OT7: Flow Books

I recently took my first trip to Hong Kong and after spending the first two days doing all the touristy things, I decided to hunt out some of the more unique cultural offerings. On a recommendation from a friend, I checked out the Hong Kong Film Archive and started discussing books with a woman who told me there was a secondhand bookstore in Central that specialized in English books.

Even though Hong Kong is officially bi-lingual Cantonese and English, the majority of people speak Cantonese and use Chinese as the written language so an English bookstore is quite uncommon but they do exist. An English used bookstore, though, is downright unique.

After a quick search online, there appears to be a small handful of stores. One of primary ones, The Book Attic, sadly closed down a few months ago (a fact I didn’t discover until I was in the dark corridor of a sketchy building trying to read room numbers by cellphone light). The other main one, though, was still in business.

A Hong Kong bookstore.

Flow Books, located at 38 Hollywood Road in Central, is exactly what I pictured an English secondhand book store to look like in space-starved Hong Kong. Packed floor to ceiling with a mix of bestsellers, classic lit, travel guides, and art books, it easily consumed the better half of a day.

Could lose yourself for days.

Spent half the time digging for interesting finds and the other half chatting with the proprietor about the state of the used book market in Hong Kong. Bookstores have it rough nowadays and even heavily bankrolled stores like Chapters are folding left right and center. Used bookstores have it even rougher with erratic sales and relatively smaller selections. Used bookstores that carry books servicing the native language of 5% of the population is just ridiculous.

A labyrinth of literature.

Nonetheless, he was in high spirits and obviously genuinely loved books to run such a business. I ended up telling him about the Biblio-Mat and the Monkey’s Paw, which blew his and everyone else’s mind at the store with everyone looking at me skeptically until I pulled up pics of it. Hopefully he’ll make the journey to Toronto to check it out.

Score!

I did end the day with two awesome scores by one of my favourite authors. If you like digging for random books and find yourself in Hong Kong, I highly recommend making a trip out to the quaint lil store:

Flow Books

1A – 38 Hollywood Rd. (Wing On Bldg)

Central, HK

https://www.facebook.com/flowbooksnet

S10: The Ancient East and Its Story

Freshly back from my trip to Asia and I’m hit with this:

Not literally, though. Cause that would hurt. A lot.

Title: The Ancient East and Its Story

The ancient east, in this regard, refers to what we now consider the Middle East. Centering on Egypt, Babylonia, and Assyria, it’s a thick 472 page history tome that makes me glad I stopped doing the ‘read a book all the way through each week’ project.

So happy that's done.

Written by James Baike, it has no publishing date but it was prior to 1928. How do I know? Cause the book plate on the inner cover states that this was one of the prizes presented from the Strathcona Trust for good work in physical exercises for the year 1928-1929.

Yep, you can be both a winner and a loser.

This appears to be a standard history textbook and contains a variety of black and white photographs. However, it also has a handful of colour plates. The best aspect of it (beyond functioning as an effective doorstop, anyway) are the pseudo-deckle pages that are uniformly miscut.

Riddle me this...

Colour makes everything better.

After three weeks abroad in Asia, though, reading more about any parts of Asia seems like overkill.

OT6: Needlepoint Redemption

Flying to Hong Kong from Toronto was a good 26 hours. Instead of packing something entertaining, I used the time to needlepoint. This was theonly uncompleted project from last year and has been the bane of my existence ever since I failed to finish it in week 22.

Greatly underestimated this.

The view from the back.

 

30 odd hours from beginning to end, it’s now complete.

Signed and soon to be sealed.

Never again.

S9: Switzerland

On the eve of my first vacation in a long while, the Biblio-Mat throws a curveball, which should surprise no one.

Quite European.

Title: Switzerland

It’s an interesting title as the original plan for this year was to head to Europe for a trip but instead plans have been sidelined and I’m now heading to Asia instead to meet up with family. As a reminder of what was supposed to be, Switzerland is a nice kick in the pants.

Pretty dustjacket, though.

Yep, that's Switzerland.

Written by John Russell and published in 1950, it does have a pretty interesting dustjacket. The interior 152 pages contain a nice assortment of black and white photographs on Switzerland. However the only colour piece was the title-facing plate.

Not quite a selling point.

Much better.

Reading through a few pages, it’s a little dry but most travel books are. Who knows, though, perhaps next year Switzerland will be a travel destination.

S8: Lightnin’

At first this Biblio-Mat book looked like a run of the mill biography but it turns out to be much more interesting.

The nickname is a bit of a misnomer. Really.

Title: Lightnin’

The cover itself gives away an air of vintage – not quite antiquarian, but distinctively dated in a charming way. Indeed it was published in 1920, and on thick stock with a photo cover to boot. Written by Frank Bacon, Lightnin’ had more than meets the eye.

$1.75 is steep!

Mmmmm...bacon...

The Biblio-Mat doesn’t give out fiction often, so when it does it’s always interesting. Lightnin’, as it turns out, is a fictional biography based on Lightnin’ Bill Jones, the eponymous character from Bacon and Winchell Smith’s play “Lightnin’”, a crafty old man in the not-so-wild west. 

Reading through the first chapter, it seems to be farcical view on small town life, but really, anything written back then seems like a farcical view of small town life. The best part of this book is the inclusion of photographs from the stage play.

It must've been extremely successful.

See, total misnomer.

Also interesting is back inner flap of the dustjacket. Not only does it have an ad for Harper’s Magazine (only $4.00 a year!) but it also has an unclipped book re-ordering coupon, which I rarely see.  

Tempted to mail it to the publisher.

Perhaps one day I'll end up reading through the whole thing but for the time being, this lightning will stay bottled on the shelf.

S7: Beaten Tracks

In the midst of planning a trip to the other side of the world, this Biblio-Mat book looked like it could give me some springboards on places to go. Unfortunately, it turned out to be completely useless for my purposes.

At least the cover is nic- oh wait...

Title: Beaten Tracks

Written by J. H. MacCallum Scott and published in 1938, Beaten Tracks is a travel book that looks very much like most travel books I’ve received from the Biblio-Mat.

Quite beaten indeed.

Looking through the table of contents, it seems quite fitting that the title of Beaten Tracks is missing the ‘Off the’ before it as the text covers the author’s travels to Canada, USA, Mexico, Brazil, New Zealand, and Australia, which may be among the most popular destinations today. Sadly, it doesn’t travel through Europe or Asia, which might have actually helped in my trip planning.

At least the photos were well done.

Despite looking quite generic, though, Beaten Tracks does have two interesting qualities about it. The first was the inner cover, which has a pretty fancy bookplate denoting that it comes from the library of Homer Morton Jaquays, who appears to have been a soldier of note.

And also a fisherman, it seems.

The second interesting aspect of the book is that all the black and white photographs have overlays of what I would guess to be vellum. In addition to protecting the image, the overlays also have captions and information about the image, which is a pretty cool design aspect.

Why are the photos so blurry?

Overlays!

All in all, Beaten Tracks appears to be a decent traveler’s guide, if for nothing else than being thick enough to be able to bludgeon an attacker should you find yourself in one of the sketchy areas covered within.

OT5: St. Patrick’s Day 2014

St. Patrick’s Day falls on this Monday and while the Biblio-Mat has given me a book on the history of the Irish people last year, none of the books received or submitted recently fit the bill so in honour of the patron saint of inebriation and bad decision making (at least in contemporary North America anyway), I'll showcase two books I picked up from the Monkey’s Paw over the past year by one of my favourite writers, who happens to be Irish.

Charming fellow.

Yep, the one and only Oscar Wilde may have lived in London and died in Paris but he was born and grew up in Dublin. Being the very essence of the term ‘rake’, I think he fits the festivities of today the past few days rather well.

The first book up is a collection of his works wrapped in an eye-catching sun-faded forest green paper dustjacket. Officially titled “The Works of Oscar Wilde”, the dustjacket design is closer to a billboard than a cover. Published in 1954, the 1120 translucently-thin pages contains almost all of his published works.

Design styles of the 50's.

Everything you would want to keep you occupied for a week.

Known mainly for his plays and one novel (The Picture of Dorian Gray), I actually enjoy his short stories the most and have up until recently kept this book at work to leave through whenever I needed a break. Of all the works, I think ‘The Selfish Giant’ and ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ resonate the most with me.

Simple yet deep.

Unfortunately there is only one illustration in the book, the black and white plate of Oscar Wilde by Toulouse-Lautrec pictured above, but the inclusion of minor works like the essays and letters make up for the lack of visuals.

"There is no sin except stupidity" would make a great tattoo.

The second Oscar Wilde book I picked up was one of those treasures that if it had not been put out when I was in the shop it would’ve been snapped up before I even had the chance to see it. It is the Ballad of Reading Goal published by a small artisan press circa the 1910’s

Made by little book elves at the turn of the century.

Gorgeous even in deterioration.

Everything from the embossed soft leather cover to the deckle edges to the gilding on the front and top edges, it screams craftsmanship. The book is definitely showing its age, with the iridescent inner cover sheets cracking but the thick cut paper makes this a joy to hold and read.

Dapper in many ways.

The texture of the paper turns me on more than it really should.

At only 30 pages it's a tiny book but contains a lot of character. Funny enough, the last page is still uncut, which I feel has some symbolic meaning somewhere. That or the guy making it missed a page.

The end. Or is it?

Drink lots, be happy, and enjoy the lack of snakes in your home country if it happens to be Ireland.