A gorgeous and thoughtful overview that will bring joy to any bibliophile.
A tribute to literary oases.
Mollier and Sorel are French, so it makes sense that the scholars of the history of bookselling begin their global photographic tour of bookstores in their home country. Beyond any practical considerations, there’s good reason to start in France: It is, they write, “a world leader in book outlets per capita, and the first country to pass a law to protect ‘bibliodiversity’”—restricting online retailers from undercutting the country’s 3,500 independent bookstores. “Bookdealers have always been highly vulnerable,” the authors add, “whether burned at the stake in the sixteenth century (like Michel Servet in Geneva and Étienne Dolet in Paris), heavily fined in London in the late nineteenth century (like Henry Vizetelly, guilty of selling the English translation of Émile Zola’s allegedly ‘obscene’ The Soil), or imprisoned in Brazil in the late twentieth century, for selling Marxist literature during the military dictatorship.” This book can therefore be read as a celebration of a trade that has existed against all odds. Readers will be familiar with many of the beloved shops featured here. In Paris, there is Shakespeare and Company, the English-language store that has attracted readers since the 1950s. Vibrant photographs capture its charm, from its wood beam ceilings to its upright piano. We see graceful interior and exterior shots of London’s capacious Foyles, as well as the equally mighty Strand Bookstore in New York City and Powell’s Books in Portland. Happily, the book highlights many lesser-known stores, including ones in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. In Cameroon, the authors write, the Librairie des Peuples Noirs—the Black Peoples’ Bookshop—“symbolizes the struggle of its founder, Mongo Beti, and of all African people to make their rights and cultures known.” As the authors observe, “Bookstores are surprisingly diverse and inventive….Gigantic or tiny, with or without a roof, fixed or itinerant, bookshops all convey the same love of books—a love that brings people together.”
A gorgeous and thoughtful overview that will bring joy to any bibliophile.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9780789215161
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Abbeville Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2025
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
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