A Curious Volume This odd little book appeared in our Chicago store one afternoon, shortly after we were visited by a lovely woman with the most striking, untamed hair. (Her appearance reminded me slightly of Margaret Atwood. And, for reasons I cannot explain, she also reminded me of Audrey Niffenegger.) This lovely woman browsed around for a bit, then disappeared quite suddenly. Shortly thereafter, we noticed this strange, almost empty book lying on one of the tables upstairs and, quite certain that we had not seen it before, leafed through it. The pages are blank, except for a few odd images, stamped at random intervals in the pages. These odd emblems also appear on the book's endpapers. One of the emblems appears to be a blue phone booth, or perhaps a police call box. Such police boxes were once a common sight in London, but we have not seen one for many years. (There was one incident when we thought that we had seen one at the end of a dark alley; however, just as we were about to investigate, we were distracted by a curious whooshing sound. By the time we reached the end of the alley, there was nothing there.) The design of the book's cover also invokes the look of those old police boxes. Curious, we took a few photos of the book, then went downstairs to send them to our friends at Adelphi Press. At that point, the lovely woman reappeared -- in fact, we use the term "reappeared" quite deliberately, as she was suddenly in the store, although we did not see her come in through the door. She said simply, "Forgot something," and walked upstairs. When we went upstairs a few moments later, both the book and the woman were gone. In any case, our friends at Adelphi Press suggest that the book appears to be handmade, and is likely the work of a current or former member of Chicago Hand Bookbinders. (In fact, Ms. Niffenegger was once a member of said organization. But I digress.) The gentleman from Adelphi Press believes that it was probably created by Sharp Design, as they are known for custom books and albums. "They're on Tumblr," he tells us, "But they don't seem to be too active there. I suppose everyone's on Tumblr these days. Did you know Neil Gaiman is on Tumblr? You like Neil Gaiman, right?" The name "Neil Gaimain" does sound vaguely familiar, and we will perhaps check to see if we have any of his books. At the moment, however, we are otherwise engaged, searching for a copy of a book requested by a customer: the expurgated version of Olsen's Standard Book of British Birds. It is suprisingly difficult to find.
