Bookbarn Apocalypse

This is the scene inside a warehouse in Bristol, UK. The warehouse used to be the home of Bookbarn, Amazon.UK's largest supplier of secondhand books. Now it's a biblio-wasteland.

After their lease was up Bookbarn moved out leaving millions of books behind. The landlord then decided to invite the public in to take whatever they wanted. Ashley Nicholson, the director of the property, said 'We thought it was a sensible idea to give people the opportunity to come along and choose themselves a book or two and help us clear the warehouse." The thought of free books had people coming from far and wide. Nicholson added 'The response has been unbelievable since we opened it to the public. It's like a swarm of locusts."

Is such a tragic scene a direct result of the race to the bottom pricing mentality of the penny sellers that infect many of the online marketplaces? Where value is sucked out of many perfectly good books until they are rendered 'worthless'. What a shame.

Do you think they'll get their security deposit back?

More at the Daily Mail online

Note the Bookbarn is not to be confused with Bookbarn International

Sleep at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Richard Brathwaite. Ar’t asleepe husband? London, 1640. ©Folger Shakespeare Library

Whatever your relationship to sleep is the latest exhibit at the Folger Shakespeare Library, To Sleep, Perchance to Dream, is worth staying awake for.

The "exhibition explores the ethereal realm of sleeping and dreaming in Renaissance England, from the beliefs, rituals, and habits of sleepers to the role of dream interpreters and interpretations in public and private life."

In addition to a sampling of Shakespeare and Milton and books like Thomas Tryon’s A treatise of cleanness in meats and drinks, of the preparation of food, the excellency of good airs, and the benefits of clean sweet beds the exhibit also includes other tangibles like nightclothes, gemstones, recipes and ingredients for curing nightmares and inducing sleep.

Sleep disorders are nothing new but who knew what lengths people went to keep nightmares at bay. Carole Levine, co-curator of the exhibit, shares a few strategies of the day, like "rubbing the blood of a lapwing on your temples, putting an ape’s heart under your pillow, or even worse to find -- a dragon’s tongue soaked in wine.” Yikes.

One can only imagine what Sigmund Freud, who read some of the books displayed, would have thought of this homage to the Renaissance night.

The exhibition is both comprehensive and enlightening and has a strong online component as well which includes The Dream Machine which provides Renaissance-era dream interpretation.

There is an audio tour available online but without the corresponding visuals it seems the weakest link of the online offering.

Exhibit Details:
February 19-May 30, 2009
Monday-Saturday 10am-5pm

Co-Curated by Carole Levin of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Garrett Sullivan of Pennsylvania State University.

Marsha Dubrow has a good review of the exhibit at Examiner.com piece

Limerick for the Kindle

This little gem was left as a comment to Allison Arieff's post, Shelf Life, at the New York Times. The story profiles renowned architectural bookseller and publisher William Stout.



There once was a time when books slowly dwindled,
Bibliophiles everywhere felt nothing but swindled,
They wanted their books,
By hook or by crooks,
But alas, in the end, all of them Kindled!

Cliff Eyland : The 'Librarian Painter'

Bookshelf File Card LK 21 -The Large Bookshelf, 2009
Illustrator Drawing on Paper, 3" x 5"

At times Cliff Eyland thinks of himself as a "librarian painter." A longtime bibliophile, Eyland has been painting on 3" x 5" index cards for 30 years.

In his latest exhibition Bookshelf File Cards, at the Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto, Cliff Eyland "reengages his lifelong obsession with books and art by painting abstract images of books on shelves."

"Since his art school days Eyland has not only remained consistent in the size of his work but he has also come to believe that the library is the most important of all art institutions."

In 1981, while at a student at the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design, Eyland created N.S.C.A.D Library File Card Intervention. Eyland cut up a copy of H.H. Arneson's History of Modern Art into 3" x 5" pieces and inserted them into the card catalog at the library. It took him a month and a half to finish. Picasso was well represented, his images turned into 55 file cards that were filed behind 'Guernica'.

Another one of his biblio works "File Card Hidden in Books", is still alive at the Raymond Fogelman Library at the New School in New York City. Since 1997 Eyland has been inserting original file card size drawings into books at the library.

The current exhibit is the first in which Eyland has actually painted books. That alone, given his bookish history, is a good reason to go.

Bookshelf File Card LK 17, 2009
Illustrator Drawing on Paper, 3" x 5"

Gallery of the Bookshelf File Cards

Piece on the Bookshelf File Cards by Katherine Laidlaw, in Things of Desire Canada's Alternative Art Weekly

Booksellers Talking

Are you wondering what's happening on the frontlines and how technology, chains and the slumping economy are taking their toll on the bookselling community?

Three podcasts of note hit the airwaves in the last few weeks giving us a inside look on the current state of the trade.

Nigel Beale, host of the radio show The Biblio File, recently passed through the Twin Cities and interviewed booksellers Rob Rulon-Miller and Kathy Stransky co-owner of Midway Used and Rare Books

Beale's interviews are worth a listen. At around 20 minutes each they are long enough to give one a real sense of the challenges facing the trade both from a bookshop and home-based perspective.

The Stransky inteview, titled "Gloom and doom from the used book business?," is a jolt to one's bookselling senses. Stransky recounts how all the changes in the last 15 years have chipped away at the brick and mortar of her business. It is not a pretty sight and after listening I was ready to turn the keys to our shop over to the landlord and go hole up in an office somewhere far away. "Yes, it’s been hard" says Stransky "but still, despite diminishing returns, nothing can beat doing what you love for a living."

The Rulon-Miller interview sheds light on the inner-workings of the antiquarian trade and the challenges this segment of the trade is facing in these times.

Rulon-Miller interview here
Stransky interview here

On a lighter note. Cy Musker of radio station KQED visited James Bryant, of Carpe Diem Books at his booth at the California International Antiquarian Book Fair. Apart from the 'book as object' argument that separates the non-new bookselling world from the publishing and new book world you get a sense of the depth and breadth of material exhibited; from a fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls to a book inscribed by John Lennon to Eric Clapton.



Note the last minute or so of the podcast is not book related

Also of Note: The Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) under the guidance of bookseller Michael Ginsberg, has begun an oral history project. Ginsburg and others have been traveling to various book fairs to interview booksellers. Think of it as a Folkways for the bookselling trade. At this time none of these interviews have been made public. I am hoping that when the newly revamped ABAA website launches in June we will have access to this treasure-trove of bookselling history.

Notes from the Fair : Codex & The California Antiquarian Book Fair

It was a big book week in San Francisco with both the book arts and antiquarian segments of the book trade hosting their largest events of the year. I was interested to see how these events would fair in the current economic climate of doom and gloom.

Well, I got good news. Books are still alive!

The Codex Foundation kicked things off with The Second Biennial Codex International Book Fair and Symposium. The book fair took place on the Berkeley campus of the University of California and the symposium was held at the Berkeley Art Museum. Over 125 fine presses and book artists from around the world showed up to exhibit their wares. As the Codex fair website states the "fair is rapidly becoming the “world’s fair” of the book as art and artifact."

When I visited on Wednesday afternoon the room was filled with an excitement and buzz that was quite refreshing. I got the sense that Codex is in a way a coming out party for the fine press and book arts community. Peter Koch, the fine press printer and founder of the Codex Foundation, told me he sees himself as the "Bill Graham of book arts" and he deserves much credit for his work here.

The time is also ripe for such an event. As the larger book environment continues to go through a prolonged upheaval, with technology redefining how books are read and how their content is delivered, the handmade book is enjoying a bit of a revival. It is one of the few solid growth areas in the book world. It is also an area that has not yet fully benefited from the e-commerce technologies that have redefined the other segments of the book universe.

Then it was off to San Francisco to exhibit at The 42nd California International Antiquarian Book Fair. Though I did not feel the same sense of excitement and buzz that I did at Codex I was, in the end, happy about the way it unfolded.

Going into the fair one could be cautiously optimistic at best. The weather was terrible, the economy is in the tank and the trade is still spinning from the technology changes of the last 15 years.

The fair was well attended, which in itself is a sign of health, and people were buying books. Disaster was averted.

What seemed to me to be the biggest change, and one that has been on the horizon since the advent of online bookselling, was the decrease in the wholesale or dealer to dealer sales. Traditionally, the health of a book fair is heavily impacted by the intra-trade sales. Booksellers buy books, and they still do, but not in the same fashion as in days gone by. Technology has altered this component and the economy has exacerbated it. For many booksellers retail sales have become as important as wholesale sales, in fact, in many cases, they have overtaken them. This is a significant shift in the book fair model and will undoubtedly, if the trend continues, affect the role of the book fair in the booksellers arsenal.

Other notes from the fair:

All three major online marketplaces where present. The CEO's of Alibris and Biblio where on hand as were numerous team members from each marketplace. AbeBooks had their account and marketing managers present.

It was also announced that the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) will undertake a much-needed revamping of their website with the folks at Bibliopolis taking the lead and Biblio providing the back-end support. I will have more on this in a later post.

Two of the most prominent fallacies often associated with our trade is that there are no young book collectors and there are no young booksellers. There was an informal gathering of booksellers under 50 held on Saturday night that attracted about a dozen of us. Though strictly a social affair one could see the opportunity and benefits that these "emerging leaders" can bring to the bigger bookselling table. Full disclosure - I was the elder statesman at this affair :-)

Preview of the Kindle 2

Here's what the much anticipated Kindle 2 looks like. The folks over at MobileRead have the exclusive first look at Amazon's new e-reader.

Release date Febuary 24. Cost $359

Book Bracelets : Then and Now

From the April, 1930 issue of Popular Science (p.38)

Handy Bracelet Serves As Magazine Holder
What might be a convenience to readers is a unique wrist attachment recently designed for holding magazines and small periodicals open before the eye at arm's length. This novel book holder is a bracelet fitting snugly about the forepart of the wrist, to which is fixed a small bracket firmly supporting the periodical just as the "lyre" of a cornet supports sheet music.
The device is adjustable to any wrist and may be obtained in sterling silver or nickel, silver, or gold plated.




Megan Dunn. The Book Bracelet. 20 (diameter) x 2 cm. Composed of several hundred paper strips, 8 x 1 cm. (folded), held together by elastic; laid in waxed paper envelope, secured with fine cord. One of a Kind

The bracelet was part of the Portland Public Library exhibition Long Overdue : Book Renewal, The Altered Book Project held in 2005.

Previously on Book Patrol:
Circulation: A Healthy Book Flow

Obama's First Storytime

photo from Getty/AP

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama made a surprise visit to the Capital City Public Charter School in Washington, D.C. today to read to the kids.

They read from The Moon Over Star an account of the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969.
The picture book was written by Dianna Hutts Aston and is illustrated by Jerry Pickney. It was published by Dial Books for Young Readers in 2008.





Here is a video of the visit:

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The Book Shooter : Emily Jacir's "Material for a Film"

Courtesy of the artist and Alexander and Bonin

In 1972, in response to the Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes, Israeli Mossad agents assassinated the Palestinian intellectual Wael Zuaiter in Rome. They fired 13 shots. 12 hit Zuaiter and 1 hit a copy of "A Thousand and One Nights" that was in Zuaiter's pocket. Zuaiter was in the midst of translating the book from Arabic into Italian.

To commemorate the event Jacir has created an ongoing documentary, "Material for a Film," One element of the piece has Jacir shooting 1000 white books successively, "each with one bullet using the same gun the Mossad had used"

Here is an excerpt from an interview with Jacir that appears in the New York Times piece Border Crossings Between Art and Life by Michael Z. Wise.

Michael Z. Wise: Why did you want to symbolically re-enact Zuaiter’s shooting?

Emily Jacir: This piece is based on one element of Wael’s story that I discovered during my research, which was that he was killed by 12 bullets at close range to his body, but there was a 13th bullet which struck his copy of “A Thousand and One Nights.” Wael’s dream had been to translate “A Thousand and One Nights” directly from Arabic into Italian. He had been working on this project since his arrival in Italy. This alone inspired an entire performance in which I shot 1,000 books each with one bullet using the same gun the Mossad had used to kill Palestinians in Europe. The books were white, and they were blank and symbolized the thousands of stories that have not been written and will not be written.

MZW: How did you learn that he had been carrying that book?

EJ: The Rome police found Volume 2 of “A Thousand and One Nights” on Wael’s body in his pocket pierced with a 13th bullet. At 6 a.m. they came to [Zuaiter’s companion] Janet Venn-Brown’s apartment to inform her of the murder and take her in for questioning. It was then that they gave her the book, which she safeguarded for 30 years. She then donated the book to the Wael Zuaiter Center in Massa Carrara [a province in Tuscany], where you can go see it if you’d like.

"Material for a Film" was featured at the 2007 Venice Biennale and the 2008 Home Works Forum.

Jacir is the recipient of the Venetian Golden Lion Award, the first Palestinian to win the award, and the 2008 Hugo Boss Award, an award overseen by the Guggenheim Foundation, and given in recognition of “significant achievement” by a contemporary artist.

More..
Piece by Najwan Darwish on Jacir at This Week in Palestine
Story at electronic intifada
Piece by Kaelen Wilson-Goldie on Jacir at The National, Her Dark Materials

Also of note:

Untitled, Emily Jacir and Anton Sinkewich, 2003

This suspended bookshelf features books on or about Palestine and books by Palestinian writers.
The piece was included in the 2003 exhibition Made in Palestine at the Station Museum