The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald; Published by Thornwillow Press

It seems that many of my school peer-group read The Great Gatsby in high school or college. Somehow, I never did. And for the subsequent 35 years I never got around to F. Scott Fitzgerald. I’d run across his name or a reference to his books when reading other authors of his time and just figured I’d get to him sometime or the other. Then the Great Gatsby movie came out (again?) and everyone was talking about him again and I thought about reading him again – I didn’t see the movie. But I had other things to read and the years slipped by until Thornwillow Press announced their edition on Kickstarter. And, like often happens with books and authors further down my “To Be Acquired & Read” list, the happy chance of finding a nice edition at the right price point bumped it up the list. As I have done with all the titles I’ve acquired from Thornwillow thus far, I reserved a copy in the paper-wrapper state, which is an amazing value for the money ($95!), and more in line with my current book budget than most private press books out their right now. And it got bumped up to “read next” once it was in my hands because it was an illustrated letterpress edition that seemed to really want to be read.

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Endgrain Editions by the Barbarian Press

I just received my copy of the latest Endgrain Editions, this one focusing on Richard Wagener. I now have the privilege of owning the last three editions, and they are magnificent. Each book is a visual feast of an engraver’s art coupled with the wonderful design and immaculate presswork of the Barbarian Press.

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Please forgive me if you got (temporarily) swamped with comment notifications!

Hello Dear Readers! I just now figured out how to manage my comments in a way that (I think) will keep the spam at bay. I’ve had them basically turned off since I started this blog but have now gone back a few years and approved some pertinent ones. I’m afraid to do too much because I fear you are all receiving notifications. If you are receiving them for “old” comments, that should stop again now and from this point forward you will only receive the notifications on “new” comments if you checked the box to be notified.

Thanks for your patience as my my blogging skills mature. But most of all thanks for reading about books and for supporting the presses, bookmakers, binders, papermakers, and other book crafters that create these wonderful books by seeking out and purchasing their work.

I would be honored if you would subscribe to my humble blog, as that is the best way to make sure your receive the content I work so hard on and for me to feel like I’m not dropping my hard work into the bottomless well of the internet. Read on, read wide, my friends!

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Reading Statistics for 2019

It’s time to review my reading for the last year and see how I did with respect to my goals of reading widely outside of the Western White Male Canon (WWMC). While reviewing some publishing statistics, I realized that the WWMC was the main focus of my education in the U.S. and that the focus continued unconsciously even in my self-directed reading due to publishing and societal norms. If you want to read wide, you have to be proactive and search those books out.

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Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu; Published by Providence Press

Tao Te Ching-17Like it should, the Tao Te Ching  arrived exactly when I needed it. The Tao helped me get through a really rough patch of my life: a dissolving marriage, unbelievable animosity and accusations, and stressful negotiation of parental rights through a nasty family court process. Reading it over and over helped me get through that process with my dignity and without saying or doing anything I now regret or asking for anything that was above and beyond what was reasonable and best for my kids.

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

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Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen; Published by Thornwillow Press

Pride and PrejudiceDespite its reputation, somehow Pride and Prejudice remained unread for the first fifty years of my reading life. I’ve read some of her contemporaneous authors and classics but this one escaped my widely-cast net for one reason or the other. Or at least I consider my net wide. When I researched it maybe I haven’t read that many novels from 19th-century English authors. I’ve read Emily and Charlotte Brontë, a fair amount of Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Joseph Conrad. So maybe it’s those so-called “romantic” novels that I’ve missed, sometimes intentionally. I’m not necessarily a reader of romances as a publishing genre but I like them more now. Especially when I read them for the glimpses of how the class, culture, and social mores of the times reflect through the Pride and Prejudice-4story line and affect the characters and plot lines. I have to say that in Austen’s time those factors seem to make for many unlikable characters, especially when it came to their behavior in the romantic relationship category. Wuthering Heights left me cold. Jane Eyre was likeable enough as a character but I don’t remember if the story line held me that much. It’s been a while but I think I might have enjoyed the edition I was reading more than the actual novel itself. It was the 1943 Random House edition with illustrations by Fritz Eichenberg but I can’t go back to see what I liked so much because I think it left with my ex- to be imprisoned on her book purgatory shelves. I do want to revisit Jane after reading Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea to see how it strikes me now and if that reading fleshes it out even more. Is there a better edition than the Random House? I’ll have to do some homework there but I may have to search out another copy. Continue reading

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Pedro Parámo by Juan Rulfo; Published by Arion Press

Pedro Paramo-15I guess a book resonates with you if you have a dream about being in the town that is the setting of the book. A couple of days after my last reading of Pedro Páramo, I was in Comala, a dream/ghost town populated by the people and events of budding magical realism. Like a dream, it is hard to figure out what exactly is going on, when it is happening, and if it really happened. Are living people talking to each other? Or are dead people talking to living people? Or is everybody dead? And like a dream the particulars can fade pretty quickly after reading. But if the dreamscape is written in a beautifully crafted piece of literature and manifested artfully by a private press, you can delightfully revisit the dream anytime with a re-read, culling new insights each time. Continue reading

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Moon as Bright as Water; Published by Chester River Press

Moon As Bright As Water-2As a reader more than a collector, I’m blessed that I enjoy poetry as much as I do. For poetry readers, there is much more reading available in private press books than, say, a reader of novels or other lengthy works gets to choose from. Those longer works just seem to be too large and risky of an undertaking for most private presses. Many things can contribute to the difficulty of tackling large texts: the amount of paper needed, the amount of type that needs to be cast and set, the type of press required, the amount of time for printing and binding, the price point and accompanying risk. Really only one private press comes to mind that regularly does novels and that is the Arion Press. They have the resources to tackle even massive undertaking like Don Quixote in the new Grossman translation. There are others, of course, like Prototype Press’ willingness to undertake Bukowski’s Ham on Rye, Thornwilllow Press publishing Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby, and Sherwin Beach Press’ edition of Twain’s The Innocents Abroad. If you consider fine press there are more novels available with presses like the Folio Society, Centipede Press, the Limited Editions Club, etc., and the reading horizons open up more. And I’ll also add to this reader’s lament that there are plenty of presses out there that are primarily interested in images, or art, or the craft and history of printing, or just plain books as beautiful objects that sometimes are downright un-booklike. Having been to CODEX for the last four or five shows, I’ve seen plenty of that. If I have time, I check it out. Given the funds and the space, I would probably have lots of these books as well. But generally, I bee-line to the CODEX tables that have executed their craft on something readable. Continue reading

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Dante’s Inferno; Published by Thornwillow Press

Inferno Header-2Inferno Header-1“Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura…” “…Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself in a dark wilderness.”

So begins Dante’s Inferno, the first in the trilogy that makes up The Divine Comedy. Continue reading

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The Intruder; Published by Midnight Paper Sales

Intruder-1I have always been intrigued by Gaylord Schanilec’s work but have never had much opportunity to spend time with any of his books other than quick glances at CODEX. That changed when I noticed a friend’s name in a colophon to one of his books on an Oak Knoll Books mailing. Franny Bannen is not exactly a common name, and knowing that she had taken some bookmaking classes at Mill College left me little doubt that this was indeed a book that my book artist friend had a hand in. How did I not know this? I instantly tried to purchase the book only to find that in the hour or so since I got the email, it had already been snatched up. Luckily, they also had this book that Franny had worked on. We staff together at an camp for unschoolers every year and I proudly showed it to her and it was wonderful seeing her face light up when she saw it. Like seeing one of you children after a long time away. I will be having her sign my copy. What a delight for a book lover to own books whose creation your friends and family have had a hand in! My daughter had a short stint working at Arion Press and I have the joy of owning a few books with her name in the colophon. Continue reading

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