NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

A walk

on

the

beach

Strikes me that there is this similarity between literary criticism and book collecting: only by reading an author’s entire oeuvre can a critic authoritatively state which works are the strongest, which the most and which the least successful. Only by knowing the range of prices that are out there in the marketplace can the collector get a true sense of whether or not she’s getting a bargain. The more she studies pricing, the better able she is to determine value. The more books the critic reads, the better positioned he is to identify quality, to…determine value.

A recent article in The Independent, sees Jonathan Gibbs, prompted by the release of Faber’s Eighty Years of Book Cover Design mentioning five publishers who are currently reissuing classics in beautiful ways:  Persephone Books, Hesperus Press, Pushkin Press, Capuchin Classics and White’s Books. Here’s a look at what they’re doing:

Persephone’s uniform grey jackets –

open up into beautifully coloured endpapers

chosen to complement era and/or setting. Capuchin Classics, tipping a hat to bygone Penguins, feature green bars and original drawings.

Hesperus Press

is quite wonderfully located on ‘Rickett‘ Street.

and every Pushkin Press book is, according to the publisher,

embued with some form of passion.

While these four are producing paperbacks, White’s Books is taking on the hardcover…art director, the famed David Pearson, has, according to Gibbs, commissioned illustrations from such people as textile designer Celia Birtwell and Stanley Donwood (known for work with Radiohead). The results stand out thanks to what Pearson calls "non-repeating narrative pattern." 

Do I hear collectible?

James McNeil Whistler

First: The Florida Antiquarian Booksellers Association is holding its annual bookfair at the Colliseum in St. Pete’s, starting tomorrow, with more than 110 National & International Dealers exhibiting their wares.

Second: Friends of the Tampa Book Arts Studio and University of Tampa Library will be hosting a free lecture by noted collector and scholar Mark Samuels Lasner who will talk about his experience “COLLECTING THE LATE VICTORIANS”; Saturday, March 13, 2010, noon-12:45 at the MacDonald Kelce Library, University of Tampa ( stay tuned for The Biblio File interview!).

 The talk will complement "Facing the Late Victorians" an exhibit of items from Lasner’s collection on display at the fantastical

Royal Pavilion-like

Brighton, England

H. B. Plant Museum, a building constructed in….the late Victorian era.

Also, in the Macdonald Kelce Library,  two more free exhibits for booklovers:  “The Bookbindings of Alice C. Morse,” prepared by Mindell Dubansky of the Thomas Watson Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and originally exhibited at the Grolier Club, plus a display of Victorian Publisher’s Bindings from the Tampa Book Arts Studio Library Collections.

Speaking of translations, this from Chad Post at Open Letter: "Gail Hareven’s The Confessions of Noa Weber, translated from the Hebrew by Dalya Bilu and published by Melville House Press, and Elena Fanailova’s The Russian Version, translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler and published by Ugly Duckling Presse, are the recipients of this year’s Best Translated Book Awards for fiction and poetry, respectively. The announcement was made at a special award party at Idlewild Books, a New York City bookstore that specializes in travel books and international literature. Organized by Three Percent at the University of Rochester, the Best Translated Book Award is the only prize of its kind to honor the best original works of international literature and poetry published in the U.S. over the past year."

I dropped in on Mary Ann Talmadge at Dunbar Old Books the other day. Turns out she’s an avid mystery fan and, given the breadth of her reading, I’d say an authority on the subject. What’s interesting about her annotated list of best mystery/crime/detective…whatever you want to call them writers is how thoroughly non-American it is. How completely different it is from this. Which prompts me to want to put Mary Ann in touch with Chad Post at Open Letter.

Here’s the best, most authoritative unconventional mystery reading list you could ever possibly ever wish for…better start buying now for your summer vacation:

Henning Mankell: Sweden’s best cop/mystery writer. The main character in these stories is Kurt Wallander. As he solves horrific crimes he also juggles problems with his father and his daughter. The escapades of his father are worth the price of the books. Read them in order, starting with Faceless Killers.

Ake Edwardson: More horrific crimes, but Erik Winter’s home life is tamer than Wallander’s. The stories are set in and around Gothenburg, with a trip to England here and there. As with Mankell you’re seeing the under belly of Swedish society. Start with Sun and Shadow.

Fred Vargas: From France, a real find. Vargas’ first book was The Three Evangelists. It isn’t her best, but it sets the stage for the commissaire Adamsberg books that follow. The first one of those is Have Mercy on Us All. Learn how the French solve crimes.

Donna Leon: She writes about Guido Brunetti and his efforts to solve crime in Venice, where the police use boats. You’ll love Mrs. Brunetti and get a feel for modern Italian home life.

Magdalena Nabb has written 12 novels about Marshal Guarnaccia of the carabinieri. The stories are set in Florence where it’s drier and sometimes hot. More Italian home life. These Italian crimes aren’t nearly as horrific as the Swedish ones.

Andrea Camilleri: Now we’re in Sicily. Camilleri write fast paced stories that are easy to read. No home life here, not even a cat.

Denise Mina: Stick to the Paddy Meehan stories and learn about the Glashow that you didn’t know existed. You’ll love Paddy, her irreverence and loyalty. Start with The Field of Blood.

Peter Temple: Cop mysteries in Australia. Temple has two story lines: Jack Irish and Cashin. I prefer the Cashin stories, starting with The Broken Shore. Cashin has a soft side with trips into the world of dogs and opera. Jack Irish is trying to be hardboiled.

P. D. James: So much has been said about her writing – but there are two elements that I really like – her description of the English countryside and her minor characters. Tallulah Clutton, from The Murder Room, is my favorite. Ignore her bloodless detective and focus on the other characters.

Margery Allingham: Set in the 1930s her Mr. Campion stories should be on your reading list.

Peter Robinson: Hardboiled, but good writing.

Stieg Larsson: I’ve read the first two books in his trilogy. But I’m not sure what I think of him yet. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo should be read.

V. L. McDermid: Love her books. Not sure where to put her in the pantheon.

Right now I’m reading Boris Akunin. No opinion yet.

In this letter to the Editor:

Paulo Coelho may be giving away all but 400 of his books so they won’t “remain immobilized on a shelf ” ("Dust in the Wind", December), but a computer search will never replace the thrill of finding a long out-of-print volume in a used bookstore and taking it home to add to your library. There are readers and there are collectors. As collectors we may not sit down with a particular find for months, but we always know it’s there when we’re ready. There’s nothing like holding a book in your hands. Also, millions of books have not been digitized—and may never be because so few people want to read them. But what if you’re one of those few?

David and Susan Siegel Yorktown Heights, New York.

[The Siegels are the former owner/publishers of The Used Book Lover’s Guide series (bookhunterpress.com). I say former, because, although I plan to make a bit bigger splash about it once the site is redesigned and the services expanded – reader: I bought the company at the beginning of the year! Please feel free to subscribe to the online database as many times as you like

Penelope

Livingston

at the Old Tampa

Book

Company has a  50% off  'section' sale once a month or so, rotating through those categories whose books are overflowing off the shelves. I was lucky enough to be in the store when she put art, poetry and lit crit on sale!

In his introduction to Richard Le Gallienne's The Romantic '90s, H. Montgomery Hyde tells us that the nineties were regarded as naughty, not because they were any naughtier than other decades, but because of the efforts of the 'decadents' to shock the middle classes – Épater le bourgeois. Ironically this group sprang from the middle class itself, and, as Arthur Symons puts it "Nothing, not even conventional virtue, is so provincial as conventional vice…and the desire to bewilder the middle classes is itself middle class."

Montgomery Hyde suggests that these 'decadents' exhibited: perversity, artificiality, egoism and curiosity, with their novel ideas reinforced by the use of epigram and paradox. The goal was, according to Symons, "to fix the last fine shade, the quintessence of things, to fix it fleetingly; to be a disembodied voice, and yet the voice of the human soul…" Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Beardsley's unfinished romance, Under the Hill

Victorian Web.

are held as exemplars.

By continually satisfying new desires, MH concludes, they created new ones, and in the new thirst for fresh experiences and novel sensations they were insatiable to the point of exhaustion, mental and physical.

Many turned to Rome. Some turned to theosophy. Others turned a gun on themselves.