Pages & Proofs

Ever since the Codex Seraphinianus was originally published in 1981, this book has fascinated fans of the unusual. The crazy surreal artwork. The language that no-one can decode. Luigi Serafini is author of the world’s weirdest book in our humble opinion. Italian artist Serafini still maintains an air of mystery when asked about the Codex book. […]

Movie director Guillermo del Toro has written a book called Cabinet of Curiosities: My Notebooks, Collections, and Other Obsessions and it looks remarkable. He’s a bibliophile and this video also shows lots of views of his home (called Bleak House) – check out the books piled everywhere and the painting of Edgar Allan Poe. The director […]

GQ magazine has an interview with Noel Gallagher and the interviewer Danny Wallace covers the subject of books (Wallace is an author with at least four books to his name) with the former Oasis star. I’ve included the book-related portion of the interview below. I think there are 24 swear words in this section alone. […]

The Canadian media is reporting that 82-year-old Alice Munro will not attend next month’s Nobel event in Stockholm due to her ill health. In other news, her publisher wants to turn Munro’s childhood home in Wingham, Ontario, into a tourist attraction. Like other booksellers, AbeBooks enjoyed a significant Munro boost thanks to Alice’s win,  including the […]

A good number of booksellers found on AbeBooks have dual careers. An office worker by day and bookseller by night. But Neil Pearson has perhaps the most interesting division of labour by being an actor and a bookseller. During the 1990s, he was a familiar face to Channel 4 viewers as Dave Charnley (editor/cynic/womaniser) in […]

Literary Canada is a happy place right now.  Alice Munro, a Canadian legend of literature, has the Nobel Prize for Literature tucked in her back pocket along with a chunk of Krona. The 82-year-old, famous for writing short stories, is the13th woman to receive the prize and first real Canadian (because Saul Bellow doesn’t count […]

The BBC reports a rare collection of letters signed by Black Beauty author Anna Sewell have been purchased by a local historian in Norfolk, Sewell’s home county. The letters, written between 1820 and 1860, were discovered on an internet auction site. Also included are letters written to Sewell from her family, as well as a […]

Three quite different books are found at the top of our list of most expensive sales for September 2013. You all know Lord of the Flies by William Golding, but this particular sale includes some interesting correspondence between the author and a collector. In Dubious Battle is the first book in John Steinbeck’s Dustbowl trilogy […]