Latham, a bookseller for 35 years, has put together a heady mix of history, philosophy, anecdotes and entertaining factsWhat most people know about the American librarian Melvil Dewey is his phenomenal classification technique, the Dewey decimal system, which is still used in 135 countries. Less well known is how he liked to classify people, too. In a chapter entitled “Dubious Dewey”, Martin Latham describes how the great librarian created groups from A to D, banning all in the D group – Jews, African-Americans, Cubans and the “new rich” – from his Lake Placid resort. He was also a prolific groper of women. Latham speculates that Dewey’s hypocrisy, and his “obsessively domineering persona”, were what caused his lifelong constipation and piles.This is a book that is down on banning, rigidity, abuse of power and all kinds of snobbery, bookish and otherwise. It celebrates stories, scribbling in margins and the collecting, cherishing and even kissing of books – something done with surprising frequency, apparently. Latham, a bookseller for 35 years, currently runs Waterstones Canterbury, where he proudly filed the biggest petty cash claim in the chain’s history to pay for the excavation of a Roman bath house under its floor. But this is not one of those funny “anecdotes from a bookshop” books that have recently been popular – though anecdotes there are aplenty. It is rather a history and celebration of all things bookish, from Alexander the Great’s unusual habit of reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'
[ The Guardian | 2020-12-19 09:00:45 UTC ]
News tagged with:
#heady mix
#bookseller
In this spooky, atmospheric debut novel, readers enter a sterile, off-kilter world of horror — sort of — that is more David Lynch than Stephen King.Threats Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-04-01 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#amelia gray
#atmospheric debut
#david lynch
#stephen king
A look at AT&T's Bell Labs documents what in its heyday was truly a marvelous innovation machine and focuses on a handful of compelling narratives.For generations of industry research executives, AT&T's Bell Telephone Laboratories served as an inspiration: a warren of youthful scientists... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#nobel prizes
#personal computer
Lionel Shriver deftly handles terrorism, politics and satire in 'The New Republic.'It takes guts to write a satire about terrorism — and Lionel Shriver has guts. She has already published biting novels about the failings of the U.S. healthcare system ("So Much for That") and a school shooter... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-25 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#lionel shriver
#healthcare system
Thane Rosenbaum skillfully mixes fantasy and tragedy in 'The Stranger Within Sarah Stein,' whose heroine weathers her parents' divorce with pluck and defiance.Young adult novelists are increasingly tackling darker subjects: kidnappings, drugs, rape. But few have delved into so many dark subjects... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-24 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
In 'These Dreams of You,' Steve Erickson writes incisively and movingly about issues of family and race, but the novel goes off the rails with tangents.Zan Nordhoc's unhappy family is certainly unhappy in its own ways in Steve Erickson's new novel "These Dreams of You." For instance, in a... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-23 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#david bowie
#iggy pop
In 'The Escape Artists' by Noam Scheiber and 'Confidence Men' by Ron Suskind, President Obama's economic recovery plan and his advisors are in the spotlight, but the books' analyses are off the mark in places.On Oct. 28 and 29, 1929, when the great crash devastated the stock market, Herbert... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-22 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#stock market
#hard times
Late New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid writes about insights gained rebuilding the war-ravaged home of his great grandfather in Lebanon in 'House of Stone.'A yearning for home, wherever that may be, is one of many themes that the late New York Times journalist Anthony Shadid so deftly... Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#anthony shadid
Penguin Press will be publishing a new title by former children's laureate Philip Pullman... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-19 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#penguin press
This is a brilliant collection of writings on politics, social and cultural engagement and literary life.Reading for My Life Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#literary life
#book review
Controversial political and social issues are examined with an intellectual passion.Thinking the Twentieth Century Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#twentieth century
#timothy snyder
#social issues
'Tinderbox: How the West Sparked the AIDS Epidemic and the How the World Can Finally Overcome It' describes what spread the pandemic and what could rein it in.Tinderbox Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#aids epidemic
In reckoning with her friend's suicide, the author pulls readers into that empty space where loss and grief reside.The Guardians: An Elegy Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-18 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#sarah manguso
South Korean novelist Kyung-sook Shin has won the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize, becoming the... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
After a week of media speculation that independent Canadian bookseller Nicholas Hoare would be... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-16 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this |
This collection of short stories includes the fine 'Frankenwittgenstein,' 'Considering the Bittersweet End of Susan Falls' and uneven others.Hot Pink Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
This is a comprehensive biography of the president and an assessment of his leadership qualities on and off the battlefield.Eisenhower in War and Peace Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
The novel takes place across decades and tells overlapping stories as it tries to piece together a fallen world.Gods Without Men Continue reading at Los Angeles Times
[ Los Angeles Times | 2012-03-11 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#book review
#hari kunzru
#takes place
Irish author Emma Donoghue has been longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2012 after making... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-08 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#orange prize
Since the San Francisco Examiner was published 125 years ago - March 4, 1887 - for the first time bearing on the masthead "W.R. Hearst Proprietor" - Hearst Corporation has been an organization constantly changing, growing, innovating. What st ... Continue reading at Editor & Publisher
[ Editor & Publisher | 2012-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#hearst corporation
French booksellers are cautiously optimistic that their margins will not be squeezed when VAT on... Continue reading at The Bookseller
[ The Bookseller | 2012-03-05 00:00:00 UTC ]
More news stories like this | News stories tagged with:
#french booksellers
#cautiously optimistic