There is a handful of English bookshops in Paris, for those who know where to find them. Yet none of them are as famous as the one standing in the shadows of Notre-Dame, the one with yellow and green lettering. The one known as Shakespeare and Company.
The heart of World Book Day is encouraging book haters to become book lovers, to tackle the elitist stereotypes around reading, to give a child a form of escapism. How can we not justify this scheme being useful for adults?
Rainbow colour-coded bookshelves, special edition hardbacks surrounded by fairy lights, atmospheric coffee shop scenes with a splayed open paperback on the table – this is what you can expect to see when scrolling through the 39 million posts under the ‘bookstagram’ hashtag on Instagram.
On the 21st January 2020, Alex Cristofi went from the peaceful quiet life of editor and author to being branded as a “book murderer”. Cristofi had, as his crime, cut three large books in half to make them easier to carry and read.
On 21st January 2020, the University of Liverpool’s Library tweeted an image with the caption: ‘This is not a bookmark.’ This firm declarative was in relation to a photograph of a piece of plastic wrapped sliced cheese which had been left in a library book.
Books have been part of our existence for thousands of years. In the Middle Ages books and manuscripts were one of the main source of “material” knowledge. Through books, a small number of people learned their history, how society works, how to flirt… almost everything.
Art is part of our everyday life. We read when we travel, we turn on the stereo after a long day, we coexist with art. However, even though we are strongly connected to art, we are drawing away from it by separating ourselves from the process of making art.
In 1932, the father of Futurism, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, unveiled his Futurist Words in Freedom: Olfactory, Tactile, Thermal, an object now known as the ‘tin book’. Comprised of 30 aluminium pages lithographed […]
by Elżbieta Piepiórka Value is relative. To some, Jane Austen is a genius. Others can’t comprehend why she was published. Sentimental, literary, academic values – these vary depending on our individual experiences and […]
by Elżbieta Piepiórka Are the rumours true or are things not as they appear? Find out by following me down the rabbit hole, into the second-hand bookshop wonderland. Bibliophiles will agree that second-hand […]
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