Books Tell You Why. All About Collecting Rare Books

What Were Americans Reading When We Landed on the Moon?

By Brian Hoey. Jul 19, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Sometime around Thanksgiving 1862, Harriet Beecher Stowe, author Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), met sitting-president Abraham Lincoln. Upon the initial introduction, Lincoln famously quipped, “So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” Accounts of the exact wording vary, and in fact the whole story may be apocryphal, but it still speaks to the way that art and media help us make sense of history as it unfolds around us. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (or, if not Stowe’s novel, then perhaps works like Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1961) or 1845's The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass) gave 19th century readers new ways of understanding the “peculiar institution” over which the Civil War would be fought. As the war progressed, books like these continued to act as touchstones for anyone seeking to understand the conflict, the nation, and the world.

Dan Brown’s Rules for Storytelling Are… Actually Pretty Sound?

By Brian Hoey. Jun 22, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Movie Tie-Ins

Love him or hate him, Dan Brown has had an outsized impact on Anglophone pop culture since his breakout novel, The Da Vinci Code (2003) was released 16 years ago. Harvard Professor of Religious Symbology Robert Langdon burst onto the scene like an apres-garde Indiana Jones and gave a generation of readers and filmgoers a slightly dubious lesson in religious history. Since then, things like the Malthusian Tragic (Thomas Robert Malthus—the population growth alarmist who bears a striking philosophical resemblance to Marvel’s Thanos—figures prominently in Da Vinci’s 2013 follow-up, Inferno) and The Gnostic Gospels (a series of Coptic texts that present a portrait of Jesus Christ that diverges sometimes radically from the four canonical gospels) have become (comparatively) common nodes in the cultural consciousness.

The Wonderful Adaptations of Oz

By Abigail Bekx. May 15, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Children's Books, Movie Tie-Ins

With advancing technology, it is becoming less and less rare for an adaptation to be better known than an original work, especially if the original work is a book. First published in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and its 13 sequels, has long been a favorite of readers. The world of Oz Baum created grabs hold of the imagination. As a result, it has led many writers to add their own interpretation and work to the magical land of Oz. In addition to the written works, Baum’s world has become a cultural icon due, in part, to the many film, television, and stage productions adapted from the original story.

Ten Things You Didn't Know about Breakfast at Tiffany's

By Kristin Masters. May 4, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Movie Tie-Ins, Modern First Editions

Truman Capote is a legendary American author who penned such classics as In Cold Blood and Other Voices, Other Rooms. But Breakfast at Tiffany's is undoubtedly Capote's most beloved work. Adapted into both a movie and a musical, the story has enraptured generation after generation. The novella remains a favorite among rare book collectors. Here are a few tidbits you probably didn't know about this iconic story.

Climbing Into Jon Krakauer, Legendary Mountaineering Author

By Lauren Corba. Apr 12, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Movie Tie-Ins

American writer and outdoorsman Jon Krakauer was born April 12, 1954. He was raised in Corvallis, Oregon and was first acquainted with mountain climbing when he was eight years old. He attended Hampshire College in Massachusetts where he graduated in 1976 with a degree in Environmental Studies. Following his time at university, Krakauer moved around the States, living in Colorado, Alaska, and the Pacific Northwest. He worked as a commercial fisherman and a carpenter to support himself while he pursued his love for nature and rock climbing.

Movie Tie-Ins: Sturges' and Tracy's Old Man and the Sea

By Adrienne Rivera. Apr 5, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Legendary Authors, Awarded Books, Movie Tie-Ins

Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961) is universally considered one of the most important writers of the 20th century and certainly one of the most influential writers of the American literary canon. Hemingway's career stretched over three decades of war. He wrote travel journalism, seven novels, numerous novellas, short story collections, and works of nonfiction. His novels For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms, and The Sun Also Rises are considered to be some of the most important works of literature written in the English language.

Hemingway's style has served as an influence to generations of writers and has helped form the landscape of modern American literature. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize in Literature, two of the highest honors a writer can receive. His work has been adapted numerous times for both television and film. One of the most notable adaptations of a beloved Hemingway novel is the 1958 film adaptation of The Old Man and the Sea starring Spencer Tracy.

Netflix Announces New Tolkien Adaptation Slated for 2021

By Brian Hoey. Apr 1, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Movie Tie-Ins, J. R. R. Tolkien

For years now, film and television producers have been battling each other to create the one piece of fantasy media that will dominate all others. There was New Line’s Lord of the Rings (2001-2003) adaptions, HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-2019) series, New Line’s subsequent Hobbit (2012-2014) trilogy, and now, as of a blockbuster 2017 deal, Amazon Studios will be producing at least five seasons worth of television based on Tolkien’s iconic mythos and characters—a show that they, like those that have gone before them, hope will be the one series to rule them all. In this regard, it sometimes feels like these studios missed the point of Tolkien’s story entirely.

John Fowles, A Solitary Non-Conformist

By Andrea Koczela. Mar 31, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Literature, Movie Tie-Ins

"What interests me about novelists as a species is the obsessiveness of the activity, the fact that novelists have to go on writing. I think that probably must come from a sense of the irrecoverable. In every novelist's life there is some more acute sense of loss than with other people, and I suppose I must have felt that. I didn't realize it, I suppose, till the last ten or fifteen years. In fact you have to write novels to begin to understand this. There's a kind of backwardness in the novel…an attempt to get back to a lost world." ~John Fowles, 1977 BBC interview

This week we celebrate author John Fowles, named by The Times as one of Britain's greatest writers. Best known for his novels The Collector (1963), The Magus (1966), and The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969), Fowles' work is most often categorized between modernism and postmodernism.

Top Ten Movies Inspired By Great Books

By Kristin Masters. Feb 22, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Literature, Movie Tie-Ins

The 91st Academy Awards are set to take place on February 24, 2019. Of course, this got us thinking about book-to-movie adaptations. Here's a look at some of our favorites, in no particular order. What would you add to the list?

The Origin of Donaldists: How Micky Maus Became a Bestselling Magazine

By Brian Hoey. Jan 23, 2019. 9:00 AM.

Topics: Children's Books, Movie Tie-Ins

In Germany, to this day, there are so-called Donaldists: men and women who apply rigorous scientific and anthropological methods to understanding the world of Donald Duck and Duckburg, his hometown. That’s right, in Germany, Donald Duck—not Mickey Mouse—is the star. He’s the reason that Micky Maus, the German-language Disney comic magazine, is the fourth best-selling comic magazine of all time, surpassing a billion sales over the course of its 60+ year run. Considering that no other Disney comics rank so highly in their respective formats, the tremendous ongoing success of Micky Maus warrants some explanation. How did these magazines become best-sellers—and how did Donald Duck surpass the world’s most iconic small rodent in popularity?