15 New Books / September 2012 Acquisitions

New acquisitions have been arriving daily here at the PLL.  I even found the compelling How Prints Look: Photographs with a Commentary by William M. Ivins, Jr. (Robert Smithson Collection) yesterday at a local junk shop.  How Prints Look investigates the process and reproduction of various prints, frankly discussing "of copies, facsimiles, and other bothersome matters."

An original 15th Century Florentine woodcut (left) and a copy by Pilinski of Paris.  Of course, this is a reproduction of a reproduction and a reproduction of a reproduction of a reproduction.

Included in the new batch of acquisitions are a few books that focus on geology and mineralogy - all from the Robert Smithson Collection:

The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Dawson Adams
Landforms of Australia by Vincent Serventy
Western Gem Hunters Atlas by Bob & Cy Johnson
Biogeography of the Southern End of the World by Philip J. Darlington, Jr.

The Birth and Development of the Geological Sciences by Frank Adams (a spread showing Gessner's classes of fossils)

Landforms of Australia by Vincent Serventy (spread showing snowy vistas and Tunnel Creek in Western Aus.)

 

Western Gem Hunters Atlas by Robert & Cy Johnson (spread showing area around Portland Ore.)

 Beautiful hardbound volumes are also added to the Library to support the Jorge Luis Borges Collection:

New Arabian Nights by Robert Louis Stevenson
Buried Alive: A Tale of These Days by Arnold Bennett

As well as In the Sky Garden by Lizzie Chamney, from the Maria Mitchell Collection.  This beautifully illustrated (by "Champ") of fables is dedicated to Maria Mitchell herself:

"To Professor Maria Mitchell, . . Written in the hope of interesting the small people, and leading them to a study of its more fascinating truths, is gratefully and lovingly dedicated by her pupil and satellite,"

Other acquisitions from the Robert Smithson Collection include:
A Fire on the Moon by Norman Mailer
Phenomenology: Its Genesis & Prospect by Quentin Lauer
On Violence by Hannah Arendt
Poems & Prose by Gerard Manley Hopkins

From the Jorge Luis Borges Collection:
Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen
The Golem by Gustav Meyrink

From the Italo Calvino Collection:
The Way Things Are (De Rerum Natura) by Lucretius

Please contact the Personal Libraries Library at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com for questions about membership or checking out books.

Summer Bounty!

The summer has been good to the Library - with lots of new acquisitions being added to the shelves.

New to the Italo Calvino Personal Library:
 VARIETY, Second Series by Paul Valéry

New to the Robert Smithson Personal Library:
The Day of the Dinosaur by L. Sprague de Camp and Catherine Cook de Camp
Albrecht Durer Complete Woodcuts, edited by Dr. Willi Kurth
The Diary of Anais Nin, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann
Madness & Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason by Michel Foucault
The Light of Common Day by Diana Cooper
Mapping by David Greenhood

Also included in this Smithson batch is, probably, the best title for a book that I have ever encountered:
the Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America by Daniel J. Boorstin

And one of the most beautifully printed & designed volumes:

The Succession of Life Through Geological Time by Kenneth P. Oakley and Helen M. Muir-Wood.  This amazing book includes countless illustrations and the stand-alone poster, The Geological Column (both seen below.)  All of this is priced at "Five Shillings."

Lastly, is the incredible Follett Beginning Science Book The Moon by the venerable Isaac Asimov.

Please contact the Personal Libraries Library at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com for questions about membership or checking out books.

Summer 2012 / Printed Matter

The latest round of PLL Printed Matter has been printed, amassed, collated, addressed and enveloped.  Included in the Summer 2012 are two posters and two 3x5 library cards:

Above is the Textual Genetics poster, following how texts can relate and lead to one another (11" x 17" / edition of 200.)  Below is a stack of the latest in the Entering the Robert Smithson Library series, Alain Robbe-Grillet's 'Snapshots' (8.5" x 14" / edition of 200.)

Two 3" x 5" letterpress printed cards round out this summer's packet.  Both are recreations, of sorts, of book cards left in formerly-deaccessioned books that are now part of the PLL collection.  Each card has been translated through OCR and hand-set in metal type.

Geological Acquisitions / June 2012

Four new acquisitions add to the Robert Smithson Personal Library, all with a focus on Geology:

Treatise in Sedimentation, Vols. I & II by William Twenhofel
Field Geology by Frederic Lahee
The Geological Evolution of North America by Thomas Clark & Colin Stearn

From the aforementioned tome by Clark & Stearn: a look into 20th century ideas of dinosaurs.  A bit of marginalia lets us know that dinosaur means "terrible lizard."

The Los Angeles Southwestern College Library deaccessioned this gem, and it eventually found its way to the Personal Libraries Library.  It will not be deaccessioned again.

April 2012, New Acquisitions (Arendt to Wyndham)

The Personal Libraries Library newest acquisitions comprise of:

The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt (Robert Smithson Collection)

On Human Communication: A Review, a Survey, and a Criticism by Colin Cherry (Robert Smithson Collection)

The Red Redmaynes by Eden Phillpotts (Jorge Luis Borges Collection)

The Cantos (1-95) by Ezra Pound (Robert Smithson Collection)

Time & Western Man by Wyndham Lewis (Robert Smithson Collection)


The Cantos (1-95) of Ezra Pound include the first 95 Cantos of Pound's monumental poem. These were first published as six separate books: A Draft of XXX Cantos, Eleven New Cantos, The Fifth Decad of Cantos, Cantos LII-LXXI, the Pisan Cantos, and Section: Rock-Drill.

Please contact the PLL at personallibraries{at}gmail{dot}com for membership details or other information.