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Browse Before you Buy

We know not to judge a book by its cover, but even so it’s hard to resist buying every expertly designed publication included in the Book Cover Archive.

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The Winter Olympics are almost here…

Marquand Books’ Seattle office is a stone’s throw from Vancouver, so it’s hard to resist the excitement surrounding the 2010 Winter Olympics, especially since we’ve just finished producing the exhibition catalogue Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man for the Vancouver Art Gallery. The anticipated exhibit, in association with the Royal Collection, features drawings loaned by Queen Elizabeth II for the Winter Games.

Our friends over at Chronicle Books have the perfect reads to help you imagine you’re in the center of Olympics action if, like us, you’re watching from home. Chronicle is offering a trio of Canada-centric titles, including the ever-compelling So you Want to be Canadian and City Walks Vancouver: 50 Adventures on Foot, available here.

A peek at this month in the blogosphere

We here at Marquand Books like not only to write our own blog; we also enjoy seeing what others are blogging about and have to say.

In the Seattle PI’s Reader Blogs, Jeremy Tolbert keeps us posted on the latest happenings around the city. This month author Katharine Harmon is visiting the Ballard Public Library on January 21st at 6:30pm to talk about her new book, The Map As Art, a gathering of images by artists “whose maps to are used to express their visions.”

On Book Patrol: A Haven for Book Culture, Michael Lieberman speaks to the collector of “the world’s largest private collection of rare books on Haiti,” Robert Corbett.

In case you haven’t heard yet, as of January 11th, the New York Times Books blog, the Book Design Review, will be on indefinite hiatus. You will still be able to follow Joseph Sullivan on Twitter, and he suggests that you follow the Casual Optimist, Faceout Books, and the Book Cover Archive for any book-design-commentary needs he will no longer be filling.

Seattle Bookselling News Roundup

Bookselling has held an uncharacteristically prominent place in Seattle newspapers and Web sites of late. Elliott Bay Book Company, the flagship retailer in the historic Pioneer Square neighborhood, is moving to the Pike and Pine corridor on Capitol Hill. Bailey/Coy Books, the longtime Broadway bookseller, has closed its doors. Everyone agrees that bookselling in Seattle is changing. But there’s plenty of disagreement about what the change means.

Here’s a roundup of relevant stories. This collection represents but a small fraction of the ink spilled and pixels lit about the changes afoot for bookselling in Seattle.

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2009 Holiday Gift Book Ideas from Marquand Books & iocolor

It’s been a busy year, but we still managed to squeeze some reading time in, and we are all looking forward to reading a few more in the coming year.  Here are a few hand-picked gift recommendations from the Marquand Books and iocolor staff:

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Handmade Books and Letterpress Ephemera in Tieton

Ed recently transformed a space by the windows inside our Tieton Book Arts studio, home of Marquand Editions, into an arty general store of sorts. Here are a few recent photos from the space, offering Marquand Ephemera, handmade blank books and Spines and Memories chapbooks amongst other keepsakes and curiosities:

If you’re in the area, stop by.

Contemporary Art Reading Room Coming to Essex Street

On-line magazine and art network e-flux is opening a reading room in Manhattan’s Lower East Side next week. It will house more than 2,000 art and design publications from around the globe:

The reading room is a rapidly growing collection of several thousand books on contemporary art exhibitions open to the public at 41 Essex Street. The books have been donated by numerous art institutions and individuals from all parts of the world and reflect some of the more interesting developments in art of the past decade.”

Contributors will include the Blanton Museum of Art, PS1, Miami Design District, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, and Weatherspoon Art Museum.

The opening party is Friday, August 28th at 6 p.m. 41 Essex Street. Regular hours will be Tuesday through Saturday, 12-6 p.m.

Required Reading for Art Publishers

Jamie Camplin, managing director of Thames & Hudson, wrote an opinion piece for the June 2009 Art Newspaper that should be required reading for all art and museum publishers.

It raises the question: if art book publishing is to remain vital, how do we keep producing fresh, thoughtful publications at a reasonable price point? Read the article here.

Summer Reading Picks from the Marquand Staff

Now that the weather is finally starting to warm up in Seattle, the staff at Marquand had some fun cherry-picking books fit for long, lazy days of summer reading. Here’s a handful of our favorites:

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A Serious Library

A well-written commentary in the Wall Street Journal by voracious reader Luc Sante on why reading and owning bound books is, and will remain, a very good thing:

As far as the decline of reading goes, I am nervous, but also believe that matters of taste and inclination do swing around on long orbits. But I would very much miss books as material objects were they to disappear. The tactility of books assists my memory, for one thing. I can’t remember the quote I’m searching for, or maybe even the title of the work that contains it, but I can remember that the book is green, that the margins are unusually wide, and that the quote lies two-thirds of the way down a right-hand page.

Read the full article here.