blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

In 1986, Wole Soyinka became the first African to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Soyinka's legacy is bound up in the numerous plays, novels, short stories, essays, memoirs, movies, and translations which he has authored. And throughout his life, he has served as a spokesman against apartheid and government corruption. He has won numerous other awards for his work, including the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Academy of Achievement Golden Plate Award, and the Agip Prize for Literature, and he has taught at many prestigious universities including Emory University, Harvard, and Obafemi Awolowo University.

Wood engraving is perhaps one of the most amazing art forms known to man. Often, wood engravings are found in older collectible books as well as in modern-day fine press books. But unfortunately, the art form can often be missed in the more mainstream world of book collecting and art. Today we'd like to change that by sharing a collection of videos about the wood engraving process.

Even if you’ve never read Dean Koontz’s books, you’ve certainly seen them around. Whether in airports, used bookshops, or your aunt’s living room, the work of Koontz litters shelves and stands all over the world. It makes sense, too. At age 70, Dean Koontz has placed himself among the top twenty best-selling authors of all time, with more books in circulation than either Stephen King or James Patterson.

“A place where there was nothing but land: not a country at all, but the materials out of which countries were made.”

A bleak sentiment, yes, but perhaps one that has been the basis for some of the most stark, intimate, and revealing writing in the American literary tradition. Taken from the mind of Jim Burden, the central character in Willa Cather’s masterpiece novel, My Antonia (1918), this moment expresses a place where imagination, creativity, and fortitude are not merely boons to intellectual survival: they’re essential. But perhaps it makes sense that these aforementioned qualities are also often found in the lives and stories of some of America’s most famous authors.

With any series of novels, there comes a pivot point—a moment when the author decides to move away from familiar themes and tropes in the hopes of breaking new ground for his characters and worlds, exploring previously untapped themes and ideas in an effort to create greater depth and complexity for his readers. One could argue Ian Fleming’s fourth James Bond novel, Diamonds Are Forever, is just such a pivot point.

Today, we’d like to tackle the topic of collecting art books. Before we begin, it’s necessary to define what exactly “collecting art books” means. In fact, it can mean different things to different people, and this blog post certainly won’t be an all-inclusive list. For the sake of this post, we’ll discuss four variations on the collecting art book's theme. First, we’ll focus on collecting books of artists’ art work. Second, we’ll document some great books about art, from its history to key players in the art scene, both past and present. Then, we’ll shift our attention to collecting books by famous illustrators; such books are magnificent in their own right. Finally, we’ll discuss books as art and the art of fine press books. Read on for tips to get started with or continue your own art books collection.

The term “Founding Fathers” was coined by a speechwriter named Judson Welliver. He wrote under the administration of Warren G. Harding, who said the phrase nearly a century after the last of that group perished—the fourth president James Madison, who died in the year 1836. Yet even before they had a collective name, the legacies of the founders were constantly being reinterpreted.

Even today, Franz Kafka remains one of the most celebrated practitioners of absurdism that the world of letters has ever known. Born to an Austrian Jewish family around the turn of the 20th Century, Kafka spent most of his life working in obscurity, paying the bills with an insurance job that he reportedly loathed, only to gain a huge audience after his death on the strength of such classics as The Trial (1925) and The Metamorphosis (1915). Here are some interesting facts about him.

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel passed away on July 2, 2016. Wiesel was born in Sighet, Romania in 1928, and is best known for his voice as a Holocaust survivor and advocate for peace. Wiesel’s family was separated during World War II when the German army deported their Jewish community of Sighet to Auschwitz-Birkenau. His father died just weeks before the camp was liberated by American troops in 1945. After the war, Wiesel was reunited with two of his three sisters in France; his mother and youngest sister did not survive.

Collecting the works of Nobel laureates makes sense. There’s a definable list of winners. The winners are the best-of-the-best. And, your collection can span titles from authors the world over. Or, if you prefer, it can be focused on a specific genre, idea, or region. If you’re interested in Italian Nobel Prize in Literature winners—in total, six individuals from Italy have been awarded the Prize—today we spotlight the most recent winners: Eugenio Montale and Dario Fo. For more information on our previous Italian Nobel Prize in Literature winner spotlights, see the end of the post.