Peter McGlynn, 'The Books Nobody Reads', 2007

'The Books Nobody Reads'

Peter McGlynn

Laser Print

330 x 450

2007

Gift from Jamie Warde Aldam

No Commercial Value

2013.005

My proposal to the Story Gallery that they should commission me to catalogue my own library took the form of a PowerPoint presentation (see 2012.004 previous post 4 January 2012).

I also sent a copy to my friend Jamie Warde Aldam who despite, or perhaps because of, working in advertising said he had never seen PowerPoint used this way. It was a bit odd.

Jamie, amongst other things, edits the Hotspur Magazine, Parish Magazine of Healey St. John. 

Given that its strapline is ‘Hotter than Hell’ it would be fair to say that it’s not quite like other parish magazines because it’s mainly about Art. Our parish magazine is called the Lyvennet Link. It doesn't even pretend to be 'Hotter than Morecambe' although it does carry a page long column called Maulds Meaburn Weather in which the wetness of the year has been remarked upon in exhaustive detail. Its coverage of the arts though, has been rather limited. 

Jamie commissioned Peter McGlynn, based in Newcastle upon Tyne and who I have never met, to turn the PowerPoint into a cartoon strip, a task for which considerable ‘licence’ was taken. The trapeze artiste and the stovepipe hats for example were not of my invention. But who cares, I love it. It appeared in an issue dated December 63^rd [yes] 2007. ’Forgotten Books Number’.

We still have the ‘Blackpool Beach Library’ by the way. It’s a wheelbarrow which was then used to barrow borrowing books about the beach but which today is full of the most fantastic 10 year old compost. I have been planting bulbs, late. I’m trying to give them a bit of a boost.

After yesterday’s post I have an astonishing 164 page views and an offer for ‘Some Los Angeles Apartments’. I had not intended to make an offer of sale but part of the transparency of this project is about money which I have always found to be a useful way of describing value. However as I think about getting into this it seems less useful than I thought.

Oh and also a rhetorical offer to commission me to catalogue my own library... If only the organisation concerned can survive the year, given the government's war on all that is decent in the arts and elsewhere, and pay for me to do this kind of stuff. Good luck to those concerned, I wish them well and I loved working with them when the sun shone. If only we had fixed the roof. Its bloody raining now. 

'FVGIT HORA. QVANDO LVDIS'

No link today!