Check out this bookstore sign posted in a bookshop window over in England:
That’s a pretty clever bookstore sign. Kind of gets you all pumped up doesn’t it? The folks over at Galleycat say it’s a play on a sign by one Beatrice Warde, originally put together for a printing shop.
One thing I truly enjoy reading about is books. Books about books is just about as good as it gets. These can cover book collecting, book arts, book plates, libraries, crafts, publishing, biographies about writers or editors,etc. There are even sub-genres of fiction that identify when books or bookstores or libraries figure heavily into the story. It’s a little meta. It’s a little nerdy (but not geeky), but it’s great to read up on people’s personal libraries and people’s relationships to books.
But there is no word for it! You read that right. I can find no single word that means “books about books”.
How can this be? Is there one that I haven’t thought about? Surely someone has solved this problem by now. How can there be no word for “books on books”?
If you read books about book fanatics you’re reading about bibliomania. If you read mystery books about books you are reading bibliomysteries. But what if you’re reading books about books? The trio of words works, but you have to admit “books about books” is a bit cumbersome. Can’t we come up with a word whose sole definition is “books about books”? I guess if you read books about books you are a bibliophile, but how can we work that so it means an actual book whose focus is books.
Time to get busy wordsmiths! Let’s solve this. The solution (the final word, if you will) should be an elegant one worthy of the task. Biblio-biblio is just weird. Biblio-books is even more awkward than the original phrase.
Of course, this whole exercise makes me think of Sniglets. So now I have to go find those books and thumb through them. You should do the same. But when we get done reading…. back to the neologistic task at hand!
It looks like famed bibliophile Nicholas Basbanes and Knopf have put the finishing touches on Basbanes’ long awaited new book “On Paper: The Everything of Its Two-Thousand-Year History”. It has an official street date of October 15, 2013. Basbanes started researching paper and paper ephemera back in 2005. The new Basbanes book was first mentioned in a CSPAN video interview the author did back in 2008, where he gave the cameras a tour of his home library. The new book is listed at 488 pages with a full retail price of $35.00. Can’t wait to see what it looks like when it comes out this October!
Basbanes is best known for his books about book collecting and bibliomania A Gentle Madness and Patience & Fortitude.
The first 10 minutes of this short film are fantastic. I would love to get lost in the stacks of an old shop just like this boy does. Lots of great imagery here as a boy finds himself exploring the last bookshop in England. The film was produced in an effort to support local bookshops and stress the importance of them. They have a site for the film as well so you can learn more about the shops shown in the film, bookshops in the UK as well as the movie score. Lot’s to think about while watching this short movie.
What did you think of the short film?
