BibliophileBullpen

This is a stitch..and very important..this will be the best time to find these books and dump them back on the publisher. They are worth more now then they have ever been or will be. So go dig em out kiddos and trade them in for a refund.

www.sunsetrecall.com

From Consumer Products Safety:

Home Improvement Books Recalled by Oxmoor House Due to Faulty Wiring Instructions; Shock or Fire Hazard to ConsumersWASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following products. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed.

Name of Product: Home Improvement Books

Units: About 951,000

Publisher: Oxmoor House, Inc., of Birmingham, Ala.

Hazard: The books contain errors in the technical diagrams and wiring instructions that could lead consumers to incorrectly install or repair electrical wiring, posing an electrical shock or fire hazard to consumers.

Incidents/Injuries: None reported.

Description: The recall involves nine home improvement books, as listed below:

Title	ISBN	Publication Date
AmeriSpec Home Repair Handbook	978-0-376-00180-1	January 2006
Lowe’s Complete Home Improvement and Repair	978-0-376-00922-7 978-0-376-01098-8	September 2005 December 1999
Lowe’s Complete Home Wiring	978-0-376-00928-9	May 2008
Sunset Basic Home Repairs	978-0-376-01581-5 978-0-376-01025-4	February 1995 January 1975
Sunset Complete Home Wiring	978-0-376-01594-5	December 1999
Sunset Complete Patio Book	978-0-376-01411-5 978-0-376-01397-2 978-0-376-01399-6	January 2006 January 1998 April 1990
Sunset Home Repair Handbook	978-0-376-01258-6 978-0-376-01256-2	October 1998 February 1985
Sunset Water Gardens	978-0-376-03849-4	January 2004
Sunset You Can Build – Wiring	978-0-376-01596-9	January 2009

For anyone who doesn’t already know one of my seasonal traditions (well since ‘04 anyway) is a reading of Christopher Moore’s The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror – an impossible tale of zombie santas, giant fruit bats and small town warrior babes. It’s bawdy, vulgar, and spit-takingly funny. In my top 10 funniest books I ever read.   I recommend the audio – but don’t eat while you listen you’ll choke and die and that would suck.

- yes this is a post rerun -

a review from the Guardian:
The Observer, Sunday 6 December 2009

Everyday Drinking: The Distilled Kingsley Amis
Kingsley Amis’s sparkling essays on booze make a perfect gift for a man of a certain age, says Euan Ferguson

In the 70s and early 80s, times now so far away the thought leaves you reeling, this splendidly humane old chuffpot knocked out three great little books on drinking, one of the areas of life – along with jazz and bemusement and women – to which he brought grand amateur enthusiasm. Unaccountably out of print – unaccountable until you remember the last 15 dull years – the three have been brought together in this estimable collection and given a feisty (with wise minor barbs) intro by Christopher Hitchens. The result is joyous.

(continue reading)

note: I am reading this book, it is recommended.

from the BBC
A traditional red phone box has been recycled into one of the country’s smallest lending libraries – stocking 100 books.
Villagers from Westbury-sub-Mendip in Somerset can use the library around the clock, selecting books, DVDs and CDs.
Users simply stock it with a book they have read, swapping it for one they have not.
“It’s really taken off. The books are constantly changing,” said parish councillor Bob Dolby.
He added: “It is completely full at the moment with books. Anyone is free to come and take a book and leave one that you have already read.
Read the rest of this entry »

Heads up from Warren Ellis’s blog…he found Amazon still advertising one his books..which doesn’t exist. . . . . are we supposed to be surprised..it IS a big ass database filled with much crap and nonsense alongside everything else.

Cuypers Library in Amsterdam. A cast-iron spiral staircase provides access to four galleries; light falls within the frosted-glass.

If there is a church for my particular bent of irreligion, this is it.

I had a rough day so, I’m just gonna stare at this a while, ya mind?

via boekendingen blog

Dimensions
By Lee Kirk

Fold a sheet for Folio.
Fold again to make a Quarto:
four leaves, eight pages, don’t you know –
Another fold yields Octavo.

But what booksellers really prize is
how these folds relate to sizes..
It’s kind of shorthand, don’t you see –
for clarity and brevity.

Some think that we are too effete
or somehow trying to be elite –
but what if, instead of 16mo, 24mo, and 32mo
we wrote sextodecimo, vigesimoquarto, and trigesimosecundo?

Lee Kirk – The Prints and the the Paper

edited by Brander Matthews
Published 1899
Dodd, Mead & Co.
174 pages

available to download in its entirety from Google Books

Ben Jonson
“To My Bookseller”

THOU that mak’st gain thy end, and wisely well,
Call’st a book good, or bad, as it doth sell,
Use mine so too ; I give thee leave ; but crave,
For the luck’s sake, it thus much favor have,
To lie upon thy stall, till it be sought ;
Not offered, as it made suit to be bought ;
Nor have my title-leaf on posts or walls,
Or in cleft-sticks, advanced to make calls
For termers, or some clerk-like serving-man,
Who scarce can spell thy hard names ; whose knight less can.
If without these vile arts it will not sell,
Send it to Bucklersbury, there ‘t will well.

[image thanks to Sarah's Books blog]

someone brought up this subject on the bibliophile list this morning and I forgot I hadn’t posted something from “the Weathercock Crows” by L.B. Romaine in a while.

“Saved by the Bell”

Full calf and quaintly tooled I stood
Upon an honored shelf
With Grandmama’s possessions rare,
‘Midst Sandwich glass and Deift;
And there I would be still, I guess,
If she had lived my hide to bless
With gentle daily sweet caress.
But people die, and I live on,
Forever, so it seems,
While poverty destroys at will
Fond memories and dreams
Of those who lived and loved a book,
And treasured it in snug, safe nook
Where no one else would think to look.
Into a carton, attic bound,
I went and generations passed;
Then to the woodshed, worthless trash — And finally, at sad long last
Into the paper drive. They threw
More than a book, but no one knew,
Till a bookworm read and found the clue.

So still my carcass is intact,
For scribbled on my pages
A diary Grandmama had found
Preserved there for the ages:
Grandfather fought with Washington,
His diary told of Arnold’s gun
And Independence fairly won.
Full calf and quaintly tooled I stand
In a National Archives air-proof case.
No longer now can human hand
Dust and caress my time-worn face.
And so it seems that money must
Alone preserve from worthless dust
Small facts that are a sacred trust.
But for the curious bookworm humble,
About whose ethics many grumble,
Obituary this might be,
And none would ever know but me!

L.B.