Archived treasures

Love this 1966 edition of The Paris Review (No 39) I found in a secondhand book stall in New York a couple of years ago. 
Great cover art and scratchy thick textured pages. And look how fantastic the line-up is on the contents page! The letters of ee.cummings to Ezra Pound, an interview with Harold Pinter and poetry by Pablo Neruda - all published while they were not only alive and kicking but still writing new material. 
The magazine is still going strong today but it's fascinating to see who has contributed to past editions. Back issues, from as early as No 7 published in 1954, are still available via the website. I'd love to get my hands on that one - with illustrations by Picasso and Warhol - going for US$100, or No 28 1962 featuring an interview with Pound and fiction by Samuel Beckett and Jorge Luis Borges for US$80...
For now I'll content myself with reading the magazine's regular Art of Fiction series online via the Archive section (1953 onwards) which includes such contributors as Ernest Hemingway, Graham Greene, E.M. Forster and a myriad of other greats.

Bookaholics Anonymous

My name is RubyfireWrites and I'm a bookoholic.
Just when I think I am fortified against temptation.... I come across a bookstore and all resolve crumbles. Sigh.
Books + shop = ka-ching goes the till. 
This was Saturday's haul from Andy's Book Shop on the northern beaches (19 bucks for the lot). I went out shopping for figs, spinach leaves and raspberries, so of course it was natural that I came home with a pile of books.
Cervantes' Don Quixote, Plutarch's Fall of the Roman Republic, Aboriginal Myths and Legends by AW Reed and - haha! - for a little light relief The Love Queen of the Amazon by Cecile Pineda. The Rousseau artwork on the cover caught my attention and the blurb on the back won me over for the $4 spend: 
"Expelled from her demure convent school in the small town of Malyerba, Peru, to be led kicking and screaming to the altar, Ana Magdalena was kidnapped on the night of her wedding only to escape and find refuge with the man of her dreams. But marriage to the penniless deluded writer Federico Orgaz was to herald even more extraordinary adventures. From her colourful initiation into the life of the flourishing bordello La Nymphaea to her exalted role as Madam of the legendary pleasure-dome La Confiteria, Ana Magdalena's sensuous journey would lead her into realms hitherto unknown..."
They say when trying to write, one should also read read read. That's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.

Literary List Week...

This week is Literary List Week on Rubyfire Writes. Cyberspace seems to be full of people making lists - top 50 this, top 20 that, top 3-gazillion something else - so I've been stashing away a few literary lists for your reading pleasure. 
To get you in the mood, take a look at this Huffington Post selection: Nine of the Most Amazing Bookstores in the World. I'm excited to say I can cross three of these off my list of yet-to-see shops and, happily, add to my 'holiday' list an additional six destinations.
In 2008 The Guardian named Selexyz Bookstore in Maastricht, Holland, the best bookstore in the world. This heavenly store is located inside a refurbished Dominican church that dates back to 1294. Wow.

El Ateneo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was once a theatre named The Grand Splendid (which, in 1929 premiered the first ever movie with sound).

A homegrown entry - Gould's Book Arcade in Sydney, Australia. Bob Gould started selling books in the inner west suburb of Newtown in 1967. Bob has over a millions books and records to sell either in the store, in storage or on line.

'Amazing' means different things to different people. I could add a few, perhaps more humble, bookstores to the list. You tell me yours and I'll tell you mine...!