At the heart of it all, I’m a fan. A fan of books and bookstores. A fan of fiction and non-fiction. A fan of authors and publishers. And most of all I’m a fan of great conversations sparked by books. All that to say - I really need more bookshelves.
I ran across this post over at Reading Matters where people are wallpapering their homes with big photos of stacks of books. As a “book person” I thought they were pretty cool and fun to look at. I know I enjoy my stacks around the house.
But then I read this post over at fade theory about how “55% of people buying books do so just to decorate with them and have no intention of reading them”!!! Can that really be so? That’s really kind of sad.
So maybe these wallpaper books are for people who want to merely decorate with books and do so with no appreciation for books themselves. If that’s the case, then I don’t think this is very cool at all.
It’s pretty interesting to see how many titles are from this side of the pond. But also how many titles from over there that we all have read over here. I guess nothing is as universal as a good story.
Nut what’s with the Czech Republic’s non-fiction selections? Not even a cookbook could make the list?
I can’t tell you how much fun we had at last year’s inaugural event! And it wasn’t due to all the free books and swag we picked up. There were some great authors speaking last year. So far the list seems much longer this year.
I see that Southern-super-brain-historian Wayne Flynt will be speaking. So that’s one I’ll have to see and (even better) Amos Kennedy has already committed to hauling his letterpress equipment back down there (like he did last year). His table was right next to the UofA Book Arts people. It’s fun to watch cool people do cool things.
This upcoming Friday, Irma Boom will accept the award for “The Most Beautiful Book in the World” at the Lepzig Book Fair. It’s for Sheila Hicks: Weaving as Metaphor, that Boom designed last year.
Maybe forwarding that article to every publisher I have ever worked for would be a goo dfirst step… What publisher wouldn’t want to be known for having “The Most Beautiful Book in the World”?
