Fun with Books

Making a  book.

A stack of blank journals-to-be.

An altered book behind the red Buddha.

Books are Wild Things

 The following is an excerpt from the current issue of Harper's Magazine:

From an interview with children’s book author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, by British journalist Emma Brockes, published in the November/December 2012 issue of The Believer. Sendak, whose many works include Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen, died in Connecticut last May.

Brockes: What do you think of e-books?

Sendak: I hate them. It’s like making believe there’s another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of sex. There isn’t another kind of book. A book is a book is a book. I know that’s terribly old-fashioned. I’m old, and when I’m gone they’ll probably try to make my books on all these things, but I’m going to fight it like hell. I can’t believe I’ve turned into a typical old man. I can’t believe it. I was young just minutes ago.

Brockes: Is the problem with e-books partly a problem of color?

Sendak: Yes. Picture books depend on color, largely. And they haven’t perfected the color in those machines. But it’s not that. It’s giving up a form that is so beautiful. A book is really like a lover. It arranges itself in your life in a way that is beautiful. Even as a kid, my sister, who was the eldest, brought books home for me, and I think I spent more time sniffing and touching them than reading. I just remember the joy of the book, the beauty of the binding. The smelling of the interior. Happy.

Stairs and Beavers

Last weekend, Sean, our friend Jackie, and I went on a group walk organized by Feet First, an organization that promotes walkable communities, to celebrate the publication of a book Seattle Stairway Walks:  An Up-and-Down Guide to City Neighborhoods  (The Mountaineers Books) by Jake and Cathy Jaramillo:  "For one day, for two hours Feet First Neighborhood Walking Ambassadors led [fifteen] free simultaneous stairway walks to celebrate the Puget Sound Region's amazing elevation changes and the individual characteristics and historical context of our local stairways."

The route we went on was the Maple Leaf and Thornton Creek walk, near Northgate Mall, where a creek runs through more than 700 backyards, 15 parks and natural areas, finally making its way to Lake Washington. Ironically, our particular walk did not include many stairs, or so it seemed.  The guide book said there were 326 steps down, and 136 steps up.  The Maple Leaf area is a largely residential area with big evergreen trees, split level houses, and no sidewalks, feeling quite suburban.  About twenty people made up the walking group, which was led by a very nice school-teacherly lady who stopped frequently to talk about the features we passed on the walk, and who quickly learned Sean's name, as he immediately became the front walker/troublemaker amongst our slower cohorts.  Sean and I had a copy of the book with the route, so we went ahead at our own pace, stopping at the best spots and waiting for everyone else to catch up.

The most amazing feature of this walk was the Beaver Pond Natural Area.  This area, located right in the middle of houses and apartment buildings, was purchased by the city in the late 1970's and restored by volunteers who cleared invasive plants from the bank of Thornton Creek, and replanted native plants.  In 2008 beavers felled trees and built a dam.  Although the book has a short history of this area it doesn't explain where the beavers came from.  "The raised water level and felled trees established new habitat for other plants and animals, which is why beavers are called 'keystone species.'  They have made the area hospitable to mallards, hooded mergansers, great blue herons, and fish, including numerous cutthroat trout."  We did not see an actual beavers, but we did see the beaver dam, lodge, a great blue heron, and many ducks.

Which brings me to another fun book I just cataloged, and which sold almost immediately:  Chip:  The Dam Builder by Jim Kjelgaard, who wrote many children's books about animals, especially dogs.  The one I remember from my childhood is Big Red.  The wonderful illustrations are by Ralph Ray.

I love the drawing of the attacking/floating lynx; so statuesque.

Meet Pistil Book's Web Designer - Nate K

What is your history with Pistil Books and what is your current role?

I have had a love affair with books my entire life, so I was very pleased when Pistil Books & News opened its doors in my neighborhood in the mid-nineties. I loved browsing the stacks and discovering titles I’d always intended to read, but had never picked up before; always at better prices than buying them new. I gradually got to know the proprietors, Sean and Amy.

I also attended a few of the events they held at their shop, book readings, lectures, etc. I was working for various other bookstores and publishers at this time, but Pistil Books & News always was a comfortable, stress-free environment. And it happened to be down the street from one of my favorite coffee shops, Café Paradiso.

Eventually finding independent bookstores to work for became more and more difficult to do as the bookselling market saw the rise of the "big box" stores. I could see the writing on the wall, and found myself in temp positions that ranged from lawyer's office copy shops to psychiatric clinic reception offices. And this was before "the mighty 'A' river" (where I also managed to temp for a month) swamped the big box stores, but that is another story for another time.

I really missed working in independent bookstores; so, I decided I would apply for a clerk position with Amy and Sean at Pistil Books & News and almost immediately they asked me to help out Saturday mornings, which was a perfect fit for me. Soon I became one-of-the-family and enjoyed spending my Saturdays there.

Describe some of the graphic projects you've done for Pistil.  Do you have a favorite?

Pistil Books & News already did a brisk online book selling business and I was helping out entering inventory. On my own time, I’d been learning HTML and web design, so when Amy mentioned to me that they were considering closing the store on Pike Street and moving the bookstore into new warehouse space in their home to continue selling books online, I begged her to allow me to do some design for their web presence.  She agreed and I came up with the flower diagram intro page design you encounter at their first domain, pistilbooks.com . Since then I’ve been acting as Pistil Books Online’s web designer, helping Amy create titles and banners, "book interest" content like The Museum of Weird Books and  Retail Hell, bookmarks,and even a rubber stamp.

Homage to Frida Harris -- Alistar in His Element by Nathan K (Pistil Books Surrealist Calendar, 2013)

Are you working on any other artistic projects?

Lately I’ve been collaborating with Amy and Sean by designing and contributing collage to the Pistil Books Surrealist Calendar. I’ve really enjoyed working with them both, especially since I am now using all the collage technique I learned in college.

One of my big personal design projects is to scan all my old sketchbooks from the nineties, post them as an archive online and work their contents into tee shirt, coffee mugs, etc. So far I’ve only worked through two of my sketchbooks. One I created in college and the other is one I started right after moving to Seattle. Probably my best item, so far is a dancing thistle design I originally did for a friend who used it as a tattoo on his chest.

What are you reading? 

Starting since last summer I’ve been wading my way through the middle books of the Harry Potter series. I thoroughly enjoyed seeing the movies, but I steadfastly avoided the books after someone made me listen to one of those audiobooks on a road trip. It wasn’t that I was traumatized or anything, but I did want to read them for myself and there just seemed to be such hype around them when it was clear they were simply middle-of-the-road stories for grade-schoolers, like the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew. I figured they’d still be around to read when I had a chance.

I’ve also been reading William Gibson’s Spook Country which he published in 2007. It is quite interesting, being about virtual installation art that you encounter on street corners and in hotel rooms while wearing a VR headset. But I have to admit I got bogged down halfway through the book in the various meandering storylines. 

I also have a biography on the life of the poet Byron in my reading list, but I haven’t cracked it in months and I’m only through his childhood before he distinguished himself as a writer of epic poetry. See, I got my hands on one of those digital reader tablets and I’m having a ball reading the New Yorker and Cook's Illustrated virtually. It also helps that I’m able to read books that I purchased years ago for my old Palm PDA which I rarely use anymore. Anyone need an old Personal Digital Assistant? 

I’m going to now revisit Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon which I started reading on that PDA many years ago, mainly because it made more sense than lugging around the huge volume that it was. I was quite interested in the Alan Turing sequence as a librarian friend had mentioned it. I also have China Miéville’s Iron Council on the digital tablet to read which apparently features gay cowboys.

Lucky 2013

Another year, another Pistil Books Collage Calendar!  This year's calendar is hot off the presses and features artwork by Amy, Sean, and Nathan, made from old books and ephemera.  The artwork reflects its sources, of course, and we had a lot of old art auction catalogs, as well as broken discarded library books and other books that have been damaged in some way.  Sean favors a 1950's male nudist book called Mountain Men that had pages removed by its previous owner, no doubt for pin-up purposes.  Nathan mentioned that he hopes there won't be too much nudity for his mom...

Our calendars also have literary birthdays, holidays, and moon phases, with plenty of room for penciling in important appointments.

Cool Cultural Artifacts

1984

1985

I've been taking a lot of book photos lately, using the keen photography setup Sean constructed for me over what doubles as our packing table.   Here I can use the specially designed tripod that swings out from the wall to take horizontal photos of books laying flat on a table.  I've been impressed by how cool vintage book covers look when photographed.  I use the term "vintage" pretty loosely - the books shown are from the seventies and eighties and reflect the aesthetics of their time.   

1984

1972

1972

1974

1971

 

Vintage Holiday Books

We have some very cool vintage holiday sheet music and books for sale.  I love the bright colors, especially the blue in this book:

This one has bright, full page colorful illustrations by Swedish-American illustrator Gustaf Tenggren, known for his Arthur Rackham influenced fairy-tale style.  With simplified piano arrangements by Inez Bertail.  44 pages.  Some of the songs included:  Silent Night; It Came Upon a Midnight Clear; O Little Town of Bethlehem; Hark!  The Herald Angels Sing.

Some more holiday items can be found here.