Bukowski set to music

 Actress Ute Lemper will be holding a series of performances at Joe's Pub, the intimate cabaret located inside the Public Theater, based on the poetry of Charles Bukowski.

Titled the The Bukowski Project Lemper will perform works based on Bukowski's poems from the books The Last Night of the Earth Poems, What Matters Most Is How Well You Walk through the Fire and You Get so Alone At Times That It Just Makes Sense.

The Bukowski Project, which was also conceived by Lemper, will feature her original music with additional composition and arrangements by Todd Turkisher and Vana Gierig.

The Bukowski Project runs from August 19-22. Tickets here

Piece in Playbill, Ute Lemper to Explore The Bukowski Project at Joe's Pub

Thanks to @CityLightsBooks for the lead

A Loving Window Display

“Bookshops are romantic places, but we’ve never had a request like this before." said Jessica Graham, manager of Primrose Hill Books.

The window of  Primrose Hill Books became the centerpiece of a marriage proposal when 26 year old Oliver Harkness spelled out his wish to take the hand of his girlfriend Priyanka Chaudhuri in marriage.

Minutes after setting up the window display Oliver and Priyanka strolled past the window and he popped the question. She said yes and the crowd of onlookers that had gathered let out a cheer.

Story at the Camden New Journal, Love story – Romantic Oliver Harkness' novel proposal in bookshop window

The Title Page Through Time

Title Page. noun. 1594: a page of a book bearing the title and usually the names of the author and publisher and the place and sometimes date of publication.

All books begin with one. It is most often the first printed page one sees when they begin reading a book.

An exhibition dedicated to the title page is about to wrap up at the The National Gallery of Art.

Announcing the Text:  Development of the Title Page, 1470–1900 Selections from the National Gallery of Art Library presents "select examples of early books of the 15th century through modern books of the late 19th century, this exhibition traces the development of the title page as its role expanded and new printing technologies impacted its design."

 Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo. Wren’s city churches Orpington, Kent, 1883 Woodcut. Believed to be the first art nouveau title page

   

For those of us who can't get there the NGA has created an online exhibit featuring 24 highlights  from the show.

 William Morris. Gothic architecture: a lecture for the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society Hammersmith, London, 1893. Letterpress

 

Digital Book Burning

click to enlarge

Randall Monroe recently posted this comic strip over at xkcd.

Hysterical and foreboding.

American Junkie

 If you’ve ever stood in front of the mirror and knew you'd be a better rock star than anyone ever dreamed, and later that night made it ever more true by getting drunk and higher than Jesus, then you'll like this book. If you've ever lined up coke or heroin but didn't have the guts to shoot it straight to your blood, you'll love this book. If you’ve ever wondered why people do drugs even when it’s killing them and they know it, this book will help you understand. And if you think that all junkies are nothing but degenerates, then this book will change your mind.

A major ingredient in the Seattle punk and legendary grunge scene was heroin. Tom Hansen played a part in both, first as a musician then as a heroin dealer. Of course, he also became an addict.

In his new memoir, American Junkie, published by Emergency Press, Hansen gives us a gripping first-hand account of a life ravaged by heroin; from aspiring musician to a 'broken down junkie", from the depths of addiction to cleaning up his act and going back to school (Hansen eventually earned his MFA). It is a trip through the dark side of the grunge movement, a close-up look at many of the arms that were under the plaid shirts.

In American Junkie Hansen takes us on a journey that for many is as American as apple pie.

Here's the trailer:



Website for the book

Reviews:
Jeffrey Long at Crosscut,  A surprisingly artful memoir of drug addiction and resilience
Short review at KEXP's Scribes Sounding Off

Hansen reading from American Junkie at Seattle's Pilot Books:

Aquatic Storytelling

Singapore's noted oceanarium Underwater World has begun offering a "20-minute aquatic reading session" featuring a librarian turned scuba diver.

Using a special deep sea marine communication system the librarian reads ocean-related books while sharing the tank with some of the largest freshwater fish in the world.

The series is sponsored by the National Library Board



Story at Channel NewsAsia


Thanks to AL Direct for the lead

Happy National Bathroom Reading Month

Window display from Liberty's Dept Store, London. Image via

Seriously; June is National Bathroom Reading Month. It is the brainchild of the Bathroom Readers’ Institute, publishers of the Uncle John's Bathroom Reader series. With over 10 million books in print they are clearly in a room of their own.

Here's their pitch:

"Since 1988, the Bathroom Readers’ Institute has led the movement to stand up for those who sit down and read in the bathroom. National Bathroom Reading Month celebrates the 66 percent of Americans who proudly admit to this time-honored pastime."

What do the other 34% do?

Coming soon:

 Also on the docket this year, the First Annual "Free Flushes for All Day":

To mark the Bathroom Readers’ Institute’s inaugural “Free Flushes for All Day,” Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader representatives will be stationed outside of select Automatic Public Toilets (APTs) in New York City (Madison Square Park) on Thursday, June 19, 2008 from 7:00 am – 2:00 pm, and in San Francisco (Fisherman’s Wharf) on Friday, June 20, 2008 from 10:00 am – 4:00 pm, treating those who have to go, by picking up the 25 cent tab and giving users a free commemorative Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader National Bathroom Reading Month mini book for some prime time bathroom reading material!

More:

Contributors to The Spark of Yahoo! make their contributions to the beginning of a "Canon of the Commode" Part 1, Part 2

10 loo-brary books for national bathroom reading month at the KansasCity Star.

I gotta go!

The Honesty Bookshop

How's this for business model:

An outdoor location
All books are £1 or less
Hours of operation - 24/7 365 days a year
Total staff - 0
Security - none
Method of payment - cash - deposited in lock boxes located throughout the shop

Welcome to the The Honesty Bookshop one of the 30 or so bookshops that populate the book paradise known as Hay-on-Wye. It is part of Richard Booth's Bookshop which has, in addition to the Honesty Bookshop, two shops in Hay-on-Wye. And for those looking for a little Hay-on-Wye history, it was Richard Booth who opened the first bookshop there in 1961 and devised the concept of a book town.

Hmm, maybe we should attach a lock box to our bargain rack and leave it out after hours to see what happens. Will the super-egos of Seattleites prevail? or will the books and the rack disappear?

 Images via

Book Power!

Mary Bennett. Fodor’s Iran 1979. Altered vintage book, wall hung, linen tape, gesso, thread. 43.5 x 7.5 x 1 inches. 2010. Unique

Portland, Oregon's 23 Sandy Gallery is quickly becoming one of the premier book art destinations on the west coast.

 

Their latest show Book Power! is a knockout. It showcases artist books addressing the social, political and environmental issues of our times.

Randi Parkhurst. Colony 45. Papers by the artist, linen thread, long stitch over book cloth tapes, acrylic, graphite, watercolor, braided linen pulls. 17 x 17 inches. 2010. Unique

The exhibition features work by over 40 artists and proves that:

an artist book can be a powerful vehicle to shed light on the problems we face in the world and can also be a strong call for change. War, poverty, decay, politics, revolution, violence, feminism, environmental, economic and political upheaval are but a few of the issues that these concerned artists have used to engage their readers in an effort to raise consciousness, call for justice and provoke action.

Lauren Jacobs. Gradually Green. The illustrations are hand drawn and painted, then compiled and edited using Photoshop. Tape binding. 10 pages. 8.5 x 11 x .25 inches. 2007. Edition of 6

Edgar Papazian. Scaleless: Approaching the Armenian Genocide. Digital printing, museum board cover. 65 pages. 8.5 x 8 x .75 inches. 2005. Edition of 10

Book Power! runs through June 26th. A 48-page, full color, printed catalog of the exhibition can be purchased here.

Amazon's Next Price War?

Thinking of having a promotion or a sale on your website to help you sell some books? Now think again, for any attempt to promote your own business might cost you one of your deepest revenue streams.

Amazon's latest 'our way or the highway' policy involves independent third-party sellers on their European websites. The same stranglehold Amazon has on publishers is now being placed on independent booksellers. 

Amazon's New Rule:

Any book listed on Amazon must be sold at the same price or cheaper than it appears on any other website including the booksellers' own websites.

Any bookseller found in violation is subject to removal from the marketplace.

The Independent Online Booksellers Association (IOBA), which represents more than 250 booksellers, has sent a letter to various EU and European officials objecting to Amazon's new 'price parity' policy calling it "dangerously anti-competitive."

Perhaps the old Net Book Agreement, which from 1900-1997 set the price at which a book was sold to the public in the UK, should be renamed the Amazon Book Agreement.

Here is the letter in its entirety:


Dear Sir/Madam,

I am writing to you on behalf of the Independent Online Booksellers’ Association (IOBA) to express our concern about recent moves by Amazon to force independent booksellers to set prices on Amazon’s UK, French and German websites equal to or lower than on any other sites which sellers use to sell their books. The IOBA believes Amazon’s demands for ‘price parity’ to be an anti-competitive measure by the dominant online marketplace for new and used books designed to undermine smaller competitor websites and even independent booksellers’ own websites.

The IOBA is an organization which represents more than 250 independent online booksellers around the world. While the majority of our members are based in the US, we currently have about 20 members based in the UK, France and Germany who are directly affected by Amazon’s latest policy change. The IOBA also runs IOBAbooks – one of the small aggregator websites which are likely to be adversely affected by this move. By way of background, Amazon’s Marketplace is an aggregator website through which thousands of independent businesses (including booksellers) can offer their goods for sale to the general public. In this latest policy change, Amazon have contacted independent sellers using their UK, French and German websites and said that any items they have for sale on Amazon must be sold at the same price or cheaper on Amazon than they are sold on any other website including booksellers’ own websites. This policy change has been backed up with a threat to ban any seller who fails to comply from selling on Amazon’s sites.

Most independent online booksellers sell their books on several different websites to generate sufficient sales. These often include aggregator sites like Amazon, Alibris, Biblio etc and, in many cases, their own independent websites. However, for many sellers, Amazon – as the largest and best known marketplace of its kind – generates a significant proportion of their income.

Aggregator sites usually generate income by charging booksellers commission on any sales generated through their sites and, in some cases, from monthly subscriptions. A typical ‘Pro-Merchant’ subscription to use Amazon’s UK website for instance costs £25 per month plus commission on any sales made.
This means that the costs faced by many booksellers to sell books via Amazon are often higher than on many other websites and often substantially higher than selling books through their own independent websites. However, under Amazon’s new policy, booksellers are forbidden from reflecting those differences in costs by pricing items cheaper on websites on which they are charged less to list their books. In addition, under this policy, booksellers would be forbidden from, for instance, having a 25% off sale on books on their own independent website as this would breach Amazon’s price parity ruling and risk the seller being thrown off Amazon and hence losing a substantial proportion of their income.

It seems to us here at the IOBA that Amazon’s policy of forcing sellers to reflect the higher costs involved in listing items for sale on Amazon across all websites is likely to be bad for book-buyers by generally increasing the cost of books, and is likely to be particularly damaging to smaller, cheaper aggregator site competitors to Amazon’s market dominance.

This policy also removes the freedom from independent booksellers to set the prices that they want for books on their own independent websites and, as highlighted above, to offer sales and other special offers to their own customers on their own websites.

As a result, the IOBA believes that this latest move by Amazon is dangerously anti-competitive, designed to use its market dominance to undermine smaller competitors and independent booksellers and will inevitably lead to a worse deal for book buyers.

Hence the IOBA would like to call on the relevant authorities in the UK, France, Germany and the European Union to examine this latest move by Amazon with a view to ruling on the legitimacy of the site to use its market dominance in this way.

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to read this letter. If you have any further questions then please feel free to contact me at this email address.

Yours faithfully,

Karin Isgur Bergsagel
President, Independent Online Booksellers Association

How long until the same rules apply to listing on the Advanced Book Exchange (ABE), the leading non-new book marketplace, and an Amazon owned company?

The Pocket Poet Portraits of Ann Mikolowski

John Asberry

John Yau takes a look at the work of Ann Mikolowski in his piece To Have and to Hold: Ann Mikolowski's pocket portraits show two ways of looking in a mirror at the Poetry Foundation.

In addition to her miniature portraits of artists and writers Mikolowski also painted large landscapes and, along with her husband, founded the Alternative Press, a seminal experimental poetry press that was at the forefront of the mail art scene of the 1960's and 70's. Headquartered in Detroit, they  would ship envelopes packed with letterpress printed ephemera, bookmarks, photos, and other paper bric-a-brac to all corners of the globe. The press featured work from Detroit’s Cass Corridor artistic community, as well as the Beat and Black Mountain schools. In 1996, the University of Michigan acquired the archive of the Alternative Press.

“Robert Creeley” (1988). Oil on linen. 3 1/4” x 2 3/8”. Collection Penelope Creeley

 Here is Yau on Mikolowski's portrait of Robert Creeley:

In Robert Creeley (1988), the poet is resting his forearms on the table, a cigarette in his right hand. He seems to be reflecting on what he is going to say next. Before him are a partially filled glass and a nearly empty bottle, the label turned away because the artist doesn’t want it interfering with the subject. Something of the poet’s intensity, sincerity, and solitude comes across. Mikolowski has been subtly attentive to the texture and folds of his denim shirt as well as the feel of his skin. The subtle shifts she makes in the paint are painstakingly scrupulous, and yet are never emphasized. For her, the real delight was in getting it all down.

More:

Article in Metro Times on the last publication of the Alternative Press

Press release for “The Alternative Press Symposium” and the exhibit  “Your Artwork Here: 30 Years of The Alternative Press” that was held at the University of Michigan in 1999

'Take a Seat' on a Book

In need of a few extra chairs for your next book club meeting? Are you a bookstore looking for some extra seating for your events?

See those "books" on the shelf in the background? Thanks to designer Darris Hanroun those "books" transform into nifty little seats.

The impetus behind 'Take A Seat' is Hamroun's belief "that objects have to adapt to humans and their habitat."

The folding stool rests inside the covers of a book form.  It is constructed of solid wood, connected with hinges and cloth. The book "cover" is made of foam covered in cloth and when opened becomes the seat.


Here's a quick little video of the book seat in action:


.



 
Thanks to the Bookshelf blog for the lead

Fingerprints as the new library card

 Image via

An elementary school library in Manchester, England has begun using a new system developed by Microsoft  where kids use their thumbprints to check-out and return books.

The head of the school, Lesley Isherwood, praises the system for its efficiency and notes that no image of the fingerprints are ever stored. The system is also entirely voluntary. 

 Phil Booth, national coordinator of NO2ID, a privacy campaign group is highly skeptical of the program. “For such a trivial issue as taking out of library books the taking of fingerprints is way over the top and wrong...It conditions children to hand over sensitive personal information.”says Booth. “The money for such a system could be spent on actual school resources. How about some more books for the library instead?" 

 Image via Sensible Curiosity

Something about "biometric recognition system" and elementary school in the same breath leaves me a little queasy.

Article in the Telegraph, Children, 4, 'to be fingerprinted to borrow school books from library'