Twelve 506 page volumes printed-on-demand, representing a scale model of our solar system from the Sun to Pluto. (via Astronomical at Mishka Henner / Works)
Bibliotaph: (n) a person who hides books Image courtesy of Polly M. Law (via The Word Project: Obscure Words in Bricolage | Brain Pickings)
Les Fleurs du Mal. Pieces Condamnees. by Charles Baudelaire. With illustrations by Charles Mayrs. Vancouver, BC: Black Stone Press, 2010.
A new fine press edition featuring six illustrations by Mayrs, each opposite a poem (presented in the original French.) Designed and printed by David Clifford; the text was set in Arepo and printed letterpress from polymer plates on Rives BFK. Each copy was hand-bound by Yasmine Franchi.
Edition of forty numbered copies, signed by the artist.
“Six of one hundred poems were banned by the French Government three months after ‘Les Fleur du Mal’ was published in 1857. The reason given was outrage against religious and public morals, and Baudelaire was fined 300 francs. Despite, or perhaps because of the controversy, the original edition became an instant sensation. The ban was not revoked in France until 1949…”
"People go off and have intense private relationships with books, and then they return to the bookstore and, among other book people, manage to share some of that interior life with strangers who can speak easily from a similar place. It’s not something we can take for granted in this society."
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Books – Increasingly Illegal Intoxicants?
Interview with Karen Lillis at Sensitive Skin magazine
"So maybe don’t think of it as a bookshop so much as a doorway to any number of worlds and adventures. Bookshops aren’t just shelves of dusty Dickens - whether you want to train falcons, master molecular cooking or build a time machine, we’ve got the goods. If you love reading fiction, great, but if you don’t, there are plenty of other places to start."
The secret histories of secondhand books
The personal dedications one finds in secondhand books are often as fascinating as the text. In honour of this, we’re starting a new series showcasing my most intriguing finds.
This first is written in the front of A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor: From Safei to Dad. The inscription reads:
25/4/88
Dear Dad,
According to Mum (alias the Guru of the Postal Rates) the best way to send a book is as Printed Matter, but then it can’t include a letter – hence this method.
I enjoyed this book (and its sequel) a ‘lot.’ While I was reading them, I thought of you, and wondered what memories you have of any of the times and places he describes. Of course this world, (of central Europe as it was in 19??) vanished before I was born. The mixture of the author’s experiences of it at age 18 and his reflections now (or at any rate in 1978) on a world it is impossible to re-visit, give the book an usual texture, I think.
Don’t feel obliged to read it if it doesn’t “grab” you. You can view this as a short letter with 300 pages attached.
Lots of love
Safei
