We interview collector, bookseller and activist Lisa Unger Baskin, who has amassed a vast collection of books and printed material dedicated to showing women in work over the centuries. Now placed with Duke University, highlights from the collection will be exhibited at the Grolier Club in Manhattan. Lisa describes how she put the collection together, and how humble objects can shed light on women’s role in work and society.
Michael Ciancone works as a NASA engineer. In his spare time, he collects early books about rockets and spaceflight. His collection spans more than 600 books published prior to 1958, including many hard-to-find titles from Russian authors. In our latest podcast, Michael discusses his collection and the challenges of collecting books on such a specialist subject.
We interview Doris Moskowitz, owner of Moe’s Books in Berkeley. With four floors of books, Moe’s has been a bookselling institution since the 1960s when Berkeley was at the heart of America’s free speech movement. We discuss her father, Moe, her mom, Barbara, cigars, hippies, the 1960s, being a working mom, being fired, the nearby university, millennial confusion, and why Moe’s has a huge philosophy section.
We are joined by Shawn Sheehy from the Movable Book Society. The society was founded in 1993 to share enthusiasm about pop-up and movable books. Shawn is a book artist and a paper engineer. Discover how pop-up books are created, their long history, and why paper engineering fascinates children, collectors and people who love books when the art that literally pops up off the page.
We are joined by Sadie Hirst, a food historian from Lincolnshire in the UK. Sadie is a collector of antiquarian and vintage cookbooks. She also speaks about food history at numerous events and runs historical cookery workshops. We discuss what cookbooks tell us about history, Georgian recipes, butter-making kitchenalia, and other mouthwatering topics.
We’re at the movies and talking about the growing phenomenon of collecting film scripts. Bookseller and author Kevin Johnson reveals why film scripts are so desirable, how studios and production teams have created and used scripts over the decades, the most expensive script he has ever sold, and why scripts from Night of the Living Dead are so difficult to find.
We are joined by Lisa Fagin Davis, who is the Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America, to discuss the on-going mystery of the Voynich Manuscript. Housed in the Yale library, this 15th century manuscript is written in a language that can't be decoded. Lisa explains why so many theories about its meaning and creation just don't add up.
We are joined by bo0k restorer Sophia Bogle, who has just written a book called Book Restoration Unveiled. Sophia now teaches book restoration. Her book explains the craft through case studies, illustrations, and interviews with clients and people in the industry. Our interview tackles the tools, the terminology, the most common forms of damage, the pros and cons of restoration, and some of the remarkable repair jobs that have come her way in the past 25 years.
The Dance of Death is a grim art genre, found in books and art, that began in the 15th century where Death appears in the living world in order to claim its next victim. Professor and author Elina Gertsman from Case Western Reserve University in Ohio explains the origins of these grisly illustrations where Death can never be avoided.
Iron Dog Books is a red van - a mobile bookshop that brings affordable books to many parts of Vancouver. We speak to Hilary Atleo who runs, and drives, this bookselling business with her husband Cliff. We discuss the van's connection to boat-building, city bylaws, and how people react to a bookshop on wheels.
Medellee Antonioli is part of the new generation of booksellers. The 34-year-old is now the proud owner of a used bookstore after buying the Used Book Emporium in Bozeman, Montana. She joins us to discuss the joys and challenges of buying a bookshop, and fulfilling one of her dreams. If you’ve ever wanted to own a bookstore, then this podcast interview is for you.
A bestiary is an encyclopedia of animals, both real and mythical. Popular in the Middles Ages, these books often featured beautiful illuminated illustrations of unicorns and other fantastic beasts. The Getty Museum in LA is currently staging an exhibition called 'Book of Beasts: The Bestiary in the Medieval World', and Larissa Grollemond, from the Getty, joins us to explain the significance of these remarkable books.
Our is guest is Matthew Budman, the author of Book Collecting Now: The Value of Print in a Digital Age. His book is a complete guide to collecting in the modern world. We discuss the new generation of young book collectors and the rise of female collectors.
Author Jen Campbell has numerous strings to her bow. She's written non-fiction, poetry, short stories and children's picture books, as well as being a book reviewer and a podcaster. Jen's love of books, fairy tales and storytelling shines through in her writing. We discuss dragons, bookshops, bookselling, and how villains have been traditionally portrayed in fiction.
We interview Ciara Farrell who is the Library and Collections Manager at the Kennel Club, the UK’s largest organisation dedicated to protecting and promoting the health and welfare of dogs. If you have almost any question about a dog, then this specialist library, founded in 1873, has the resources to answer it.
We interview Carly Maris, the founder of the Pinup Book Club, a community dedicated to reading the books from Marilyn Monroe’s personal library of 400+ titles, and also appreciating pinup culture.
We interview Nicole Kilburn, who is an anthropologist at Camosun College in Victoria, BC. Nicole is the author of a book called The Future has an Ancient Heart: Southern Italian Food Traditions in a Modern World. So that means we are talking about Italy, food and history.
We interview Anthony Casillo who repairs, collects and sells vintage typewriters. He is the author of a book called Typewriters: Iconic Machines from the Golden Age of Mechanical Writing, which features 80 machines from his personal collection. We speak about Tom Hanks, Ian Fleming, carrying typewriters on the subway, repairs and the dusty typewriter that started Anthony's interest in these machines.
Our guest is British author and journalist Alex Johnson, who has written about garden sheds, book lists, and book towns. The interview ranges from George Bernard Shaw's writing shed to the books that Ikea use in catalog photography and Scotland's beautiful book town.
Should be simple? But there’s a whole world of jargon to understand. From foxing to marginalia, we attempt to explain the terminology of the used book business and offer some golden rules to remember when buying a secondhand copy.
The Doors, Thompson Twins, Supertramp, Tears for Fears.... there are numerous bands that took their names from books. We look at the stories behind some of these band names, and discover the impact of Billy Idol's mum and the villain in David Copperfield.
Simon Garfield is the author of In Miniature: How Small Things Illuminate The World - a study of miniature things and the people who create them. We discuss model trains (and Rod Stewart), miniature villages, flea circuses, matchstick models of ships, tiny books and so much more.
We pull on our hiking boots and discuss writers who made some seriously long walks and then wrote about them.There's Patrick Leigh Fermor, who walked 1,590 miles across Europe, and Laurie Lee who walked around Spain. There's also Thoreau, Wordsworth, Bill Bryson, Cheryl Strayed and several wandering poets. Enjoy the show.
Annie Barrows is the co-author of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, one of the most popular novels of the past 10 years. Hear how Annie became involved in a project started by her aunt Mary Ann Schaffer. We discuss occupied Guernsey, early book clubs, epistolary fiction, and the challenge of writing for both children and adults.
Our guest is award-winning Canadian wine critic Natalie MacLean. She is the author of two books about wine, hosts a podcast about vino, and runs a website that is a huge resource for winelovers. We discuss the world’s top vineyards, $15 wines versus $30 wines, tasting in the digital age, wine in literature, pairings with food, & much more.
With The Very Hungry Caterpillar celebrating its 50th anniversary in 2019, we speak to Courtney Waring from The Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, an institution dedicated to inspiring a love of art and reading through picture books. We trace the history of Carle’s classic book, which began as A Week with Willi the Worm, his involvement with the museum and discuss the importance of picture books.
A new book fair is about to make its debut. Rare Books Los Angeles occurs on February 1 and 2. We interview Brad and Jen Johnson, the husband and wife bookselling team, who are organizing the event. We discuss the fair, their bookshop dog, heavy metal books, Wayne's World, acting, menus, vintage board games, and Hugh Hefner's library.
Scott Wallace Baker has been proclaimed Australia's biggest Agatha Christie collector. Scott describes his book collection and the other objects that he also collects. Dedicated to the world's most famous writer of detective fiction, Scott has traveled to places associated with Agatha Christie and has a deep knowledge of this author's remarkable life. Enjoy our interview with this very special collector.
"A boot camp for booksellers," that's how Anthony Smithson describes the York Antiquarian Book Seminar in the latest AbeBooks podcast. Anthony is a co-founder of this annual event and he also owns Keel Row Books, an antiquarian bookshop in North Shields in the UK. Enjoy our interview with bookseller Anthony Smithson.
We interview Rebecca Baumann about her collection of books covering crime, science fiction, horror and pulp paperbacks. Rebecca's day job is working as a librarian at Indiana University's Lilly Library but this interview covers her wide-ranging personal book collection, which stretches from HP Lovecraft to Arthur Machen, and Shirley Jackson, as well as a host of less famous authors.
