When Pope Gelasius established Saint Valentines Day in 496 AD, he certainly had no idea that the holiday would persist for centuries. The holiday was first associated with romance and love during the High Middle Ages, thanks to the burgeoning tradition of courtly love in Geoffrey Chaucers day. And nothing says love like giving the perfect book! Heres a look at some favorite Valentines Day gift ideas for the bibliophile and rare book collector.
Determining the value of a book or an ephemeral object can be very difficult. While certain texts are highly sought after under almost any circumstances, some items can be very tricky. Some old books are extremely valuable, yet some old books have almost no market value at all. Some books with inscriptions have significant market value, while many books with personal or sentimental notes have little to no market value. Although the condition of a book will almost always impact the object’s value on the market, some books in quite poor condition can still be extremely valuable depending upon the provenance. In short, determining a rare book’s value is typically a holistic enterprise that involves taking into account many different factors.
If you have a book that you believe to be rare and to have significant market value, you should get in touch with a rare bookseller who can properly appraise the object for you. In the meantime, we want to provide you with some of the key elements that go into determining the value of a rare book or paper object.
Have you chosen a costume? Stocked up on candy? Planned that trick-or-treating route? That's right. Halloween is here! The myths and tales of Halloween have long captured our imagination, making the holiday a perfect match for book collectors. Classic spine tingling reads are consistent book collecting favorites.
In the United States, Mother's Day is just around the corner: the second Sunday in May. Shopping for mom can be tough! She may say she doesn't want anything in particular, or she may ask for utilitarian gifts that aren't items she'll really enjoy. But you definitely want to give a Mother's Day gift that is both meaningful and thoughtful. We've come up with a few strategies for selecting the perfect gift. Hopefully, this post will make your Mother's Day gift-giving process easier.
In 1932, Ansel Adams and ten other photographers, announced their formation of Group f/64, a group devoted to straight photography and sharp focus images. It was Edward Weston and Ansel Adams at the center of the group, helping bring the group’s ideals to national attention. They adopted the name Group f/64 in reference to the smallest aperture available for large-format view cameras, which allows the picture to achieve as sharp of focus as possible. As a whole, the group focused on landscapes or close-up photographs of natural subjects. Despite differences in subjects and personal style, their efforts to perfectly show the exact features of their subjects brought them together in a shared venture. While not all official members of Group f/64, the female photographers showing their work in the first exhibit are especially interesting. Each possessed their own style, journey, and place in the history of photography.
In the United States, there is some disagreement about when, precisely, the Christmas season starts. Extremely conservative estimates might say it starts at the beginning of Advent, some might declare the first of December to be the official start of the season, while increasingly many of us seem to have settled on the discount-fueled pandemonium of Black Friday as our starter pistol. In Iceland, on the other hand, there is no such ambiguity. The Christmas season begins with the annual November distribution of the Bokatidindi—the catalog that lists almost all of the books that will be published in Iceland during the coming two months.
After the whirlwind of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Small Business Saturday last week, today gives feasters and shoppers a chance to sit back and get some holiday shopping taken care of online. Everyone is offering deals of the century, but we have some items that you can’t find on Amazon. If you’re still in the market for a good book for anyone on your list, take some time on this Cyber Monday to browse our site. In this post, we’ve included several great titles and categories to get you started.
Happy Black Friday, shoppers! We hope you all enjoyed a lovely Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. If you are hitting the sales early this morning or easing in to the day, we have compiled a brief list of classic Christmas books that make for stellar gifts. Put one (or several) in your virtual shopping cart, and start checking names off your list. In case you missed it, last Friday, we rounded up all sorts of books that we think make excellent gifts. You can find that post here. Enjoy!
Black Friday is one week away. Are your shopping plans made? Or are you still puzzling over the perfect gift for someone in your life? Maybe you won’t even think about the holiday shopping rush for another month. In any case, we’ve put together a list of some lovely collectible books as well as some stellar reading copies that might prove to be the solution to even the trickiest of gift-giving cases. From art books to fine press titles, sports stories to suspense, we’ve got something for everyone on your list. Be sure to follow the links for more information on each book. Happy shopping to you, and happy collecting and reading to your gift recipients!
