Inside Jacket

Stieg Larsson knew how to fire a grenade launcher, according to this report. Shame he never met Hunter S Thompson or William S Burroughs – they could have had a lot of fun together.

Richard has been reporting back to us from Vancouver where he is attending the Vancouver Antiquarian Book Fair. There has been a steady flow of folks all day beginning with a line of about 50 attendees waiting to enter as the doors were opening. The fair continues tonight (October 15th) until 9pm and tomorrow 10am – 5pm at the Vancouver Public Library (350 West Georgia).

As we mentioned before the fair features top booksellers from across Canada including a number of our AbeBooks sellers. So if you happen to be in proximity to Vancouver this weekend, be sure to stop by the fair to say hello at the AbeBooks booth, and of course check out some beautiful books.

Here are some photos of today’s action:

The 8th entry into the ongoing manga series, DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND is a New York Times Bestseller! It debuted on the list at #2 and remains on the list this week at #9.

Congratulations to mangaka, Nozomu Tamaki, and to the folks at our Seven Seas imprint!

About DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND, Vol. 8:

The assassins are dead but an invisible enemy still lurks in the peaceful island nation known as the Vampire Bund. As the loyal lycanthrope Akira struggles to protect his queen, Mina Tepes, ruler of all vampires, fear and chaos descend upon the Bund. A plague of nanomachines has taken over and no vampire is safe. Time is running out and Akira must uncover an assassination plot and the true identity of the culprit before it is too late. Dance in the Vampire Bund is an ongoing manga series that features stunning artwork and an enthrallingly original supernatural narrative.

DANCE IN THE VAMPIRE BUND is now a hit Anime series, currently airing in Japan but available for streaming online via Funimation.

Filed under: News

For a second, I thought Glenn Beck was going on about Stuart Little yesterday but I don’t think America’s leading right-wing broadcaster does classic children’s books. Stuart Chase is the latest economist to be examined (negatively) by Beck, who will not become a Fabian Socialist anytime soon.

Chase (1888-1985) was an American economist and engineer, who studied at MIT and was really into semantics.

He wrote many books on a diverse number of subjects. As I searched through Chase’s books, I came across Mexico: A Study of Two Americas – the Macmillan edition has a beautiful cover but I don’t suppose Beck gives a flying Fabian about this book.

Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian author, has been awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize in literature. The 74-year-old has written more than 30 novels, plays and essays, and is the first South American winner since 1982 when Colombia’s Gabriel Garcia Marquez triumphed. So much for the bookmakers saying Philip Roth would win. The Nobel Academy’s Peter Englund said Vargas Llosa was “a divinely gifted story-teller.”

In many ways, this is actually a mainstream selection from the Nobel Academy following the announcement of Herta Muller’s victory last year. Vargas Llosa is widely read around the world. His work is collectible but not particularly high priced.

Vargas Llosa, who has been heavily involved in politics during his career, became a Spanish national in 1993. His books have been translated into many languages.

His first major success was the novel, The Time of The Hero, which came from his experiences at a military academy in Peru. It was a very controversial book and copies were burnt by officers from Vargas Llosa’s academy.

The most expensive Vargas Llosa book to have sold on AbeBooks was a true first edition of Los Jefes (The Cubs and Other Stories), which was his first published book from 1959.

Conversation In The Cathedral, The War of the End of the World, The Feast of the Goat, The Green House and Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, which became a woeful Keanu Reeves movie, are among his best known works.

True first editions of The Time of the Hero (La Ciudad y Los Perros) published in 1966 are also desirable. AbeBooks has sold copies for close to $500.

He is also famous for punching Gabriel Garcia Marquez but the reason for the dispute has never been revealed.