2013 Outdoor Book Sale

We had our annual outdoor book sale last weekend, followed by a barbecue and hanging of art on the outdoor gallery in the alley behind our building.  Both events were a lot of fun and widely visited by Pistil Books' regulars, as well as many people who didn't know they had an internet bookstore in their neighborhood. 

Here's the staff of Pistil Books:

Troy, Sean, Amy, Tim, and Nathan.

This Sunday, Pistil Books will have a table at the Slow Food Sunday lunch at Bastyr University.  We will be selling copies of Erin Coopey's The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook, as well as a selection of cooking and gardening books from our inventory.

I highly recommend Slow Food Sunday - I went for the first time to the June lunch. A guest chef and volunteers cooked up a delicious buffet style lunch with fresh, local food, live music, and a presentation by Bastyr University students, all for just $12.  It's a great way to meet other people interested in sustainable, local, food and food culture.

Book Arts Guild

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I joined the Book Arts Guild

(only $20 for a year-long membership) a couple of months ago after a friend and drawing teacher invited me to go to a BAG lecture by a book artist friend of hers who was in town for the event.  The lecture was held in the Special Collections/Map Room in the basement of the Suzallo Library on the UW campus.  I graduated from the University of Washington many years ago, and Suzallo was one of my favorite places, with its beautiful stained-glass-filled graduate reading room, giant card catalog (no longer in existence), and endless stacks.  I went to another lecture again recently, this time by Genie Shenk, who makes books based on dreams using mica.

After her presentation, we toured the exhibit of her work set up in the Special Collections reading room - somewhere I had never been and would like to visit again.  In addition to Genie's lovely work, the reading room had other book and library-related artwork mixed in amongst the tables and shelves.  One of my favorites was a real card catalog of about twenty drawers, each drawer containing its own mini-exhibit:  a drawer full of used pink pencil-top erasers; a drawer full of leaves; baby bottles with artwork inside them, etc.

Save the Date: Pistil Outdoor Book Sale, August 17

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.