever felt lonely to come to Shakespeare & Company," one says. Visitors are so effusive that a few years ago George installed what he calls a "mirror of love", where hundreds more scribblings are pinned, from the surreal to the touching: "Dear Granny, I would like you to come to Paris with me", reads one. "Books insulate this nest of wandering dreams", reads another, "there should always be a place where stories reign over commercial enterprise."

We stand in the beamed reading room, the light soupy. George's mongrel, Collette, smart in a red neckerchief, snoozes on a rug lining the stone floor. A white cat arches its back on a desk overlooking the river. Sylvia explains that when it rains the room fills with readers and writers, all jostling for the handful of cushions scattered along the wooden banquette. Her image only sharpens the silence of this morning.

As I leave, the western facade of Notre Dame is noisy with tourists. I cross the square, haunted by one of the messages tacked to the mirror. Hand-written by the mother of a 21-year-old bipolar man who killed himself by jumping off Brooklyn Bridge, it read: "I've spent the last hour trying to decide if I should end my life. If he could have discovered your bookshop, perhaps he would have survived. I want to thank you for this place and the hope it gives." Not only does that seem to underline the redemptive power of literature, but also something less tangible: the balm of environment.

Another article.

Will I ever go back? Would like to think so...

Bank Holiday Sunday

Went to Pool Market. Got there a bit late so most of the stalls had gone. Had seen this book on a previous occasion, the stall holder wanted £2. It was on the stall yesterday he wanted 50p. Bargain.

It's a Dover Publication I love their books, they are quirky. Many are reprints of earlier works. This one gives an insight into the Victorian interior designer's mindset and has reminded me of something else that I will put into my next entry. I can only put about five pictures into a post.

Truro

Truro yesterday. Lunch in the Try Dowr , love my lasagne. Followed by a world tour of the secondhand bookshops and charity shops.

Lemon Quay has really taken off as a new hub of the town. There was a Farmer's Market there yesterday and the M.I. Bar and the Hall for Cornwall have cordoned off sections as pavement cafés, there was a children's roundabout operating too. This picture shows it just after the completion of the shopping development.


Image Source

On another occasion in June these two guys were performing light operatic songs. Their version of 'Time To Say Goodbye' was excellent.



There was a book stall in front of the Museum selling secondhand books. Bought a hardback version of Lawrence & Oppenheimer by Nuel Pharr Davis.

Yesterday

Gold dust again in the charity shops. The Clic Sargeant has more old-stock CDs.

Bought Dvorak 'From the New World'and Prokofiev, Highlights from 'Romeo and Juliet'.

Then, because I recognised Samy Bishai (from Celloman, Digitonal), this:



Lost the original image from the website, this one courtesy of Amazon

Seckou Keita

Very good so far.

In another shop, bought this, with a picture of my little friend on the cover:



Got to get a handle on that furry little brain somehow!

Wow, books!

This is the Big Book Sale by The Friends of San Francisco Public Library.

Had to edit this as the original image became unavailable. This one is an improvement actually. Only in America do you go bookshopping with a shopping trolley!

The 2010 one is September 22nd to 26th

Bibliophile heaven!

Books

Photo by Scott Frances
I think it's this chap. His photos are amazing.

Not a room in my house, wish it was.

One of the things I must do is catalogue all my books.

I would love to take a larger part in a site called LibraryThing. I have entered a few of my books, but I have so many it would be a marathon task to upload them all.

I have:

Three bookcases in the lounge

A huge bookcase in the back room

A bookcase in the spare room/computer room

Books beside the bed

My son has books in his old room

And several piles of books

Many things hold me back:

I haven't got a bar code reader

a lot of my books predate barcodes anyway

I wouldn't even dream of unpacking the books in my cabinet of curiosities. So they would be uncatalogued

Only the first 200 books are free, so I'd definitely have to upgrade to the premium account. Although $25 for life doesn't sound too bad

But I STILL BUY BOOKS

Second hand, charity shop books. I certainly don't agree with this chap and neither do the people who commented on the piece, Why I hate second-hand books



It's not quite that bad!

Bargains

A local charity shop has, what looks like, bankrupt bookshop stock. they are selling things really cheaply.

I bought the book that accompanied Rachael Whiteread's New York Watertower installation, Looking Up for £1. A real bargain.



Also bought a book called The Customised Body By Ted Polhemus & Housk Randall



Review

Art: Bendtsen

One of Tom Bendtsen's Arguments. A house made of books.

Stumbled onto this looking for something else. Gotta love the Internet for turning up these unexpected treasures.

Website

The page

Quite like the page design even though it's a supplied one. It's like my bookshelves at home.