blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

More than a decade. That’s how much time elapsed between adventures of the world’s most famous superspy, James Bond. Following the publication of the first post-Ian Fleming 007 novel, Colonel Sun in 1968, the Bond series went into hiatus for roughly 13 years before Glidrose Publications (now named Ian Fleming Publications) approached noted British spy and literary thriller writer John Gardner to revive the series in the late 1970s.

After several years of negotiations, Gardner agreed to take up the 007 mantle and relaunched the 007 series with the 1981 publication of License Renewed, an aggressive reboot and branding of the series that thrust Bond into a new era. With new themes, tropes, villains, and geopolitical concerns, Gardner’s foray into the James Bond world beginning with License Renewed brought new life into the 007 series at a time when many fans believed the novelizations to be a relic of the past.

If you’re interested in twentieth-century poetry, Richard Wilbur should be on your reading list. Born in New York City, Wilbur became the second United States Poet Laureate in 1987. His poems draw on a number of life experiences—including his time of service during World War II. When he took his post as Poet Laureate, Librarian of Congress Daniel J. Boorstin described him as “a poet for all of us, whose elegant words brim with wit and paradox.”

Writing has always existed as a means to explore the realities of the world, to illuminate both the good and the bad. As long as people have been writing, they have been writing about the world around them, and in many ways, the relationship between art and politics—writing and politics, to be specific—is inexorable. Aristotle wrote his Politics in the 4th century. Jonathan Swift wrote A Modest Proposal, his satire on the Irish potato famine, in 1729. Anna Laetitia Barbauld wrote her critiques of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars not long after. There is a long history of writers using their voices to draw attention to the most important issues of their time. Here are some writers who meld writing with activism and advocacy to great and enduring effect.

The enormity of Nelson Mandela’s influence on the world is undeniable. He fought for years against apartheid in South Africa, suffering a long imprisonment and a constant stream of indignities en route to dismantling the South African National Party’s legally codified racism, becoming the first black president of South Africa, and winning the Nobel Peace Prize. Given the number of lives he touched in carrying out his work, it should come as little surprise that his influence has extended beyond politics and human rights to the world of literature.

Deconstructionism is one of the most significant intellectual movements of the 20th century, having helped to usher the post-structuralist era and having had wide implications for the study of history, literature, and philosophy. As a method for criticism, it has been practiced by Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller, but the term and technique were both originally coined by Jacques Derrida in his seminal work Of Grammatology (1967). For all of its influence on the intellectual landscape of the 20th and 21st centuries, however, it can be a difficult concept to describe or understand. For starters, however, Derrida’s version of what deconstruction means is simple: everyone is basically just MacGyver.   

Thrillers are characterized by suspense—a feeling of pleasurable fascination and excitement over what is to come next, mixed in with apprehension, anticipation, and sometimes even, fear. These feelings develop throughout a narrative from unpredictable events that make the reader or viewer think about the consequences of certain characters’ actions. The suspenseful feelings build towards a climax that is sure to be memorable.

With suspense and crime, with conspiracies and revenge, the thriller genre has been keeping audiences on their toes with tension and excitement for centuries. When it comes to thrillers, many think of Alfred Hitchcock and his movies, like Psycho (1960) and Frenzy (1972), that contain storylines of embezzlement, murder, wrong accusations, and more. However, the thriller genre began much before these movies ever hit the big screen. Let's take a look at a brief history of the thriller genre.

Given that Kraków, Poland is a UNESCO City of Literature, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Kraków is where the Nobel Prize-winning poet Czesław Miłosz (pronounced CHESS-wahf MEE-wosh) made his home until his death in 2004. Indeed, in addition to national presses, there are numerous independent book publishers located throughout Kraków, and there are nearly 80 bookstores throughout the city. Moreover, the city hosts international books fairs and literary festivals on an annual basis, including the Miłosz Festival, which honors the late poet and brings literary guests to the city every June. If you’re hoping to visit Miłosz’s home, you won’t find a museum space like those dedicated to many other writers in cities across the world. However, you can still stand outside the apartment building where the Nobel Prize winner lived, and you can experience the city of Kraków largely as Miłosz would have seen it in the final years of his life.

In 1955, writer Kay Thompson and illustrator Hilary Knight published Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown-ups. Interestingly, as the original title suggests, the Eloise books were first marketed to adults—perhaps it was an early sign that they would be a hit with children, as well.  In 1969, the title changed simply to Eloise, leaving out the “grown-ups” part, but the spirit of Eloise as a both mature and juvenile girl was already set. Ever since, she has been the rare sort of character that grows with the reader, coming to mean different things in all stages of life.

Maycomb County is a small, unassuming town, nestled in the state of Alabama. Many of us have been there (I myself have visited several times throughout the years) to check in on the beloved Finch family. When Harper Lee’s fictional southern story, To Kill a Mockingbird was published in 1960, the reception was quite positive. Readers and critics alike praised Lee’s eclectic characters and important life lessons. Let's take a look at some of these positive reviews while also addressing the later change in tune regarding this seminal work.

Will you be traveling to Poland anytime soon? There’s no better country in Eastern Europe to seek out rare and antiquarian books, and in fact, we’re pretty well convinced that Kraków and Warsaw contain some of our favorite rare bookshops in the world.