The Biblio File hosted by Nigel Beale

You can read her winning essay and bibliography here.

Martin Latham has been a bookseller for thirty-five years. He has a PhD in Indian history, and taught at Hertfordshire University before turning to bookselling. He is proud to be responsible for the biggest petty-cash claim in Waterstones' history, when he paid for the excavation of a Roman bath-house floor under his bookshop. Martin's books include Kent's Strangest Tales, Londonopolis, and most recently The Bookseller's Tale which we talk about in this episode. It's really a book full of tales about books of course, and bookstores, libraries, chapbooks, marginalia, women readers and collectors - chock full of fascinating biblio adventures. I highly recommend it.

The Bookshelf bookshop in Guelph, Ontario was established in 1973 by Barb and Doug Minett. In 1980 it became The Bookshelf Cafe - Canada's first bookstore cafe/restaurant. Shortly thereafter an ambitious plan was conceived to add a cinema and bar to what was then the roof of the building. During implementation, University of Guelph physics professor and longtime customer, Jim Hunt, trained a team of 10 cafe servers and booksellers in the art & science of 35mm projection. In 1988 The Bookshelf Cinema showed its first film. Over 20,000 shows and 1,000,000 cinema goers later, the cinema continues to offer 14-15 shows a week with its fancy digital projection and great sound system.

Shortly thereafter bookshelf.ca (Canada's first full-service online bookstore - sold to Indigo in the late 90s) was launched.

The Bookshelf team also embarked on "the great leap sideways" expanding all aspects of the emporium by re-building the building next door and adding a music venue: the eBar. Many great Canadian musical talents have graced the eBar stage. The bar serves up great craft beers and dj's and dancing every Saturday night. Over the years The Bookshelf has operated a number of food and beverage operations - originally with its own staff and later in collaboration with others. In 2015 The Bookshelf welcomed Miijidaa ("Let's Eat") as its restaurant collaborator.

My conversation with Doug Minett starts with him in Europe, with his future wife Barb, the year prior to their setting up shop, and ends with discussion of cibabooks.ca and Doug's role as acting Executive Director.

It was on Twitter a couple of months ago that I noticed this tweet celebrating the work of one Bianca Gillam (@BinxGillam). 'You're the best special sales assistant ever', it said, or words to that effect. Hmm I thought. What, I wonder, does a special sales assistant do at a publishing house - I'd noticed that she worked at Simon & Schuster ( @simonschusterUK ). I wasn't sure. So I tweeted at Bianca, inviting her to appear on the podcast to explain just exactly what she does.

Last year at about this time David Gilmour and I sat down together to talk about "Mojave" one of Truman Capote's greatest short stories. We enjoyed ourselves so much we decided to do it again, this time with "Shut a Final Door."

Capote wrote this story when he was only 23 years old. David contends that it strongly foreshadows how Truman's actual life would unfold - as a slow, messy descent into hell. Perfect fare for the holiday season.

Merry Christmas everyone. Thanks for listening!

Photo by Jack Mitchell

"Martin Parr's celebrated photographs bridge the divide between art and documentary photography. His studies of the idiosyncrasies of mass culture and consumerism around the world, his innovative imagery, and his prolific output have placed him firmly at the forefront of contemporary art. He is an avid collector and maker of photobooks. His own photobooks include The Last Resort (1986), Common Sense (iggg) and Boring Postcards (Phaidon Press, 1999), and he is the subject of the monograph Martin Parr by Val Williams (Phaidon Press, 2002)."

Together with Gerry Badger he is the co-author of The Photobook: A History, a beautiful three-volume set of books that offer an engrossing, admittedly subjective survey of the "best" photography books ever published, beginning with early experiments in the medium in mid-19yh-century England and ending with "raucous Japanese photo-diaries of the 1990s."

I question Martin about his collection criteria - how he arrived at "best," and how various artistic and social movements influenced the look and content of photobooks over the decades.

...in which I posit that raising funds is a primary motivator explaining why scientists write, and Lawrence disagrees; and the two of us argue over the similarities and differences between art and science... The combatants tend to confuse human-made with nature-made art, and possibly don't even actually disagree, if we're talking big picture. Anyway, the conversation is lively, if nothing else. Throughout the episode we reference Lawrence's entertaining, readable book The Greatest Story Ever Told—So Far. It "deals with the current scientific understanding of the creation of the Universe and gives a history of how scientists have formulated the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Lawrence Krauss is a writer and an American-Canadian theoretical physicist and cosmologist who has over the years taught at Arizona State University, Yale University, and Case Western Reserve University. He founded ASU's Origins Project, now called ASU Interplanetary Initiative, to investigate fundamental questions about the universe, and served as it's director. He retired in May 2019 and is currently President of The Origins Project Foundation and host of The Origins Podcast with Lawrence Krauss.

Patrick McGahern has been operating an antiquarian bookshop in Ottawa, Canada's capital, since 1969. Today it continues to thrive under the management of Patrick's son Liam. The store specializes in Used and Rare Books, Canadiana, Americana, Arctic, Antarctic, Travel, Natural History & Voyages, Illustrated & Plate Books, Rare Books, Irish and Scottish History and Literature.

I met Patrick via Zoom to celebrate his 51 years in business, to try to learn some of what he's learned over the years, and to talk about some of the more colourful bookseller colleagues in the trade, including Grant Woolmer, Jerry Sherlock and Bernard Amtmann