Just yesterday I posted a photo of one of my Armchair Traveller Magnetic Bookmark line to my ArtFire site. It was of the lonely phonebooth in Strath Oykel, Ross, Scotland. I bemoaned the fact that these iconic British forms of archetecture are now being removed from the landscape forever!

But maybe not…

Apparently, there are others who share my sentiment, and who have found a creative use for them. And it’s a use that really jives with my bookish sense of the world, too! See & read more!!

I’ve decided to try something a little different at ECB online. Starting today, I’ll be featuring a genre every week. Each day, three new books from that genre will go up on the front page, one of which will be at a discount of 20% - but just for one day!

For those of you who aren’t up to visiting the site each day, follow the action at Twitter - CdnBookLady. Become a fan of the blog through Networked Blogs: to receive a notice on your Faccebook Page when the blog is updated.

This week’s featured genre is Gardening. It’s time to start planning and preparing for the gardening season here in the ‘north’ (North is a relative term, I realise). There is a good selection of gardening books on the shelves at ECB - lots of tips, how-to, when-to, what-to and landscaping ideas for both full- and part-time gardening enthusiasts.

Maybe you’d like to skip the hype and peruse those Gardening books right now? Please do!

Scotland’s oldest book, a medieval Celtic psalter with vivid illustrations in green, red, purple and gold, will be put on public display on Friday for just the second time in 1,000 years.

For the complete story and source, visit the Telegraph web page.

Here’s an article that won’t surprise bibliophiles!

from Science News

‘Smell of Old Books’ Offers Clues to Help Preserve Them

ScienceDaily (Dec. 5, 2009) — Scientists may not be able to tell a good book by its cover, but they now can tell the condition of an old book by its smell.

In a report in ACS’ Analytical Chemistry, a semi-monthly journal, they describe development of a new test that can measure the degradation of old books and precious historical documents based on their smell. The nondestructive “sniff” test could help libraries and museums preserve a range of prized paper-based objects, some of which are degrading rapidly due to advancing age, the scientists say.

Matija Strlic and colleagues note in the new study that the familiar musty smell of an old book, as readers leaf through the pages, is the result of hundreds of so-called volatile organic compounds (VOCs) released into the air from the paper. Those substances hold clues to the paper’s condition, they say. Conventional methods for analyzing library and archival materials involve removing samples of the document and then testing them with traditional laboratory equipment. But this approach destroys part of the document.

The new technique, called “material degradomics,” analyzes the gases emitted by old books and documents without altering the documents themselves. They used it to “sniff” 72 historical papers from the 19th and 20th centuries, including papers containing rosin (pine tar) and wood fiber, which are the most rapidly degrading paper types in old books. The scientists identified 15 VOCs that seem good candidates as markers to track the degradation of paper in order to optimize their preservation. The method also could help preserve other historic artifacts, they add.

Inter-Library loan can be an inexpensive method of obtaining information like an article or essay that doesn’t take up a significant portion of the book for which you are searching.

You need to give the librarian some information about the publication, obviously.

For a book, you would need to give at least the author and title. Other information like the year of publication, volume number, or ISBN also might be useful if they apply. Knowing the page numbers you require could be very important if, as in yesterday’s entry, Getting the Book You Want, another library has the item but will not lend it out (this is the case particularly with rare or reference only items). That library might agree to make copies of the relevant pages and send those.

For magazines or periodicals the essential information would include title, volume number, issue number, date of issue or publication and probably the title of the article and its author’s name. Again, it wouldn’t hurt to have the page numbers, too.

Inter-Library Loan items come in at varying time rates. I have often received items within a week or two. I’m still waiting for material I ordered from the Ontario Archives in June (they are consistently VERY slow). So, it’s a good idea, if you are working to deadline, to order as soon as you know you want the item.

The amount of time you can use the item will vary, too. Usually I’m allowed two weeks. Some libraries will accept requests for an extended due date if the initial period is not long enough for your purposes. That might depend upon the demand and supply of the particular item, though.

I think the fellow who wrote this book must be a bit eccentric himself! Once I adjusted to his writing style, though, I found the accounts quite entertaining.

This is a collection of biographies of seven world travellers: Captain Philip Thicknesse, Thomas Manning, James Holeman, Charles Waterton, Joseph Wolff, William Gifford Palgrave and Dr. G. W. Leitner; men who felt the urge to go where few, if any, of their race had gone before, despite the risks. Several were, at some time in their career, missionaries, others were naturalists, one was an outlaw of sorts, another was totally blind. All of them were, to say the least, quirky.

One of the things I found very interesting about the individuals discussed was how different they were from one another. Their reasons for travelling were diverse. The way each of them considered the environments they travelled through was sometimes surprising to me. It was fascinating to see through these somewhat extreme examples of travellers, just how different we can be from each other, how much our experiences are coloured by our perceptions and expectations, and how differently we are perceived by those we meet, even though we share something so significant in common: the compulsion to travel and explore the world around us.

I was sorting through some books the other day when I found, to my great joy, another Paul Gallico book. This one is a departure from fiction in the form of a biography of St. Patrick. Rather fitting I should find it this month…

In The Steadfast Man, Gallico attempts to reveal the real man that St. Patrick was. This is quite a challenge given that only two documents written by this Primate of Ireland have survived the fifteen centuries since he set them on paper. Both are appended at the end of the book. Although Gallico refers to works about St. Patrick from time to time in his narrative, he indicates that, although there may be a grain of truth to some of the legends surrounding the saint, most of them are sensational beyond the believable. And, yes, that includes the story about him driving the snakes from Ireland.

There is a fair bit of repetition in the text, something I found mildly annoying. But I think I would read it again if I were travelling to Ireland, as it gives a lot of useful advice to the Patrician pilgrim. I enjoyed sampling a bit of Church history, too, for a change. Even if I don’t agree completely with their messages, I still find many of the great individuals in the history of Christianity inspiring for their faith, their tenacity and their courage.

I really enjoyed reading this delightful book.

The story follows the ‘decline’ of an aristocratic English family after WWI. Its focus is one summer after the death of the mother and remarriage of the father, the Earl of Savernake, to ‘Soapy’ Sonia, as the rest of the family dubs her. Soapy Sonia has agreed to holding a Festival of the Arts at the family seat, Gunville Place. Most of the book tells of the incredible change that preparing for and holding that event has on the family, particularly the youngest daughter, Amity (Amy).

The truly unique thing about this novel is the voice of the narrator. Amy is telling us the story, reflecting back on the events many years later. In doing so, she preserves the sense of viewing the world through a child’s eyes. Readers are able to put together what is happening around Amy, but Amy is still an innocent, and we feel her inability to sort everything out completely. We are sometimes startled at the clarity, however, with which she sees other situations and the keenness of her understanding. We understand her helplessness to change the complicated lives of the adults around her and are amazed at the ability she has to anchor her own life. The novel is a testament to the resilience and the often overlooked complex nature of children as people.

The author reamains so true to the child that was Amy Savernake throughout this, her first, novel that the conclusion is a little bit uncomfortable. The leap from the focussed attention on the child Amy to the relatively short summary of her adult life through WWII to the late 1940s or ealry 1950s is unsatisfying - A sequel or lengthening of the novel would have been more satisfactory. I’m glad Windsor wraps all the loose ends up, though, and the happy ending to a literary novel is refreshing.

NOTE: It is as an admitted biblioholic, and therefore with blatantly obvious prejudice that I write this post.

People are always bringing their old books in to sell to me. Especially lately….

‘So,’ you’re thinking, ‘what’s so strange about that, you think, after all, she’s in the business of selling used books.’ Too true. How could I survive if I had no stock coming in? (Any of you who’ve been in my shop are probably grinning in the knowledge that I’m hopelessly overstocked. Well, maybe… my mother certainly thinks so! Can a used book shop ever have too many books, though? Really? Again, my mother certainly thinks so.)

I can understand people wanting to purge their shelves of paperbacks they’ve read - particularly those light mysteries that just won’t bear reading a second time. Old textbooks from courses that you’ll never use again… them, too. And sometimes that author you’ve been collecting for years… well, your tastes have evolved, and it’s time to maybe try the author that won the Booker last year….

But there are some books that come in, and I really wonder how the owner can bear to part with them in such a nonchalant manner. I had several boxes come in the other day from someone, for example. He made a comment about the Campbell Soup boxes being about sixty years old. They were, too (is there a market for stuff like that?)!

I know this fellow pretty well (hope he doesn’t mind seeing himself here if he looks…), so got talking to him about why the boxes were so old. Obvious question from a reader like me. I know he’s a reader, too.

Well, the books turned out to be turn of the century novels, etc. that had been in his family for a long time, and, as they were just taking up space….

I picked one up and opened it. “That’s my great-grandfather’s signature there,” he said.

I haven’t got anything with my great-grandfather’s signature in or on it! As a family historian, I could never let something like this go!

This led me to wonder about how he could so seemingly lightly dispose of such a treasure - boxes of similar favourites that had been ‘in the family’ for a century or more. And from there it was an easy step to wonder just what brings supposed bibliophiles to part from their trophies and treasures?

I received a book in the mail yesterday, one I’d ordered in for a customer. It was in a plastic bag popped into a card Express Mail envelope. The book was a 1937 naval handbook, well used and showing it.

I’m becoming increasingly angry over how people are posing as bona fide book dealers on the Internet, selling books for almost nothing, not describing the condition properly, and completely ignorant of how to package a book properly for shipping. In this case, I knew the book was in rough shape. But to send something, especially something so vulnerable to further damage, in a stiff paper wrapper? I even asked in the special instructions to shipper “Please pad well for shipping.” Apparently this ‘book seller’ is also illiterate. The description was pretty good, so I thought I was safe, too….

A good dealer knows how to ship books properly - even the cheap ones.

I always bag the book first, just in case the package falls in a puddle or gets soaked in a downpour. The bag also helps protect the book against high humidity and dust or contaminants in the packing in the parcel.

I always put hard covers, and usually paperbacks, in a container that allows for inert padding of some sort. Sometimes I do use crumpled newspaper - BUT - and this is VERY important - Newspaper should NEVER NEVER NEVER go against a book. The print rubs off onto the book and soils it, and if it gets wet, newsprint stinks. Books absorb odour so readily. Usually, I pack with bubble-wrap or shredded paper or recycled foam chips (remember the book is bagged so it is safe from the dust from these products).

Paperbacks I often slip into a padded envelope which is adequate to the purpose. Hard covers, however, I almost always box in a container that is large and STURDY enough to protect the corners from bumps (should the parcel drop and fall on one of its corners…).

Unless a truck runs over it, the book I mail arrives in the condition it left my shop. And yes. It often costs more than $6.50 in postage. Books, particularly hard covers, are heavy. I charge actual postage cost plus $2.00 to cover the cost of mailers, etc. and the trip to the post office. And I have happy customers, who often return because they know I’ll look after them and their purchase.