JD Salinger, one of the most influential writers of the 20th century, passed away yesterday at his home in Cornish, New Hampshire at the age of 91. I remember the impact of reading “A Perfect Day for Bananafish” as a teenager and then proceeding to devour everything else Salinger had to offer over the next [...]
The majority of the books we didn’t plan to keep for use at the Ottawa Antique Market or book shows was packed up and shipped off yesterday to a gentleman in Barry’s Bay who is starting up a huge secondhand store for that area. 400+ boxes packed with over 22,000 books and weighing nearly 16,000 [...]
Have recently picked up some more great vintage books over the past week giving us another 2 boxes of Ace Doubles and a box or two of other vintage sci-fi/fantasy, horror and mystery. While there were plenty of great mid-range finds like old Ace Dean Koontz and Philip K. Dick titles, there were two exceptionally fun finds [...]
A recent post (Books in Things & Things in Books) from one of our favourite sites, Bookride, is right up my alley being jam packed with fun anecdotes of glorious items found between the pages of book, inside bindings and the many odd places books themselves have been found. Some interesting other anecdotes are popping [...]
Our good friend George Walker just released his new book A is for Alice via the Porcupine’s Quill and it is absolutely wonderful (we were lucky enough to get a sneak preview copy). It’s a playful alphabet book comprised of a quote and accompanying wood engraving (done by the Mad Hatter himself, George) for each letter [...]
The original Stukeley manuscript containing Sir Isaac Newton’s famous falling apple anecdote is now available for the first time online as part of The Royal Society’s Turning the Pages project. The Stukeley Manuscript, along with other digitized original works by the likes of Paine, Locke & Henry James, are wonderful to flip through and [...]
A few months ago I was interviewed by Nigel Beale for his literary blog Nota Bene on the history of the private press and more specifically the collecting and Canadian aspects of fine press editions and letterpress printed works. The interview lasts about 40mins and was quite fun to do, so hope you enjoy!
While most years start off with so much promise, unfortunately the first couple weeks of 2010 have seen two great Canadians in the field of literature and book arts pass away. Poet, author and artist P.K. Page passed away on the 14th well into her 93rd year. One of Canada’s great poets and an [...]
After being heavily admonished by members of our Ottawa Press Gang at this morning’s Wayzbrunch, here goes a quick catch-up on events of the past few weeks to be followed by a flurry of posts over the next few days to tick off all the items on the “To Post” list that has been growing [...]