Books about town - City & Bloomsbury Trails

I love a charity art hunt and the big egg hunt was very disappointing this year - rows of eggs in Covent Garden is not an egg hunt!

Hello, books about town! These are benches that look like a big book, each illustrated by a different artist to convey a different book and all to promote literacy. Come October, the benches will be auctioned and the proceeds will go to the National Literacy Trust.

It's a really fun way to explore London, support a charity and see some free art. And I love books! Yay! Yay!

They even provide maps, tick lists and quizzes on the website. My love of ticking off lists loves this!

Noughts & Crosses - Malorie Blackman - City Trail

Tick List!

Cricketers Almanack - City Trail

The Lion, the witch & the wardrobe - CS Lewis - Bloomsbury Trail

JM Barrie - Bloomsbury Trail

James Bond & Agatha Christie - Bloomsbury Trail

Next stops: Riverside trail and Greenwich trail!

Links:

Books about town

Peter Pan illustrations by Anne Grahame Johnstone

These are my favourite Peter Pan illustrations and this was my childhood copy of Peter Pan. It was abridged (boo) and I didn't actually read proper Peter Pan until I was grown up. Likewise with Little Women.

These pictures are so pretty though and so magical. I love the clothes made of leaves and Tinkerbell's fancy little house with cobweb curtains. Happy sigh.

Picture This at the British Library

This tiny exhibition is charming but for me, frustratingly small. Only really because I love classic children's books and illustrations and felt greedy for more, more, more stories and more pictures and more information.

However it is free and worth a visit. I may even go again. It shows how different illustrators have illustrated stories including The Secret Garden, Peter Pan, The Hobbit, Paddington (original Paddington Bear below) etc.

I was disappointed that my favourite Peter Pan illustrations weren't there though!

British Library

Foyles

The window displays have always been pretty. I particularly like this butterfly poster for summer reading promotion. Look at the common reader!! Foyles seems to be doing ok in this time of failing bookshops. Poor bookshops :( I hope they survive. Not that I help...I get my books from the library or charity shops or amazon. Boo.

Book Club Boutique - Sophia Blackwell

Yesterday a friend and I went to the Bookclub Boutique at Blacks in Soho. It was very lovely, charming and intimate with open fires, sofas and writers reading stories, poetry and singing. It was Alice in Wonderland/fairy tale themed - how perfect for me! We did feel a little awkward, being somewhat shy and everyone appeared to know each other, although they seemed nice.

Highlights for me were Salena Godden making up an excellent song, on the spot, about Alice in an artichoke, Rachel Rose Reid telling a story about seals and Sophia Blackwell's poems.

There was gin to be drunk from teacups too, though I stuck to regular tea. We were too hungry to stay to the end though so we had to leave around 8:30 and didn't see everything. It goes on from 3 til 12. I think you can get food there but don't know what it costs! We went to Crepe Affaire, and enjoyed teapigs and crepes. Then found out afterward that they don't use free range eggs. So I won't be returning. Why on earth do they bother using organic flour but not eggs??? It puzzles me.

I think I will be returning to Book Club Boutique though.

tales from outer suburbia - shaun tan

I think this is more a book for adults than children, but we sell it from the children's section at work. It's a beautiful illustrated book with odd disjointed little stories mixing imagination with suburban life.

http://www.shauntan.net/

New home - decorated by shadow and books!

I made these shadow lamps about 3 years ago, and they have never given so good an effect as they do in out new little flat. Mr Emmie and I have just moved, cramming ourselves into a little studio...so far it seems fine, nice and cosy :) and I'm thrilled with the beautiful shadows. I almost don't wnt to hang my Babar picture...

15 books

Note 15 books that have made their mark on you and will always stick with you, for whatever reason.

These are mostly childhood books...Anyone read any of these and love them like I do? What are your important books?

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Ok so if this isn't genius, what is? P&P spliced with zombie action! With illustrations!? Extreme joy! I need it.

Book Colours....reorganising the bookshelf...

I was overcome by a bizarre urge to organise my books by colour :D All I feel now, is why did I never do this before! Eggs.

Also, not just for me, but for my project...hello colours!

Brian Dettmer

Mmmmm book art.

Su Blackwell

Su Blackwell's work is so beautiful and so exactly what I love - storytelling and books come alive. I went to a talk last night with Su Blackwell and the editor of Crafts magazine at Borders. Her work is all based on stories and fragility. Stuff she said that I liked: "books going back to trees" and " half this world half book world".

Days of Reading - Proust

Favourite quote -

"For me, voluntary memory, which is above all a memory of the intellect and of the eyes, gives us only facets of the past that have no truth; but should a smell or a taste, met with again in quite different circumstances, reawaken the past in us, in spite of ourselves, we sense how different the past was from what we thought we had remembered, our voluntary memory having painted it, like a bad painter, in false colours."

There was also a long memory description of stolen moments reading as a child and it reminded me of myself reading as a child <3

The Lamp of Memory by Ruskin

I'm borrowing some of the new Penguin Great Ideas range from work. They are such beautiful little embossed matt books :D I read this one too quickly and it was difficult. I probably shouldn't have but the superior tone grated on me and it was quite religious too. But I could agree with some stuff he was saying like that we don't appreciate things enough and that understand their meanings. And that architecture is full of memory and meaning, it contains the past? There was a huge section in Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame saying the exact same thing I think. Anyway I think Ruskin reckons we should take as much care over the building of our own house as of like a cathedral, it should be as beautiful and well loved. I think I see, like if we took care, put our hearts into our homes and everything, we wouldn't throw away and consume so much?

Wanted

I watched the film and read the graphic novel. I enjoyed both. Very fun. I enjoyed the slick fantastical violence in the film. (is that wrong?) The stories are completely different just with the same sort of theme of everyone does nothing and are dissatisfied and they should do something? The comic had a bit too much rape and shit in it though...I was embarrassed cuz I could sense people next to me on the bus looking over my shoulder. Lolz.

Fraction of the Whole

I've been rubbish at updating lately...my excuse is I've been adjusting to working full time at the bookshop again plus 2 hours commute each way each day. It's a nice job though..and I get to borrow books. I'm reading one with a really pretty cover atm. It's on the booker longlist - Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz. About a father and son and their fucked up relationship and lives. I like it so far. The dad hates people and builds a giant maze around their house :D Egggs. I took the picture from Amazon as you can tell by the orange arrow sneaking on but isn't it pretty. The book is pink and the cover is beige with holes cut out :)

Lactaid Dreams by Kozyndan

This colouring book looks amaaaazing :D i NEED it.

"Kozyndan are Los Angeles based mad scientists/artists/ illustrators/lovers/ dorks who appreciate and revel in the absurdity of the contemporary world. Their digitally painted pencil drawings reflect the dichotomy of being at once in love with and repulsed by the rampant urban sprawl, technology and the disconnection with the natural world so many people are faced with today."

Ah that is so true...<3

http://www.kozyndan.com/lactaid_dreams_pages.html

http://www.magic-pony.com/gallery/kozyndan/index.htm

Griffin and Sabine

Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock is beautiful :D It's like The Jolly Postman for grown ups! Letters you take out of envelopes and read. It feels so intimate. A correspondence between Grffin and Sabine who have never met. It's a little magical and very charming and the illustrations make me very happy. Strange animals, weird things and detail :D It's a trilogy, I so want the other two!

James Lovelock - The Revenge of Gaia

This book has left me feeling terrified and hopeless. It is a good book though and I've learnt alot from it, how every aspect of the planet affects each other and works together. And how people are over paranoid about certain things yet do nothing really about climate change. That like during war, people accept hardship and rationing, that we could pull together and do something, and yet we don't, we won't really believe we need to until something catastrophic happens. By which time it may be too late if it's not already.

I now understand that we need to use nuclear power and stop using fossil fuel asap. Nuclear is less wasteful, more efficient, less harmful to the planet. Renewable energy isn't advanced enough for our needs yet and we need nuclear until it is. We are paranoid about nuclear for the wrong reasons, it is dangerous but we don't mind many more dangerous things.Lovelock uses a village near a dam in China and a village near Chernobyl as an example. About 75 people died as a result of Chernobyl. If the dam burst, millions would die.

I've been feeling like what can I do, I can't persuade people to accept nuclear energy, I can't get nuclear power stations built. I can't change peoples opinions and behaviour. Other folks like James Lovelock are trying and not really succeeding. Yeah he got me, but I aint doing anything. And I almost didn't read the book because it had gaia in the title and I thought it was some hippy book. I read it because it was borrowed to me. People who don't already care about the environment probably won't read it. Then again, like Lovelock says, fiction gets through to people. Maybe design too. Maybe I can do something... Bah. So much to think about :( I don't want to preach to people or anything. And there's so much I don't understand.