bookspile

moving onto another project

louisa mae — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:32:58 +0000

We Love Your Books included my submission for the Closure exhibition this year which I was really thrilled about. It was great to be included in such a diverse range of bookworks, a great show. The next theme is ‘Emotive’. But it’s giving me problems. I can choose from the letter E, Motive, or Emotive, and I need to choose soon so that I can begin work on the book. But it’s difficult for some reason.
I’ll have to stop mooching about it and get some ideas trapped into a sketch book. In the meantime I’m going to have another look at all the gorgeous bindings on the Society of Bookbinders site.

ready to start the real slog

louisa mae — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:42:58 +0000

Certainly more of a fiddle to bind when it’s loose pages but no slipping mountain of manuscript. Also it is A6, meaning less paper, less ink and less bulk, despite its brick-like qualities.

new old Nabokov

louisa mae — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:37:31 +0000

Now I would like to see the makers of the Kindle and their ilk try to better the new nabokov on e-paper. I am looking forward to being able to (carefully) rip out the index cards and shuffle them about. Whatever you happen to think about the man, or his writing, the chance to see the process if not the finished product – gah how many will try to write it for him? – is something you don’t get all that often and something to be glad of, despite the fact that Nabokov didn’t want it circulated. So I wait for my copy in great anticipation and have procrastinated enough with it – back to my own unfinished novel.

kindles, the horror!

louisa mae — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:56:17 +0000

The kindle kindles selfishness. One of the greatest pleasures of books is being able to lend or give to someone a book you have just read and enjoyed, or read a long time ago, but still have on your shelf. Having a shelf of books for everyone to see to browse to pick randomly from. This is one of the things which makes a home a home which is inviting and welcoming, in my experience. Even if you are a new acquaintance, and feel shy about taking a book off the shelf, you can at least browse the shelf and if there is a book you have both read, there is an instant topic of conversation.
If all you have is a kindle, stocked with a private cache of words, that whole part, experience, resource, is lost. You can’t lend a book from a kindle, you can’t print it out. Books, paper books have a binding effect between people; kindles, and their species, only kindle the flame of destruction.

tabulator

louisa mae — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 15:42:47 +0000

my scruffy desktop sketch for november. i was inspired by all the nanowrimo calendars which have been posted by some of the other nanoers this year, but i couldn’t use anything so stylish and slick! it has to be personal to me, which means making a sketch with pen and a bottle of india ink, and a rubber stamp kit.

getting ready for nanowrimo

louisa mae — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:42:36 +0000

Finished this notebook for NaNoWriMo 2009 today. The leather for the binding was a leftover trial of a design in silver foil, which was part of a commission I did this summer. I liked the effect of the silver foil looking like a really old mirror, but the motif design was not mine. I am pleased with the way my solution has turned out. The jigsaw pieces represent each 10k goal during nanowrimo and the puzzle of the unwritten novel. The motto tooled onto the pieces reads ‘cacoethes scribendi’, which roughly translated from the latin means an incurable itch/urge to write. I’m looking forward to using it. It’s a soft back binding, to reduce bulk in pockets.

The bunnies are old friends of the family, all made by me too. The brown one was spun by me also. He’s rare breed Manx, wearing a Border Leicester sweater.

closure bookwork

louisa mae — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 18:46:55 +0000

This is a double book, bound in hand-tinted goatskin, with blind-tooling and free-hand gold-tooling. There are two buckles on straps of the same leather to close the two into one volume. It has been on show this summer at the We Love Your Books ‘Closure’ exhibition in Milton Keynes, UK. And is currently on show at Northampton University till mid November.

ready for blind and gold tooling

she sells sea shells on the sea-shore

louisa mae — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:57:38 +0000

the shells she sells are sea-shells, I’m sure.

One of my favourite writers is due to host a workshop in my local library this week.

I thought I would like to go.

But then I had a horrible thought.

What if I thought he was a prat?

What if I found his voice grating?

What if I just didn’t like the way he walked?

That would spoil his fiction and poetry forever.

I’d never be able to read another line of his without being reminded.

It’s so silly, I know.

What a wasted opportunity, the reasonable me tells myself.

But still. I can’t help it. Books shouldn’t be confused with personalities.

100 books from the pile

louisa mae — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 11:23:55 +0000

Possession, by As Byatt
Angels and Insects, by AS Byatt
The Djinn in the nightingale’s eye, by A S Byatt.
Jack Maggs, by Peter Carey
Oscar and Lucinda, by Peter Carey
Theft, by Peter Carey
Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters
The Nightwatch, by Sarah Waters
The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger
Dora Damage, by Belinda Starling
On Chesil Beach, by Ian McEwan
Attonement, by Ian McEwan
The Colour, by Rose Tremain
A Winter Book, by Tove Jansson
Summer Book, by Tove Jansson
The Crimson Petal and the White, by Michel Faber
The Apple, by Michel Faber
The Love of Stones, by Tobias Hill
The Cryptographer, by Tobias Hill
Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky
The Farenheit Twins, by Michel Faber
His Illegal Self, by Peter Carey
The Steep Appraoch to Garbadale, by Iain Banks
Englyby, by Sebastian Faulks
Swithering, by Robin Robertson
The Blind Assassin, by Margaret Atwood
Oryx and Crake, by Margaret Atwood
Alias Grace, by Margaret Atwood
Music and Silence, by Rose Tremain
Restoration, by Rose Tremain
Runaway, by Alice Munro
Dance of the Happy Shades, by Alice Munro
Bookbinding by Hand, by Laurence Town
Victorian London, by Liza Picard
Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, by Alice Munro
A Dyer’s Manual, by Jill Goodwin
Alice in Exhile, by Piers Paul Reid
The Love of a Good Woman, by Allice Munro
Once, by Alice Walker
Crocodile Soup, by Julia Darling
The taxi Driver’s Daughter, by Julia Darling
Winter Trees, by Sylvia Plath
The Colossuss, by Sylvia Plath
Horses make the Lanscape look more beautiful, by Alice Walker
Serious Concerns, by Wendy Cope
Making Tea for Kingsley Amis, by Wendy Cope
Crow, by Ted Hughes
The Birthday Letters, by Ted Hughes
Ice Cream, by Helen Dunmore
Love of fat Men, by Helen Dunmore
The Seige, by Helen Dunmore
Babel Tower, by A S Byatt
Lighthouskeeping, by Jeanette Winterson
Brother of the More Famous Jack, by Barbara Trapido
The Age of Reason, by Jean Paul Sartre
Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett
Property, by Valerie Martin
The Idea of Perfection, by Kate Grenville
The Secret River, by Kate Grenville
Frenchman’s Creek, by Daphne du Maurier
The English Patient, by Michael Ondaatje
Anil’s Ghost, by Michael Ondaatje
The Piano Tuner, by Daniel Mason
The God of Small Things, by Arandhati Roy
The Ventriloquist’s Tale, by Pauline Melville
Beloved, by Toni Morrison
The Blackwater Lightship, by Colm Tóibín
The Art of Fiction, by David Lodge
Nineteen Eighty Four, by George Orwell
No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty
Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell
Black Swan Green, by David MItchell
The Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady, by Edith Holden
The Finishing School, by Muriel Spark
Tales from Ovid, by Ted Hughes
From the Beast to The Blonde, by Marina Warner
Border Crossing, by Pat Barker
Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
With your Crooked Heart, by Helen Dunmore
Enduring Love, by Ian McEwan
A Month in The Country, by J.L .Carr
Hotel World, by Ali Smith
Roget’s Thesauarus
Longitude, by Dava Sobel
A Voyage to the South, Len Tabner
Paula Rego, by John McEwen
Margaret Mee’s Amazon
Edward Thomas, Selected Poems. Bloomsbury
Teach Yourself Typewriting, Pitman’s College. 1964
Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri
What ot Look for in Summer, by E.L. Grant Waton. Illus. by C.F. Tunnicliffe, R.A
The Matisse Stories, by A.S. Byatt
Life Class, by Pat Barker
Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie
East, West, by Salman Rushdie
Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, by Louis de Bernieres
Oranges are not the only fruit, by Jeanette Winterson