Plurabelle Books

Calling Turkey: Research Project to Increase Book Sales to Turkish Libraries

2012-01-23T14:49:00.000-08:00

If your book-parcel weighs more than 730 grammes (0.73 Kg), then we shall send it in a blue M-Bag with such a label

Big news at Plurabelle as our new marketing strategy begins to take shape. Our aim is still the same: to increase the number of Turkish customers who visit and purchase books from Plurabelle. Turkey’s economy is flourishing, there is a well established network of universities. Our scholarly books could surely contribute to the Turkish Library system. But why have there been so few Turkish customers visiting Plurabelle during the last couple of years? We have sold 70,000 books in the last 10 years, but only a handful of these went to Turkey. Are we doing something wrong? Is there something we are missing?

This is why I, Julia, have joined this project: to investigate. I have a degree in English and I am now studying for an MA in Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University. I have joined with Michael Cahn from Plurabelle to find out if there is something we can do to increase our sales to Turkish libraries. I will try to develop relationships with librarians and make them aware of what we offer. This is a great opportunity to develop a new customer base and share the joy of Plurabelle Books in a whole new market! For me, it is also a research project which will be supervised and which will count towards my degree.

The first stage of my research project is an initial telephone survey of Turkish librarians. We have a short questionnaire designed to investigate the mystery of the missing orders from Turkey. Are there problems with the postal service? Is currency exchange a problem? Are customs procedures an issue? Do you use a consolidating service?

So if you receive a call in the next few weeks, asking intrusive questions about buying second hand books in a foreign country - it will be me, Julia, calling from among the shelves of Plurabelle.

Julia is calling

If you do have some answers to our questions, and you do not want to wait for my call, you could earn yourself credit by contacting us on: 0044 1223 415671 / SKYPE Plurabelle. We would be VERY happy to hear from you, and will honour your call with a credit of £20 to spend on books from the Plurabelle collection.

When calling, ask for either me (Julia) or Michael, but please do allow for the fact that we do not speak Turkish (Michael is a fluent German speaker), and that we are 2 hours behind you. An email will be just as valuable for us, and will earn you the same credit, but we would love to talk to our potential clients on the phone. You can also take our quick survey here.

We look forward to speaking with you!

Richard Murphy: The Courageous State

2011-11-17T14:50:00.000-08:00

Richard Murphy is a widely published anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert. His blog taxresearch.org.uk is probably the most influential economics blog in the UK.

Please join us at 6pm on Tuesday 29 November 2011for an evening with Richard Murphy, author of

The Courageous State.

His new book argues that neoliberal economics has led to weak governments who assert the supremacy of the market. This has created cowardly states: states that shun responsibility and leadership. Worse, the weak politicians who preside over such states encourage the use of tax revenue for the benefit of the private sector: Is there a way out of the "democracy" of capital which creates poverty with a click of a banker's mouse ?

That's the question Richard addresses and in doing so he raises one of the most urgent issues for today - What is the alternative that Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London and others should be demanding? He argues there is an alternative - and that it's all wrapped up in the contested notion of The Courageous State

Richard Murphy is a chartered accountant and economist at Tax Research UK. He has been called an "anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert". He was voted the seventh most influential left wing thinker in 2010/11 in a Left Foot Forward poll, making him the highest ranked UK based economist on the list. His blog taxresearch.org.uk is probably the most influential economics blog in the UK.

Plurabelle is books you don't need in a place you cannot find. Our premises are well hidden on the old Rattee & Kett site, next to Hills Road Sixth Form College. Plurabelle Books (Grey Barn, Michael Young Centre, Purbeck Rd, Cambridge CB2 8QL) has an extensive stock of more than 50,000 academic books in all subject areas. The discussion with Richard Murphy will take place in our browsing bookshop where great deals can be had for little money. We also have an extensive list of books on economic subjects, many currently offered at reduced prices

Snacks and drinks provided by searchingfinance.com, a new publishing venture set up by Ashwin Rattan. Ashwin will offer Richard Murphy's book at a specially reduced price of £ 11.- Searching Finance is currently soliciting proposals for new publishing ventures, and he looks forward to meeting authors and researchers.

Please join us and enjoy the magic atmosphere of old books to join in a discussion which could hardly be more timely and more urgent today.

RSVP: books@plurabelle.co.uk or on facebook

Cyclists are invited to complete membership forms for the Cambridge Cycling Campaign

Standing Room Only

2011-10-24T15:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks to the Cambridge Literary Review, our little bookshop has started to grow the very first roots (root hairs, apical meristem) in the delicate humus which is the local poetry scene. We had a full house last Saturday, counting 40 plus guests and leaving standing room only. The size of the audience kept us warm, literally, on a cold and windy evening. And quite a few were rolling their own - It was sad news to me that the old stupidity of smoking was again de rigeur among our poets.

John James started the evening with a intensely spiced word-bath, interested and joyfully surprised at the continuous flow of significance that his kaleidoscope of words would set free - making me, for one, eager to see the words we heard. I just caught one Joyce quotations, "silence, exile, and cunning" - many more will probably come forward when we see his work on the page.

Dell Olson read against the whisper of the ginger nuts her little boy was eating in the background, and perhaps she read also against a practice which marvels at the poetic magic of created meanings and images. She seems to take the reader on a tour of deconstructed language, such when verbs seem to go missing, and the effects are surely marvelous and taste like insight.

The former bookseller among our poets, Ian Patterson, would represent still another style of poetic practice. Sixty Windows, based on the text of novels where the word "window" occurs on page 60, is not only a commentary on some notion of poetic imagination, but also came closest to re-constitute our audience differently - through humour, and not through the quiet seriousness schooled in academic seminars, - something that is very hard to shed in a place like Cambridge. As a bookseller I tend to frown when I sell another book of humorous poetry: It seems shallow and cheap. But from the point of view of a reading, the laughter of the audience would be a worthwhile goal to pursue. Is this a challenge? Poets, if you can make us laugh, I'll get the old ashtrays out again, and you won't have to smoke out in the cold any more!

Thanks again to Lydia and Boris, to James, Dell and Ian, - we had a great evening!

More images from the event on facebook.

Eat That Book

2011-09-19T14:25:00.000-07:00

On the eve of the Cambridge conference entitled "Eating Words: Text, Image, Food", a few hardy forks assembled at our warehouse to conduct Plurabelle Edible Book 1. Designed as an improvised mixture between a seminar and a performance, the event attracted about a dozen attendees who spoke about their secret "book to mouth" desires, admitted to past bibliophagic engagements, ate a book, and watched others eating one. The typographic appetizers proved popular, Roasted Bookwheat was perhaps a bit dry, and the Bookbay Mix a bit too salty, said some. The books, however, were just right.

Plurabelle has been on the forefront of bibliophagy for a long time. As a cook may combine nutmeg and tomato sauce, balsamico and double cream, asparagus and strawberries, so we invite our website visitors to browse ourstock by freely combining subject terms on our kitchen page. We have issued "Eat more books" stickers, we have a whole gallery of how to prepare a book for consumption. We also look after our little pet crocodile in one of our shelves which says the same:

In short, the combination of our interest in the culinary enjoyment of books, and the conference entitled "Eating Words: Text, Image, Food" produced a perfect opportunity. This was the moment to leave behind the level of metaphorical signification and to get down to it. We started with Bookwheat (gluten free, of course)...

Bookwheat

and so to printed matter pure and simple

what a meal!

yummy, that was good

nice!

But what does this all mean? For a long time, literary critics subscribed to the notion (aka hermeneutic ideology) of the unlimited reach of understanding, emblematically depicted in the nail-eating ostrich.

The ostrich consumes a nail to show the ability of the understanding (spiritus) to
conquer even the most difficult material (Einaudi)

Just as the ostrich can digest nails, so the scholar of writing can make sense of the strangest book. Interpretation would never reach a limit. Perhaps Plurabelle Edible Book 1 is a parody of this founding metaphor of the discipline which continues to give us steady supply of English Majors (including this very bookseller), engaging the limits of understanding in a less then interpretative manner. Are we enacting a love-hate relationship with books, which a analyst would interpret for us, or was the event last week a way to glimpse over the walls of the interpretative attitude, into the promised land of "Stop Making Sense"?

For this reason, the true hero of the evening was the homovorous book, a highest level of the carnivorous plants

This philosophical object (Thanks Laura!) reminds us of the limits of the digestive paradigm of spiritus durissma coquit. Grammatically speaking, bibliophagy is transitive: If you devour a book, you soon enough find yourself consumed by the book. The reciprocal nature of subject and object in the process of engaging with writing offers plenty of .. food for thought.

Adriana Sorts it Out

2011-07-27T14:03:00.000-07:00

Adriana came to Cambridge to improve her English. Her English is actually very good, it just suffers from the famous final "e" which Italian speakers love to attach to an English-e word-e. A dog is a dogge, a book is a booke, and even my bike would become a bike-e. Somehow the bookseller sensed an opportunity to hide (nascondere) his own errors in Italian, and generally take advantage of a very pleasant presence.

It so happens that some books needed to be re-shelved, shelves needed to be re-sized, dusted, moments of organisational doubt were on the horizon. Books needed to be looked at, queried if they won't ever leave the premises and pay their rent. This kind of work is best done in two. One sits on the computer screen, the other stands at the shelf, and so we tried to improve the pronunciation of our Italian guest by making her shout out titles across the warehouse.

And in between, photos were taken.

Thanks, Adriana. Call again! Did your job restoring artworks work out?

Cambridge Librarians at Plurabelle

2011-07-23T14:02:00.001-07:00

Cambridge Librarians meet at Plurabelle for their annual summer party. The Cambridge Library Group is an active association of Cambridge librarians with a membership of more than 80(?). It was not one of those perfect college lawns, there were no porters, and no dons to be seen, but the trains were passing in the background.

Darren brought two right hands to get those big tables out of the warehouse, the delightful summer rain, which never fails to attend this event, was promptly seen (well, just a bit).

Those big conference table (each seats 24) were wheeled out on the lawn, filled with food and drink, and the book professionals took a good look at how we would try to recycle their unwanted stock. Who would want to spoil the fun and talk about cataloguing rules or how to identify first names?

Saxology brought five saxophonists (nice!), Ruth provided excellent Plurabelle fare (thanks!), Jillian did the local co-ordination, and at the end someone was seen disappearing on a unicycle. Amor librorum nos unit!

Selling More Books to Turkey

2011-03-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Geçmişten Günümüze Posta Kitabında kullanılan fotoğraflar

Thanks to everybody who is helping to make our little campaign into a success. Yes, Plurabelle wants to sell more books to Turkey. Why? How comes that this English bookshop with a German accent, where the manager answers to a Palestinian name, should discover Turkey? Why selling books to Turkey? - Yes, it just seems strange to some of our friends.

Well, times are difficult! We are already selling books to the obvious places, now we want to sell books to the places which are a bit less obvious. We are looking for new markets. A language we do not speak is just the right challenge. Book export is a good thing, it is not like selling weapons or drugs, - it is just about selling books. Books do good things, where-ever they go. Or perhaps we are just trying to do the less obvious, seeking the path less trodden?

So please, put away this suspicious glance, and just have a look at our shelves full of books. And in no time, a trickle of books will turn into a small rivulet. Our site lists just 15 books with the word "Turkey" in the title, three with the word "Türkei", but a few more with "Turkish" or "Turquie". Add to this ten titles published in Istanbul, a dozen published in Ankara, and another dozen written in the Turkish language - still not really enough to build a campaign to sell more books to Turkey. But we have more: We have over 50.000 titles, all exquisite quality, most written in English, some with traces from the famous Cambridge libraries, and that could well be of interest for your academic readers anywhere, also in Turkey.

Jo de Lyon / vicit Leo de tribu / Juda

2011-03-10T14:27:00.000-08:00

Now here is a nifty little book for which we are which we are looking for a new home. Published in 1510, re-make of the small volumes which Aldus Manutius invented in Venice a few years previously, inscribed along the edges with a name and a motto of the first owner, and with a long and intriguing manuscript inscription to the title page which declares this book to be a present for his friend, Joanni poligrapho Anglico, in 1514. There are a lot of stories around this special copy of Plinius Historia Naturalis, and a lot of research that has already completed. We have put all the information in one place, eleven chapters about a rare curiosity: Read all about it at http://jodelyon.blogspot.com/

Title Pages, Just Title Pages

2011-02-19T23:31:00.000-08:00

Titles Pages are very special places in any book. Printers used them to advertise their goods (literally, they were displayed in the window), their design emphasizes the selling points on the product, and the book historian of today can use them to better understand the history of books, the book-trade of the past, and the development of typography. Just think about the way in which a title page differs from a normal page of text, and imagine what a book would be like if it only contained title pages.
Well, luck will have it that we find ourselves in the possession of a book (recte: a collection) of engraved title-pages from the from the 16th and 17th century. Early on these engravings were valued as prints, and were sold separately through the specialist trade of prints. We are now selling a few of these on ebay, in case you are interested in a Rubens item, the title page of a 1680 Hollandsche Mercurius, or the title of a Dutch book on legal language which is entitled Parrot, or rather, Papegaey ofte Formulier-Boek, we would be happy to oblige. (more to come)

Quintilian, Oratoriarum Institutionum, Cologne: Cervicornus 1527

Here is a title-page for a famous rhetorical handbook by Quintilian. This edition was published in Cologne in 1527. It features Cleopatra holding two snakes to her breasts, just as Shakespeare described it, an American Indian (?) with the name tag "Dionysius", and another guy, chained (literally) by the force of words that the art of rhetoric controls. But the curious and sweet thing is how type size is employed purely graphically here, without a semantic emphasis. Big letters for the first words, never mind that they only refer to the first name of the author.

Boekenhal: A Visitor's Report

2011-02-03T23:56:00.000-08:00

This is the report from a Dutch visitor who came to our warehouse a few weeks ago on a dark and rainy night. The post has been published in Dutch on the site for a Poetry Magazine, and we are here offering a rough translation and the beautiful photos. Thanks, Joep, call again soon!

Joep Eijkens: Plurabelle Books, a book-hall in Cambridge

Plurabelle by Night

A Circular Revolving Door Frame.

Books, More Books and Boxes

View from the stairs leading to the office space

Packing Area: Here your books are being carefully packed and prepared for shipment

...a Bicycle!

"It's cold today"

Anna Livia Plurabelle

"Anyone who say they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book"

One of the best ways into a new city is the antiquarian itinerary. It may not work in all cities, but when it comes to larger towns, it is certainly worth a try. Even if you do not find good books, you will get to see parts of the city which otherwise would have remained invisible, and often it leads you to the more interesting locations.
Once I spent three days in Berlin going from one bookcase to the next along the secondhand book route.
Cambridge is not blessed in that respect, as I noted recently during a brief visit to the famous English university town. Fortunately, we found a local source, and someone pointed us - father and son - to an enormous hall full of books somewhere on an industrial estate behind the railway station.
And so we walked into the evening rain, directing our steps out of town, turn right, past the sports center, this does not look right, but suddenly a large building in front of us, clearly lettered Plurabelle Books.
Fortunately, the inside was brightly illuminated, the door was open, and suddenly we found ourselves in a large hall full of books. No less. Nobody in sight. What immediately struck me was the area which seemed designed as a small antique store.
We were already looking around for a while when we heard some noise coming from the office space above. Someone came down a staircase, a woman. She introduced herself as Laura and explained that all this was the fault of a person who currently lives in California. And that she and a few others ran the ship in his absence. Yes, we were welcome to look at the books on the wooden shelves, in the antique area, but the internet stock was not shelved for browsing, - "for that you have to use the website."
Ignoring her advice, I took a stroll along the hundreds of meters of shelves filled in the most disorderly manner with catalogued stock. Almost exclusively scientific literature. Medical reference books full of nasty diseases, books on philosophy, language studies, sociological theses.
Eventually I found a nice book on the wooden shelves set up for visitors: "Portrait of New York" by Cecil Beaton, one of the most famous British photographers of the twentieth century. "One pound," said Laura. You cannot beat these prices. Moments later my eyes fall on a showcase in which - well placed between Leukoplast cans and a box of syringes - I spot the booklet that gave the name to this remarkable book-hall. It reads: "Anna Livia Plurabelle" by James Joyce ("only one shilling"). Moving closer, I was able to read a little label displayed in the same case:

Anyone who says they have only one life to live

must not know how to read a book

This is the deep and natural beauty of books, that they allow us to lead more than one life, and to engage in the experience of others, and learn from their lives and their thoughts by comparing it with ours.

Selling Books to Turkey

2011-01-31T11:50:00.000-08:00

A view of our books in Cambridge

Studying our sales statistics at the end of the year, we learned a lot about our clients, where our books are going, and where they find new homes. Many go to Europe and America, a few we ship to Asia and Japan, but only a handful do we sell to Turkey. Why? Don't they need Cambridge books in Turkey?

Yes, Turkey, we want to do more business with you. We would love to send a few of our books, many come with bookplates from Cambridge Colleges, in every mayor library. We had an email correspondence with a client about The Running and Gating of Sand Castings. A Review of the Literature (1956), and had high hopes that this book would be able to make the trip from Cambridge to TR 78200 Karabuk. Alas, in the end the sale fell through. More luck we had with a book on International Economics, which is now comfortably resting on a learned bookshelf in TR 58140 Sivas. Thank you, Sarper!

One book in two years! Clearly, Turkey, you can do better. And we are going to help you. We are now embarking on a advertisement campaign involving academics and librarians in Turkey, and we shall keep you posted about the results. We are sending a few emails to the usual suspects (apologies if unwanted) If you have received on of our messages, please get in touch and help us to bring more books to your colleagues. We look forward to learn a few things about how to send books to Turkey, how to deal with customs, and how to overcome the reluctance of your readers. And we shall be happy to to reward your assistance with a book or two.

Calling Cambridge Book Collectors

2010-11-10T15:20:00.000-08:00

Attention student book-collectors!

The Rose Book-Collecting Prize offers £ 500 for the best book collection by a Cambridge student

You can enter any type of collection provided it is solely owned by you and has been collected by you. The books do not have to be especially valuable - a collection of paperbacks, put together with imagination, is equally eligible. The contest is open to all current undergraduate and graduate students of the University of Cambridge.

The closing date for entries is the first day of Lent Full Term Tuesday 18 January 2011

And if you are a bit behind in getting your collection ready, Plurabelle Books is ready to help: Same day delivery, and our unique browsing bookshop which offers many crowning pieces for any collection. come and check us out!

shelved by ROBERT GOOD

2010-08-18T04:58:00.001-07:00

Artist Robert Good will create an exciting new installation at Plurabelle Bookshop in September. Robert, who is studying for a Master of Fine Art degree at Anglia Ruskin University, says:

“I am interested in the way in which knowledge and ideas change over time. Old books are a fascinating store of information that is gradually sinking into history.

Plurabelle’s is an Aladdin’s cave, full to overflowing with books. Books sit patiently on the bookshelves like abandoned pets, hoping for a new owner. And, like our favourite pets, they may become a little aged and dog-eared but when found a new home are guaranteed to charm and please.

So this project will be a great opportunity for me to explore Plurabelle’s further and try to bring some of their books back to life. I’m hoping to create something that will surprise the passing browser – a pause for thought on their way through the scores of shelves. And there will be an air of celebration, too, of the pleasure that books give.

Finally, I will be looking to add a little humour to the occasion. Exactly how (and if!) I shall achieve all this remains to be seen, as I shall be very much responding to what I find, but I am looking forward to the challenge!”

PRIVATE VIEW ON THURSDAY 2nd SEPTEMBER, 6-8pm
come along and enjoy a glass of vine and nibbles while talking to the artist and finding out about his work. there is also a free book waiting for you from our rummage selection!

Reshetnikov apology

2010-08-17T02:44:00.000-07:00

Irina, our "new" cataloguer for russian books has found this lovely note...

Plurabelle Books by Night!

2010-06-03T13:21:00.000-07:00

This Is Where We Live from 4th Estate on Vimeo.

Michael's Miracle Flower

2010-05-27T09:23:00.000-07:00

Two summers ago, Michael picked up a mostly dead plant from the garbage bin of a garden centre. He brought the poor thing to work and stuck it in a crack at the back of the building, much to the amusement of the Plurabelle Staff. I seem to remember saying “Oh come on Michael, do you really expect that to grow?” We all had a chuckle at Michael’s optimism but lo and behold, it started growing and the following year put on a display of exquisite flowers.

It died back at the end of the summer and eventually someone pulled up the dead thing and we were all quite sad – then this spring, it put up green shoots and here it is - more spectacular than the year before. People in the office behind us keep coming to admire it and many photographs have been taken. Plurabelle’s miracle flower is quite star!

* for those interested, it’s called Clematis Dr Rupel – I think it should be re-named Clematis Dr Cahn don’t you?

The Stories that follow black pictures

2010-05-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

Literary Exhibition at Plurabelle Books, May 29 - June 12, 2010

Changing Spaces is proud to announce the first exhibition in cooperation with Plurabelle Books.
Plurabelle Books opens a warehouse full of books with a very special atmosphere, and local artists like the space to experiment and exhibit

1 artist and 8 writers are exhibiting the results of their creative collaboration. Private View on Saturday 29th May, 6.30-8.30 pm, free wine will be served and readings will take place. Come along and bring all your friends and family and join us on facebook

The orders that perk us up in the long dark days of February.

2010-02-08T12:19:00.000-08:00

Wave Guides (A Physics Textbook) - to CERN - the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Trying to figure out what went wrong!

A Victorian Book of Alphabets & Designs – to a Tattoo Palour

A Day in the Life of a Miner: This was one of a series published in the 1970’s & 80s for children. Lots of photographs of the real people and their families. This one was a particularly poignant snapshot of a Miner’s life, showing his wife and son (a little blond boy), the house, the car, the clothes, now looking so old fashioned –. We were quite touched when we realised that it was this little boy who was buying the book!

Sometimes Two Hands Are Not Enough

2010-01-07T16:12:00.000-08:00

Looking for books, but watching people. The Library Bookshop was very busy. One of the grandmothers shelving books declares that is is to early to call it a day and that she will now continue. One gentleman talks to another gentlemen how unlearning is harder than learning, how the world needs changing, and how it is done. This is California. The isle is blocked. On the next isle small paperbacks, plenty of them. The size is important, and the strength of the spine, for what follows. She was middle aged, golden haired, with gray cashmere, and those Ugg boots. It all happened very quickly, but I had a good view of it. One hand was busy carrying a bag, which left her with only one hand to open this paperback. Not that easy, small hands probably, but in this case the job was made easy by the presence of two well sized breast, one of which served to hold the book open for her.
She probably won't read the whole book in this arrangement, but she did open it long enough for a sentence or two, to check the paper and the print. I complimented her on the felicity of the gesture and asked ...

2009-12-16T09:16:00.000-08:00

Plurabelle at the varsity rugby match Cambridge vs Oxford at Twickenham Stadium on 10 th December with a spectecular 31 - 27 win for Cambridge, YEAH!

A Quiet Afternoon with 19th Century Medical Books.

2009-11-20T06:13:00.001-08:00

On a quiet afternoon, when the reassuring, clicking sound of cataloguing keyboards is disturbed by peals of laughter – I wonder to myself what could be so amusing about a 19th Century Medical book:

The results of an astonishingly successful weight loss program!

We call the poor chap the cabbage man. We can only speculate that some mischievous medical students were given the task of setting up the photographs to illustrate a nasty skin condition for this very serious medical tome. Perhaps they were instructed to find a way of preserving the patient’s modesty and unable to find a fig leaf, they improvised…….

And then there’s the 1940’s book ‘The Nation’s Health’:

Someone wanted to put it in Erotica or Drama perhaps?

The less we say about this one the better!

http://www.plurabellebooks.com/advanced_search_result.php?x=47&y=8&subject101=101&subject70=70&keyword_search=false&searchform_act=1

BookReCycling

2009-11-11T16:05:00.000-08:00

and here is a quick idea what can be made from old book boards:
a fancy, contemporary wall design.
bookboard-colour-sets of up to 100 boards can be ordered from Plurabelle Books,
ask Lisa for further informations.

Bicycles, Bibles and Bookbinders

2009-11-11T03:55:00.001-08:00

Cambridge is so wonderful to get around on a bicycle! I just took a lovely old (and valuable) book to the Post Office to send Special Delivery. I then popped into one of the ancient and beautiful College libraries to look at some books. Languishing on the Librarian's office floor I spotted some 19th Century leather-bound Bibles from the Chapel, which have obviously been “lovingly used and cherished for many years” which in Bookseller speak means they are falling apart! However, they are much too nice to discard and we will do our best to find them good homes – perhaps via a visit to our wonderful Bookbinder which was the last stop on my circuit of the city. All this in about an hour: by car, it would have taken me most of the afternoon and involved lots of time sitting in traffic and looking for parking.

Our latest acquisitions:

Here are the 91 Bibles we have in stock:

http://www.plurabellebooks.com/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=bible&x=12&y=9

Plurabelle Book stars in the very first Bahamas Shakespeare Festival

2009-11-06T06:20:00.000-08:00

“Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery” as the Book of Magic, Craig Pinder as Prospero, Dana Ferguson as Ariel in The Tempest performed at The Dundas Centre, Nassau Bahamas, October 2009.

Our Bahamian Actor friend, Craig was very excited to be involved with ‘Shakespeare in Paradise’, the first ever Bahamas Shakespeare festival, playing Prospero and co-directing The Tempest (with an African/Caribbean flavour). When I heard that the Book of Magic was being made out of cardboard I decided that Plurabelle could help out with a little magic of its own. Looking around our book-filled barn, I spotted a stack of old leather law books, which have been hanging around for a few years sadly unwanted. I selected a nice leather-bound copy dating from 1764 and sent it off to Nassau along with a single volume of Complete Works of Swift and a few other odds and ends. The whole cast was delighted with the added authenticity and it was remarked that there was something very special about old books in the New World!

“Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me
From mine own library with volumes that
I prize above my dukedom.”
- Prospero

ringplay.org/wordpress/

www.plurabelle.co.uk

Plurabelle Cataloguers are intriqued….. Comrade Stalin

2009-11-05T04:40:00.000-08:00

We are intrigued by a collection of books we are cataloguing in various languages, all bearing the name of E. R. Sands. This gentleman wrote his name in many his books along with his current location, which ranged from Archangel (in the northernmost reaches of Russia) to Paris, Helsinki, Madrid and of course Cambridge, over the course of 1939-55. Our imaginations were further fired by a note we found in one of the books:

“at the present moment I am dragging out a hand to mouth existence…in Bloomsbury, and am fast becoming an efficient Russian Linguist (Russian mind you, not Japanese). How it all happened is far too complicated to describe here. Perhaps we might call it an official wangle and leave it at that…anyway the last month has been by far the most chaotic, pointless and exciting of my butterflyish existence.”

In a different book was another intriguing note with a sketch labelled in Russian: “Comrade Stalin”

Are we onto a hitherto undiscovered member of the “Cambridge Six”?

http://www.plurabellebooks.com

Welcome Plurabelle to the 21st century

2009-10-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

Good morning everyone!
what a great start to the day, a Plurabelle Blog.
I guess its all about books, so my entry can be burned after reading, just quickly wanted to see how it looks like if I write something!

Great thing!

Lisa

Habent sua fata libelli

2009-10-07T21:23:00.000-07:00

They all have their own fate, these books, not only "pro captu lectoris", depending on each of their readers, as Terence said, but also in the way they are handed on, in which they are used and misused, forgotten and discovered, - in ever little nook and cranny of the book there is a little story waiting to be discovered, a chewing gum wrapper her, and name misspelled there, an annotation or the sheer curiosity of it. Come with us on a little journey - with pictures!