A Gift of Freedom...

Raptis Rare Books has kindly offered to give away a Signed First Edition of Jonathan Franzen's newest book, Freedom.  In its first day on sale the book ranked number one on Amazon and Oprah announced in September that it would be the newest of her book club selection, the first of the last season of the Oprah Winfrey Show.


Even if you are not a collector, this wonderful signed book would make a fantastic gift for someone who is. To win the book, valued at over $50, just be a follower and leave a comment. For two additional entries, spread the word about this giveaway on your own blog and let me know. 


Also included in this giveaway is two complimentary tickets to the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. This year’s fair takes place from November 12-14th at the Hynes Convention Center.


According to the fair’s website, “Over 120 rare book dealers from the United States, England, Germany and The Netherlands are expected to exhibit and sell rare, collectible and antiquarian books, modern first editions, manuscripts, autographs, maps, atlases, and a plethora of other literary ephemera. Fine and decorative prints will also be featured.”


In this age of the internet, it makes it easier than ever to find the specific rare book, manuscript, or ephemera you may be searching for. But one of the great joys of book collecting is to see and touch all the amazing and wonderful bits of history that an antiquarian book fair has to offer. It also allows you to really see for yourself and inspect the book you are hoping to purchase. If you’ve never been to an Antiquarian Book Fair, it is sure to be an experience you will never forget. 


The normal cost of the fair is $15 for Friday and $8 for Saturday or Sunday. As this is a regional fair, I understand that there may be more limited interest. But let me know if you would like the book, the tickets, or both in your entry. The Giveaway will go until midnight on Monday and a winner will be randomly chosen next week. Good luck!


Raptis Rare Books is also currently having a sale of 10% off anything on the website, so if you are looking for a holiday gift for a loved one (or yourself), its a great time to buy. Rare books are a gift that will be cherished for generations to come and are a very thoughtful idea for the book-lover.

Happiness and the Friendship of Books

Last week I was at a bookstore and picked up a book titled, The Quest of Happiness by Newell Dwight Hillis. I opened the cover and saw that the bookstore owner had written a price of $Free. Enjoy! What a great thing to find that the quest of happiness is free! The title is from 1902, but there are still so many things that are relevant to today. If many people like this idea, I may decide to occasionally share some gems and insights or quotes from the book, as it is not under copyright. When I was at the bookstore, the first chapter I happened to open up to was entitled, "Happiness and the Friendship of Books". As I am a lover of books, I knew this free little book was meant to be mine. Here is a bit from that chapter. I hope you enjoy!

AMONG a man's most helpful friends let us make a large place for books. They are the tools of the mind. Their function is increase the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. In the very highest sense they are the true labor saving devices. What the loom does for the fingers what the engine does for the feet what the telescope does for the eye that and more books do for reason and for memory. They hasten man's intellectual steps they push back the intellectual horizon they increase the range of his vision they sow intellectual harvests otherwise impossible and reap treasures quite beyond the reach of the unaided reason. In the physical realm tools have created more wealth in the past half century than the world had accumulated in the previous eighteen centuries. And it is not too much to say that those intellectual tools named books have increased the sum of knowledge gathered in the past century to an even greater degree than the increase in physical treasure. Strip man of his tools and he becomes a savage. Take away his reaper and he be comes a hunter of game. Take away his looms and he stands forth clothed with a coat of skins. Take away his engine and his ship and he is an ignorant peasant. Take away his gunpowder and he becomes a serf owned by the baron. Nor is it otherwise in the realm of wisdom. Strip man of his books and his papers and he becomes a mere slave ignorant of his own resources ignorant of his own rights and opportunities. The difference between the free citizen of to day and the savage of yesterday is almost entirely a thing of books. 

Plato was indeed a scholar despite the fact that he had to gain his knowledge by observation conversation and listening to speakers as he asked and answered questions but the world has had only one Plato. The man who dislikes books can never be entirely happy and he who loves a good book can never be wholly miserable. If we would understand what those intellectual tools named books have really done for man we must imagine some youth entering this earthly scene and left to find out everything for himself. Let the youth be an Apollo in his health and beauty with a vigorous and hungry mind and with untiring ambition. Nevertheless he can do but very little without books. His eyes can see but to a little distance for that curtain named the horizon shuts down at a distance of only nine miles. 

Yet the earth is 25,000 miles around some 24,991 miles entirely out of the of his observation. Even when he begins observe and his knowledge goes beyond limit of the nine miles his threescore years and ten soon prove to be all too short. If he begins to study the crystals and the handwriting on the rocks he will find that the writing is in letters so fine and intricate that it has taken thousands of men living as long as he to search out the key of the mystery and to decipher the pages. While the knowledge of the stars would mean thousands of years of life for an astronomer to master all the facts for himself. Indeed one great mind must give itself to the study of the butterflies and another to the birds one to the rose one to the apple one to the grape one to intellect another to emotion and another to will and so of the innumerable objects for observation. Before the youth has even begun his task old age will be upon him. And even though personal observation and experience do enable the youth to map out but a small portion of the earth's surface conversation can do but little more. In the first place the youth will have time to see but a few people each day and there are hundreds of millions to be seen. Also perhaps his community will hold only a few really great men and they will be so busy that the youth will be fortunate if he can see them one or two evenings in the week. 

How infinitely rich our world. Man live he ever so long will have time to break off only one bough from an infinite orchard. Unaided he sits in his little hut and starves to death. Then come the great men of the world bringing their books for guidance and instruction In the Middle Ages there was one strong man in the community named the baron in his castle. Now this baron was strong because of helpers. That he might be free to think and study one servant brought him wood another went forth to sow and reap the wheat another brought in the wheat converted it into bread one cared for his horses another servant cared for his flocks and when a thousand men had toiled to fill the castle with instruments of use and beauty the baron's life became strong and happy. And so it is in the realm of knowledge. 

Every youth is a kind of intellectual prince who is waited upon by those noble servants named books and their authors. When the youth sits down by the winter's fire one writer says 'Here is the sum of my fifty years study of beetles and birds'. And another 'Here is the record of my travels in the arctics'. And another, 'Here is the story of fifty years in the tropic forests' And another 'Here is the full record of a lifetime of examination of the Pyramids with the Egyptian tombs and temples'. Only instead of this intellectual prince having a hundred friends and servants each one of whom has toiled a lifetime in his chosen department the youth finds himself surrounded by perhaps ten thousand friends and helpers. Little wonder that rapidly his knowledge is up. His mental riches grow by leaps and bounds. These intellectual tools change boy into a mental giant. His culture and character take on strange solidity and size. The coral reefs grow cell by cell. Each little deposit means the life of the being that has sacrificed itself. Character also is the sum of many littles and grows by accumulation. 

The books of great men enter into civilization and the very structure of society. Now for these reasons the history of human is largely the history of books. Indeed during those long dark centuries before printing press was discovered the world forward so slowly that we may say there no progress but only stagnation. The era began when the printing press came its stranger incitements. Just why the could not advance without the book a problem easy to be understood. Consider a book makes it possible for one generation to begin where another leaves off. Of necessity the father no matter what wisdom he had accumulated through travel and study dying left his knowledge behind him. No Herodotus travelling in foreign lands can return home to bequeath the results of his travel and studies to his infant child. Solomon ranges the world for wisdom. And yet this wisest of men in death knows that his little child must begin just where his father the great king began. ... And yet consider that until books came no matter how far into the forests the father blazed the pathway and marked out the points of danger when he fell in the forest his little babe at home grew up to begin just where his father began therefore there was no social advance. Little wonder that the pathway was strewn with wrecks. Little wonder that the son's craft struck the same rock that his father's craft had foundered on. The son standing beside the dying father was conscious of a deep longing to find out some way by which a father could gather up what accumulated knowledge he has concerning rocks and beasts and savage men and poisons and foods and place that knowledge in the hand of his child as a guide book to the pathway of life. Therefore it is impossible to overestimate the gains for the individual in the registration of experience in books. 

...From this view point the book represents the greatest intellectual possession which man has ever achieved. It is God's richest gift to His earthly children. The book as a tool for the intellect does not stand upon the same level as the tool for the hands and the feet. It is not a star shining amid the other stars; it is a sun eclipsing the other stars by very excess of light.

If you would like to read more from this book or to finish this wonderful chapter, you can do so here. I left off on page 256. Isn't it amazing as well that books like these have been made available to read for free right here on the internet, thus greatly increasing our access to knowledge? Obviously I am a proponent of the physical page and still love to feel the pages of the book in my hand, but when that is not available, this is the next best thing.

Floor to Ceiling Library Love

Although we can't all have bookshelves like these, built-in bookshelves are actually something you can make if you are are a do-it-yourselfer... or have a dad like mine :) He's helping us build some floor to ceiling bookcases for one room. They are twelve feet high and twenty feet wide, which is quite large, so when I went to the local home center to get wood and told them it was for a bookcase they thought I was mistaken when I said I needed 374 feet. They thought I meant 374 inches. I realize I'm a girl, but I think I do know a foot from an inch! Anyway, I love these images of these floor to ceiling bookcases. Some are modern and funky, some are more traditional. I love them all. Its a bibliophile's dream...

Books to the ceiling,
Books to the sky,
My pile of books is a mile high.
How I love them! How I need them!
I’ll have a long beard by the time I read them–Arnold Lobel

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

- Henry David Thoreau

A library is not a luxury but one of the necessities of life.
Henry Ward Beecher

A library is the delivery room for the birth of ideas, a place where history comes to life.
- Norman Cousins

“The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not
content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied
passion till he grasps the essential nature of things.”
Plato

 "The love of learning, the sequestered nooks, and all the sweet serenity of books."
 --Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I don't know if these are bookcases or if it is a closet, but its so funky.

.

 "Give me a room whose every nook is dedicated to a book."
--Frank Dempster Sherman

“Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.”

–Frederick Douglass

This wall is both beautiful and practical!

Information is the currency of democracy.

- Thomas Jefferson

These funky bookcases are crazy. It's like Alice through the looking glass.

To add a library to a house is to give that house a soul. – Cicero

The more that you read,
the more things you will know.
The more that you learn,
the more places you’ll go.–Dr. Seuss

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.
Arthur Schopenhauer

These bookshelves are a piece of art in and of themselves.

So please, oh PLEASE, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.–Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

What 'style' bookcase are you? What's your favorite?

Brattleboro is for Book Lovers

Delia Cabe recently wrote an article for Boston.com entitled Brattleboro is for Book Lovers. How right she was. This small town nestled in Southeastern Vermont is a book lover's dream. Famous authors such as Rudyard Kipling, Saul Bellow, John Irving, and many more have lived here or in surrounding towns.


Vermont is a great destination for those looking to get out of the city at all times of year, although many people especially love to come in Autumn for the great foliage and in Winter for the skiing and other outdoor sports. If you drive up Interstate 91, you are bound to come through Brattleboro. Although you may be coming for the foliage or skiing, there are many other activities as well that you can enjoy.

This upcoming weekend, September 30th - October 3rd, is the 9th annual Brattleboro Literary Festival.

The Festival is a four-day celebration of those who read books, those who write books, and of the books themselves. Located in downtown Brattleboro, Vermont, the Festival includes readings, panel discussions, and special events, featuring emerging and established authors. All events are free and open to the public.



More About the Festival:

The Brattleboro Literary Festival was founded in 2002 by a very small group of bibliophiles from area bookstores and libraries. The very first festival featured Nobel Prize winning author Saul Bellow in his last public appearance. Since then the festival has gone on to present over 250 authors, including winners of the Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Newbery Medal, and the Caldecott Medal.

Brattleboro is a natural setting for this event. Writers have always found it a congenial place to live and work. Royall Tyler, the celebrated playwright and poet of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, called Brattleboro home. The first literary societies in the community were formed in his day, the forerunners of the reading and writing groups that abound here today. In the eighteen-nineties, Rudyard Kipling resided at Naulakha in the hills on the edge of town, and wrote several of his classic works while living here. Today, the Brattleboro area is home to numerous active writers.

Brattleboro has also been known for the industries that support such creativity. In 1812, the first Bible in Vermont was printed here, establishing Brattleboro as a printing town. Book presses and publishers thrived, and they’ve had a continued presence ever since. It was no great surprise when the first American edition of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone rolled off the presses here in Brattleboro.... and you can now buy the entire set of first editions at Raptis Rare Books, also located in Brattleboro.

Hope to see you at the festival!

Something Old, Something New...

A few weeks ago, my husband and I took a full day book binding class. Since we sell rare books, we would both like to be able to make custom protective and beautiful clamshell boxes for our customers who desire them (and it would be extremely satisfying work as well). If we choose to pursue this goal it will, of course, take years to learn the proper skills... but since we are still fairly young, I think it will be an exciting prospect for us.

The day was so much fun.. it seems to whiz by in a moment. Right now I am reading the book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience... and learning this art was definitely a 'flow' experience for me. We learned about caring for and protecting fine bindings and their construction, and we made a simple book ourselves.

It is such an old world trade going back to the invention of the book itself.  In our fast-paced world where we jump from one thing to another, its nice to still have trades such as these that take craftsmanship and detail.

Today I watched a BBC documentary on Youtube called The Virtual Revolution (while aiming to multi-task about seven other things of course). It is all about the history of the web and how it has changed the world over the last twenty years. It's a fabulous documentary series that I highly recommend... and you can watch it here if you like. 

Anyway, it got me thinking about what it must have been like when the printing press was first invented. Its impact must have felt somewhat like what we're now experiencing with the internet except on a slower scale. I can hardly imagine a word without books (and I have a fairly active imagination). Books have opened the world and allowed people to share ideas in so many ways, its effects are incalculable. Kids today must have the same feeling about the internet, probably thinking in their minds 'how did people function or find information before the internet??' Sometimes I wonder the same thing myself.

On another tangent (thats one of the impacts of our digital age.. we tend to not be able to focus on one thing... although our connections do make sense on a meaningful level - as you'll see here), I watched a great TED lecture the other day called 'When Ideas Have Sex' by Matt Ridley. Its all about how the exchange of ideas creates a more interesting and complex world. Well, that's my little summary anyway. If you want to know more, watch the video. 

But getting back to my original thought about book binding... I think an important thing that we really need to think about in our present world is how to keep the wonderful things of the past, while still going on into our bright future. Its like the old adage, 'Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other's gold'. We need to be careful in our age of technology, that we become a more complex and interesting species and not the opposite (mindless machines that can be controlled by our media and advertising). We need to make history, but also preserve it. We need to take the best ideas of the past and combine them with the best ideas of the future.

Sometimes I think as our society strives for progress, we need to stop and think a bit more about 'what are we progressing to?' (we should probably do this more on an individual level as well). We're cutting down trees and polluting the environment so that we can live these comfortable lives (and I'm right there as part of the problem).. but we don't stop to think about what we are giving up long term for our short-term present circumstances. Or while our urban centers are a mecca for the exchange of ideas, do we give up our connection with nature in the process when all we see is cement? Do we know where our food comes from or how to stay healthy without relying on synthetic drugs? Do we lose those opportunities for 'flow' experiences because of our fast-paced lives? These are just some questions I'm pondering this evening. There may not be immediate answers and perhaps there are no specific answers. Perhaps the important thing is just to ask the question...

A Simple Romance

I discovered the cutest (children's) book earlier this week. It called The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics.  I really wanted to share it... and then I discovered it was made into a great little movie. You don't have to be into math to like this book, so if you get a chance, watch it and I hope you like it too!

Go to the ant...

“Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, and be wise: Which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, Provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest” - Proverbs 6:6-8

I went to a lecture last night at Harvard by the famous biologist Edward O. Wilson. If you're not a biology geek like me you might not know that name, but if you work in any natural science or environmental field, you hopefully know how cool this is. Wilson has written at least 30 books on various topics, but most of his research is on ants.

In his book, The Ants, (also written with Bert Hölldobler), he begins with the line "Ants are everywhere, but only occasionally noticed". This is so true. Even though ants are tiny, the actual mass of all the ants on earth combined is Four Times the amount of all the earth's vertebrates combined. Think about that for a minute.

I'm also currently reading a book called Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life. It's a very good book that I highly recommend, and it really has me thinking about what I often focus on. How often do we really take the time to consider or notice the small things in life? We're often so rapt up in the business of life that we don't often stop to 'smell the roses' or 'consider the ant'. Its often the little things that make life amazing. One of my favorite quotes from the movie Vanilla Sky is "Its the little things... there's nothing bigger".

I also just picked up The Happiness Project yesterday when I was in a bookstore. I just read the first few chapters so far, but its great. In this as well, the author talks about doing little things daily that make a big difference in overall happiness.

Anyway, those are just my 'little' thoughts for the day.

Also, here are some great documentaries on ants. Awesome! The first is about Edward O. Wilson.





If you want to watch more of this documentary, go to Youtube or my science and nature video playlist here on the blog. Enjoy!

Books do furnish a room

I remember a number of years ago I saw this book in a bookstore: Books Do Furnish a Room. Even though I don't own this book, I always remembered this title and the book... because I remember it having a lot of great photos, but also because I completely agree with this title. I love a room filled with books. Good thing thats what I do for a living. Here are a few photos I've collected over the years. 

I have no idea where I got this picture, but I just love it.

Even a room with messy books has a certain romance to it.

Someone here made wallpaper out of book pages! Awesome.


z

I have no idea what this picture is... but I obviously thought it was cool enough to save

This is just dreamy

       via vi.sualize.us

Can books furnish a body too?

       via cupcakemugshot

A room without books is like a body without a soul - Cicero

Garden and a library...

I just stumbled upon an amazing Wonderland at Katiedid's blog. I'm new to the blogging world, but I'm quickly finding out how many wonderful bloggers there are out there and what wonderful things I can discover through the things they post.

So I definitely HAVE to go to The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens next time I'm in the L.A. area. I had no idea that this was in Pasadena.

As my Cicero quote says 'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need'. I think the Huntington has more than everything I want too :)