Adventures in English

More Stuff Found in Books

Below is a selection of some of the paper ephemera pulled from used books over the past year.  Were the 3-D glasses used to read a book?  R.I.P. the Fun Forest at Seattle Center... it was a place filled with carnival rides.  My sixth grade school patrol went there as an end-of-year treat and we got to ride the Wild Mouse roller coaster.

I just listened to a great fiction podcast on the New Yorker website.  These two Canadian women are two of my favorite writers, and the talk with Atwood at the end is quite interesting.  Mavis Gallant is in her nineties now, still living in Paris. 

Fiction Podcast: Margaret Atwood Reads Mavis Gallant

 

Progressive Destruction

I recently listed  this book,  Picasso Linocuts 1958-1963, by Donald H. Karshan (Tudor Publishing, 1968).

The book showcases Picasso's linocut prints, made by the "progressive destruction" method, in which he printed many colors from the same linoleum block; printing one color, then carving away more of the same block, then printing the next color, and so on.  By the time he was done, most of the block would have been carved away, "destroyed."

Linoleum block printing is a fun and easy way to print, especially if it's not really linoleum block printing, but printmaking using "easy cut", a kind of rubbery print block sold at art supply stores.  (Real linoleum is available too, but I find its hard surface hard to carve, and thus easy for the hand holding the carving tool to slip and nick fingers, ouch.)

Here are some examples of very simple postcards I've been printing with both the progressive destruction method and just a straight relief method (the block is not destroyed and can be used again).

Click on the photo to enlarge.

It's fun to print the different layers of ink and see what happens as texture builds up and colors change.

Spring Happenings

We're having a very lovely wet, warmish spring here in Seattle, with everything green and blooming.  Now would be a good time to check out Pistil's gardening section.

Our entire inventory is 20% off for the month of April on Abebooks, though we are happy to extend the sale discount to orders on our own website if you ask nicely first.

Bee and flower... spring is here!

 

We were contacted not along ago by a Publisher's Weekly writer who was writing an article called How Booksellers are Faring After Going Online-Only.  Check it out.

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.