Ask The Dust: Notes From The Rare Book Section - Better World Books Blog - Book Reviews, Author Interviews, Community Outreach & more

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Illustrating the Fantastic

Posted by Erin on 04.19.2012 at 8:15 am

Post by Rob Monroe, Bibliographer, BWB Antiquarian, Rare, and Collectible Books

View the Better World Book Rare and Antiquarian Collection here.

It is in the first line of Lewis Carroll’s classic that Alice ponders on the possible use of a book without pictures. Adults reading this passage will likely smile at the childish naivete, especially those unimpressed with wood engravings such as the illustrations within the first edition of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. However, I doubt that even the stodgiest of readers cannot find value in the incredible book illustrations that were to come in the early 20th Century.

1 Comment » | Tagged Ask the Dust: Notes from the Rare Book Section, Book Lists

Confessions of a Crazy Bibliophile, Concerning his Troubling Obsession with Dustjackets

Posted by Erin on 02.13.2012 at 9:34 am

Post by Austin Currier, BWB Bibliographer for Antiquarian, Rare, and Collectible Books

When I was twelve, my family vacationed in Traverse City, on the Northern peninsula of Michigan. I took to wading in the shallows of the lake and digging for Petosky stones, which are small rocks covered in hexagonal fossilized patterning (often only visible when the stones are wet). Now, they’re not actually too uncommon there, but it’s the only place in the world they exist. In the few days we were there, I must have gathered up fifty of them to bring home.

No one else in my family was particularly good at spotting them amongst the other rocks on the beach. They got bored and gave up. But I meticulously combed the shallows, eagle-eyed and obsessed with plucking them out of the water. It wasn’t about the rocks being valuable, or useful. It was the thrill of the hunt. Of finding the things that no one else could, or cared to. Every rock was a trophy awarded for its own discovery.Now, I can’t buy books without dustjackets anymore.