Follow the Wee Book Inn
Announcements

 

 

  • We would love to see any fan pictures of our store cats. Upload them on Facebook, or send them directly to info@weebookinn.com for our official website. Those cats love the attention!

 

Archive
Archive
Follow us on Facebook!

  • Locally Owned and Operated for 40 Years
  • Four Convenient Locations Serving Edmonton and Area
  • Open 9 A.M. till Midnight, 7 Days a Week
  • Wee Book Inn Pays Cash for Quality Second-hand Books, Movies, and Music
  • Don't Miss Our Online Store for Rarities and Collectibles

 

Friday
Aug202010

A Profound Respect for Art

I can easily admit that this has been the single most difficult beginning to anything I have ever written. After having finished the graphic novel entitled "Maus", I spent several minutes in reverence over what I have read to be the most honest and humanizing biography concerning the holocaust. I do not intend to cheapen the gravity of the topic with this statement, yet neither did Art Spiegelman intend to cheapen it is gravity with the production of his work. It is a literary gem the same magnitude as a fist-sized diamond.

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Aug172010

The Man with his Mind Made Up about The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

As the first installment in one of the most sought after series in our little shop, this book has a reputation that precedes it. I was told by various sources that Larsson's control was near immaculate throughout the story and, having heard this, I began from a very skeptical point of view. Almost immediately upon picking up the book, I was immersed in a story that had such realism I was hard pressed to put it down until the small hours of the morning.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Aug042010

For A Good Time of Epic Proportions Look Up Villa Incognito

Tom Robbins strikes again with a wit as sharp as the piercing cry of a small girl rolling over the lip of a rollercoaster's biggest drop. This roving tale of youth, liberalism, rebellion and circus acts is set against the backdrop of South Eastern Asia. With yet another masterpiece added to his repertoire, Robbins brings to life the story of Madam Ko with a vivacious vulgarity that paints a most surreptitiously beautiful scene of transformation and transcendence. A true addition to the tradition of Gonzo storytelling.

Click to read more ...

Thursday
Jul152010

Family Fun with Fake Names for Fame and Fortune.

I tried to put more F’s in the title.

I’ve always been intrigued by pseudonyms. They seem like an interesting way to become someone else. In modern publishing, there are a few reasons for use of a pen name, some more reasonable than others, including: to avoid publishing too many books per year, to determine if a novel stands on its own merits rather than on the author’s name, to break into new markets without jeopardizing current readership, or because the author wishes to set a more serious or humorous tone for their works with their name (eg. Mark Twain). There’s a further category: authors whose names aren’t considered suitable for publication. Somehow publishers, and often authors, don’t think a name like Erasmus Q. Fishmonger will sell books, and so the unfortunate Fishmonger would opt, either by choice, or from publisher pressure, for a more ‘reader friendly’ nom de plume. I always dislike this use of a pen name. Frankly, just once, I’d like to read a book by someone named Fishmonger.

Click to read more ...

Monday
Jul052010

José Saramago is Dead.

Portuguese Nobel-laureate José Saramago died on June 18, 2010. Most recently known because of the movie adaptation of his novel Blindness (which I found atrociously bad), Saramago’s work featured elements of the fantastic, such as in Blindness when an entire country is struck with ‘white blindness’. Although dead, Saramago left behind a large corpus of excellent work.

Click to read more ...

Monday
May242010

Almost nobody really likes Harry Stephen Keeler

Harry Stephen Keeler is one of the best worst writers you’ve never heard of. Confused? Let me explain. Keeler wrote prolifically, mostly Roman Noir and Science Fiction, in the early to mid 20th Century, during the pulp era.

The novels featured odd titles (I Killed Lincoln at 10:13!, The Case of the Barking Clock, The Man with the Magic Eardrums, Find the Clock) and his catalogue has a disturbing number of skull related MaGuffins (for example in The Skull of the Waltzing Clown, or The Riddle of the Travelling Skull). Sounds great, right?

Click to read more ...

Friday
Apr302010

A Review of Jeff Linday's Darkly Dreaming Dexter

The Dexter books have become popular, due in part to the Showcase television show. When books are made into a TV series, as a reader, I often want to read the book before the movie. So I did.

Darkly Dreaming Dexter is the first book in the series by Jeff Lindsay, and the very first Dexter episode is based loosely on said book (further episodes spin their own plots). Oddly, the television medium works for Dexter. The book overdoes it a bit, like it's trying to set too many things in motion.

Click to read more ...

Wednesday
Apr282010

Salman Rushdie's Digital Donation

I recently heard about Salman Rushdie’s donation to Emory University. It contains a number of his early computers and the files containing some of his novels. The University had difficulty in deciding what to do with Rushdie’s works. They ultimately settled on preserving the computers, as well as the files, to show Rushdie’s method, as well as the documents. The article got me thinking about the problems of digital book publication process. Although the use of computers makes the process far easier than in the past, it raises some real problems about maintaining the ability to publish works in the future.

Click to read more ...

Monday
Apr122010

Clash of the Titans and Greek Myth

Since the remake of Clash of the Titans opened recently, I thought I'd give a few recommendations for anyone interested in reading more about Greek myth. These books serve as enjoyable introductions to the myths, and many can serve as stepping stones to the world of the Ancient Greek authors.

Click to read more ...

Monday
Apr122010

A Review of Deborah Crombie's James/Kincaid Mystery Series

Any good mystery series strives to balance the reader’s interest between the individual cases, always testing the smarts of the sleuths, and the character development that keeps readers wondering what will happen next in the bigger picture – the lives of the detectives.

Deborah Crombie strikes this balance well. The author of thirteen mysteries involving two Scotland Yard detectives, Crombie brings to life the two co-workers and later, lovers, Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid, in a fascinating backdrop of British culture.

Click to read more ...