Wandering Through Blog Land, Virnor Vinge Ebook

I’ve been wandering through blogland looking at lots of different blogs. I find most library blogs to be pretty boring. They usually have a big picture of the library building on the outside. It would be much more interesting if they took a picture of the inside with the staff next to the bookshelves.
Most of [...]

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll, Short Stories

The Panic Hand by Jonathan Carroll is a collection of his short stories. All are set in a kind of magically realistic universe infused with an odd mysticism. Some of the stories in the collection I liked are Mr. Fiddlehead about an imaginary friend that grows up with its creator and changes her life. Another [...]

A Book And Its Cover, A Trip to A Bookstore

A lot of people think “You cannot judge a book by its cover.” This can be a very misleading statement. Many people collect books just for their covers. Most science fiction and pulp art comes from book and magazine covers. Many people collect hardcover and paperback books just for their cover art. Kelly Freas, J. [...]

Contentville.com, An Old Obsession and American Born Chinese

Last night I read American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang. It is a graphic novel or large format comic book. The book was a National Book Award Finalist and winner of the Michael Prinz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature. The book has very beautifully designed color panels throughout. The central theme is [...]

Librarianship, Bookselling, and Publishing

The library of the Nautilus with a picture of Captain Nemo.
Creating The Customer Driven Library Building on the Bookstore Model by Jeannette Woodward is about how to improve libraries by understanding how retail bookstores work. The central tenet of this book is that the best way to improve libraries is through better customer service. [...]

Cartoon History of the Universe And Link Dropping

Right now, I just finished looking at a book which I received as a present, The Cartoon History of the Universe III From The Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance by Larry Gonick. This is a long running “graphic novel” which is about history. What is nice about these cartoons is that they are very [...]

Science Fiction Art Books. Daily Musings.

One of the things which I do is collect science fiction art books. I really enjoy having them. I do not have a huge amount of books in my house. I try and limit myself to books which are either valuable and special, or immediately useful. It is always easy to find books or bring [...]