Illuminated

Sean and I just returned from a trip to Istanbul, Turkey.  We saw amazing mosques, walked down tiny twisty roads that also somehow accommodated cars (a bumper passing by inches from your ankles was normal), ate delicious Turkish food, visited a fishing village on the Asian side of the Bosphorus and an island with only horse-drawn carriages (no cars!).  We also went to quite a few museums, one of which was the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum where we saw many beautiful illuminated Korans, like the Ottoman period one in the photo.  These, of course, were under glass and so open to only one set of pages, making us wonder if all the pages in the thick books were as intricately gilded and decorated.

Reading Notes
I have been continuing to make my way through the reading list for a course I'll be taking in June on the History of the Book, 200-2000 at Rare Book School at the University of Virginia:

John Carter. ABC for Book Collectors.
Christopher de Hamel. Scribes and Illuminators
Michael Twyman. The British Library Guide to Printing: History and Techniques.
Warren Chappell. A Short History of the Printed Word.
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein. The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe.



Scribes and Illuminators was quite interesting (especially in light of seeing the illuminated Korans), describing the creation of a book from the  preparation of the vellum or parchment,  the quill pens, paints and inks used, to the writing of the scripts and the final gilt and ink decoration and illumination of the book and the distribution by stationers and booksellers.  I must say The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe is slow going -- very academic and clunkily written, in my opinion.


For run, I read The Best American Short Stories 2010, edited by Richard Russo, which was quite hit-or-miss (and the series editor speaks of the disappearance of literary magazines in America, perhaps leading to fewer submissions to choose from?).  One story I quite enjoyed was "All Boy" by Lori Ostlund, about a gay eleven-year-old boy, a voracious reader, who starts the story literally in the closet.

Nuke-Rebuke

Just got our first order from Japan since the earthquake/tsunami/nuclear disaster:  Nuke-Rebuke: Writers and Artists Against Nuclear Energy & Weapons.  A little heart-wrenching.  I'm sending along a copy of Helen Caldicott's Nuclear Power is Not the Answer as a gift.

On a completely different note, we just received our first check from Book-It Repertory Theatre from sales of books we filled their newly launched lobby book cart with.  The books are selling for $3 each and we are splitting the proceeds with Book-It.  I'm really happy to have such a good venue for passing along books that aren't up to snuff for the extremely competitive internet sales market, but are perfectly good, readable and valuable.  Their next show is Sense and Sensibility in June.

Current Events

Above is pictured an amazing piece of sculptural book art by Brian Dettmer.  You can see more photos and read about his art on My Modern Met.

There is a connection between what's happening in the world and what books sell.  With the current headlines about events in Libya and Japan, some of our recent sales have been Escape to Hell and Other Stories by Qaddafi; Americans At Risk:  Why We are Not Prepared for Megadisasters and What We Can Do; and Fighting Radiation and Chemical Pollutants with Foods, Herbs, and Vitamins.  If we suddenly receive simultaneous multiple orders from different bookselling websites (we sell on ten) for a single title or author, that usually means that book or writer has been in the news recently.  Sometimes, sadly, a rash of orders is an indication the author has died.

Reading Notes

I have been remiss as to updating this blog with what I've been reading, so my list is a bit long this time:

Breast Cancer:  Reduce Your Risk with Foods You Love by Robert Pendergrast
A Short History of the Printed Word by Warren Chappell
Rick Steves' Istanbul
Time Out Istanbul
Strolling through Istanbul 
Lonely Planet:  Turkey 
Out Backward by Ross Raisin

The Pendergrast book really didn't have much more to say about diet and health than I've already read in books by Dr. Andrew Weil (eat a variety of organic vegetables and fruit, omega 3 fatty acids, real food, not processed food; exercise)  but it was refreshing to see a publication that talks about breast cancer as a preventable disease; not something that can only be screened for, as the mainstream medical establishment seems to believe.

I quite enjoy when two books on completely different subjects unexpectedly intersect somehow, as did a mention of Turkish writing in A Short History of the Printed Word describing how the Turkish government  decreed in 1928 (along with abolishing the fez) that Turkish be written in Latin characters rather than Arabic; a change that instantly rendered many people illiterate and even reversed the direction of script from right-to-left to left-to-right.  I had just read about the secularization and westernization of Turkey under Ataturk in several of the many guide books I've been perusing in preparation for an upcoming trip

Out Backward is a novel I picked from a pile being culled from our shelves to make room for the new.  It's the first person story of a 19 year-old social outcast (and accused molester) sheep farmer on the English moors who becomes obsessed with a 15 year-old neighbor girl who moves with her family from London--a definite clash of cultures and class.  The language is full of lively, expressive sheep farmer slang:  "glegg" for look, "tidgy" for frail or spindly; "sprog" for child; "trunklements" for things.  The Harper Perennial trade paperback of this book has essays and interviews with the author at the end, and there's a nice essay on the state of farming in the U.K.  The same old story about consumers wanting cheap food prices and agribusiness putting small farmers out of business.

 

A book by any other name...

There's been some talk on a discussion list for members of the IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association) regarding an invitation from a member for fellow booksellers to advertise for free on a bookseller resources directory  called Smelly Books.  Quite a few of the booksellers who replied to this discussion said they didn't want to associate their books with smelliness.  Others said they loved the smell of old books and appreciated the humor of the website name.  Once a customer returned a book to us, saying it had an "acrid mildew smell," although when I received the offensive book, I could detect nary an odor.  Apparently (from my readings of bookseller discussion lists) this discrepancy in interpreting the smell of a book from no smell, to delightful scent, to stinky is a not unusual state of affairs.

Reading Notes
Sean and I have been reading Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart out loud.  The protagonist in this satiric novel, Lenny Abramov, is a reader and has a Wall of Books (which he does spray with pine sol)  in his apartment at a time when everyone has a constant stream of images and data via their äppärät (an object apparently a step above an I-phone) and books are generally regarded as smelly old things most people would be embarrassed to be caught handling, much less reading.   The depiction of a corporate controlled society, consumer culture, social networking, police state, and media limited to Fox Liberty-Prime and Fox Liberty-Ultra is a little too much like reality.

A Punchy President's Day

Although it wasn't "officially" a Pistil Books event, Sean and I  had a President's Day Party this weekend.  A couple of friends, Russell (who is featured in Pistil Readings and has published zines on cocktail culture) and Evan, concocted delicious historical punches for the occasion:  Fish House Punch and United Service Punch.

We asked our guests to dress in presidential attire and consequently had two Lincolns, a Dwight Eisenhower, the Queen of England (well, that was Sean), some diplomats from African nations, several stunning First Lady-looking types, a sneaky security contingent, and quite a few grungy protesters and anarchists (this being Seattle). 

And of course no presidential affair would complete without the press, in this case The Stranger's Party Crasher.

Here's CIA Agent Candiotti and the Queen.





















The high point of the evening were the presentations at the podium, which included The Queen of England reading from John Sinclair's Guitar Army ("free money!  f***ing in the streets!"); a rant in favor of the Puritans; some punchy thoughts by Lincoln; lovely patriotic songs; the presidential seal presenting a re-enactment of an encounter between Monica Lewinsky and Clinton; and an impassioned critique of secularism, which made use of all the occurrences of the word "ass" in the King James Bible. 

Here we have a dashing pair of Jackie O supporters.

Trudi , a candidate for class president of Beaver High School, gives the Beaver victory sign.

The Presidential Seal prepares his presentation.

All in all, it was a very fun evening, complete with first family paper dolls.

Luckily, no assassinations took place.

A Detailed Description

Here at Pistil Books we don't use the automatic pricing system often used by giant warehouse companies such as Better World Books wherein books are unloaded by forklift and dumped on a conveyor to be scanned and priced by a machine with little or no attention paid to their condition -- or whether the pricing makes sense to anyone but a computer...   Here we take the time to look at a book, inspect it and grade it and then look to see on a few sites what would be an appropriate price for our copy.   So we get to see a great many descriptions written by other booksellers.  It is to the general degradation of the industry that has come to treat books like crushed cans or recycled flotsam to which the book descriptions found below are dedicated.

Book Description: Stockton, California, U.S.A.: Lamm-Morada Pub Co, 1979. No Binding. Book Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. fine copy. Bookseller Inventory # 496j

Sounds like a great copy except for that lack of binding problem.  Hard to read in the wind. 

From Mathom House Books

Los Angeles County Museum, 1984. Trade. Book Condition: Used. We do our best to describe each book accurately. Any discrepency [sic] between what is described and what is pulled will be noted in an email. If you would like a detailed description beyond what has been provided, please ask.

Apparently "doing our best" to describe each book accurately is to determine if it is "new" or "used."  . 

From Sparks Distribution Service:

American Chemical Society, 1978. Book Condition: Good. Average used book with all pages present. Possible loose bindings, highlighting, cocked spine or torn dust jackets. Ex-Library. Ex-Library.

I like how "an average used book" can have "possible loose bindings," because not only is this not at all "average" for a used book , but of course it would have more than one binding: there's the invisible one to count also.  So I get a copy with a loose binding, highlighting all over the place and a spine that looks like a chiropractor's nightmare and this is called "good," and "average" instead of  "poor."   It seems the Spark is a little weak.  It's great too how an outfit like this will make a blanket description that they'll then apply to thousands of books and even then they won't take the care to make the description make any sense to start with. 

From Sparks Distribution Service:

University of California Press, 1966. Book Condition: Very Good. Attractive. Shows some signs of wear and is no longer fresh.

Albeit the book in question has to do with native plants, the application of adjectives usually reserved for produce to book descriptions is quizzical.  We would ask if the copy is  crisp and lush, or if the pages are wilted.

From Mathom House Books Inc:

Stanford University Press, 1955. Hardcover. Book Condition: Used. We do our best to describe each book accurately. Any discrepency [sic] between what is described and what is pulled will be noted in an email. If you would like a detailed description beyond what has been provided, please ask.

I do hope they're not working too hard at "doing their best" there; we do know it’s a book, with hardcovers and it’s used.    I guess the only  “discrepency”  they might make at this point is by shipping a "New" book with no covers.  A "detailed description" would perhaps note if the book had been run over by a truck or been gnashed by a ravenous rottweiler. 

From Look at a Book:

Macmillan of Canada, 1981. Hardcover. Book Condition: Good. DUST JACKET WORN AS IT HAS SERVED IT'S [sic] PURPOSE AND PROTECTED THE BOOK, PAGES SLIGHTLY TANNED Good: Typical used book. All pages and cover intact (including dust cover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting. Occasionally these may be former library books. Overall you will be surprised at how good our used books are. We just want to remind you that this is a used book. Satisfaction Guaranteed!

Overall, I will be surprised if they learn to use punctuation.  They have served their purpose and can now go out of business.  I just want to remind them TO USE A LOT OF CAPITALS WHEN MAKING DUMB COMMENTARY WHEN VENTING THEIR PIQUE AT ANYONE WHO WANTS A BOOK WITH A DUST JACKET THAT HAS NOT BEEN TRASHED BECAUSE IT  WAS HANDLED LIKE SO MUCH RECYCLING. 

From RUSTYLEEE

EOS, 2011. Soft cover. Book Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Fine. 1st Edition. ***ADVANCE READERS COPY(ARC)***SOFT COVER***UNREAD****ARTWORK COVER***RACHEL MORGAN IS IN TROUBLE.6 X 9.439 PAGES.EOS.MARCH 2011***ADVANCE READERS COPY***SOFT COVER***. Bookseller Inventory # 5976

Lessee here, twice it's mentioned in caps that this is a soft cover, so there shouldn't be too much question about that, yet the d.j. is "Fine."  Maybe if it's not in caps it doesn't count.  Then it's an ARC, but no wait, it's a first, again the caps may win out here, plus ARC is mentioned twice again.  I think the main point is that RACHEL MORGAN (apparently a moniker for RUSTYLEEE) *****IS IN TROUBLE!!!!!!!*******

 -- Blog entry by Sean

Return to Sender

We just received back in the mail a package with an "unclaimed" sticker and no postage due that had been sent to South Africa last March, ten months ago.  The book ordered was called Living on 12 Volts with Ample Power and it was going to our customer in care of his yacht club.  When the customer didn't receive the book in the expected time frame, he emailed me and I was able to find another copy of this fairly unusual expensive book (and ours had been signed by the authors, although that probably wasn't its selling point), and send the new copy via registered mail to South Africa, rather than via the flat rate priority mail envelope, which only costs $13.45 to mail, but does not have tracking.   We rarely have problems with books not reaching their destination, and I had no problems sending to South Africa previously, but occasionally packages are "lost."  So I just figured the book had been lost or stolen and shrugged my shoulders.

The returned package was pretty worn around the edges, and there was a tear at one corner, but inside the book (which had been double wrapped in a recycled used priority mail envelope) was still in the "Near Fine" shape it had left our store in.

I emailed our customer with the news:

Hi G.  Just wanted to let you know that today I received back the gone-missing of Living On 12 Volts you ordered from us last March.  It was returned in its original packing with no postage due, with a stamp from the South Africa post office marked "unclaimed."  We're glad to have it back, something I never expected.  Hope life is well on your boat.

 

He responded:   Hi Amy.  Wow, I am amazed, that is really good news, I was convinced it had been stolen, I went to so many different post offices in Durban looking for it.  We are now in Tanzania, sailing/chartering around Zanzibar, and things are going well.  The book has been most useful, its my electrical bible!
Thanks for letting me know, its a relief all round I think.  Kind regards, G.

Another book sent to a different customer in South Africa, also was apparently "lost' in September.  It may show up yet.

 

Reading Notes

I have been reading a lot less since before the Christmas holidays... but I am currently reading Zadie Smith's White Teeth.  I'm only about a quarter of the way into it so far, but I recognized one section as something I had read an excerpt from previously.  It's well-written and quite funny.