Wishing you a Happy New Year from Arty Bees with Rosicrucians, Opera and Pancakes for Breakfast.

What's New at Arty Bees Books.
This is the spot to check out every week, as we bring you the latest on the fabulous, weird, interesting, intriguing, and wonderful books, big or small, mostly square-ish - although not always - that have come into the Arty Bees shops over the past seven days or so.

Well, our Annual Christmas Buying Holiday is over, but only at our Manner Street store.

Courtenay Place will not be buying anymore books.

Ever.

It sounds drastic doesn't it, but the truth is that Courtenay Place is very, very full.

I haven't been able to fit in a bookshelf in over two years and books all over the floor may be cozy to a point (and don't get me wrong, we like that within reason) but sooner or later it stops being cozy and just ends up maddeningly, exasperatingly, claustrophobically FULL.

Oh, and our lease ran out. (And the rent went up (and up again) and did we mention that the building leaks and we hate getting soggy books... Ack stop me now, I could go on and on...)

So the Courtenay Place shop will be closed at the end of March 2009 and with those two prime motivators in mind we managed to secure (and this is the really cunning bit) the space directly upstairs from our Manners Street shop.

And with quite a lot of wrangling engineers, tradesmen and lawyers, and the inevitable getting of Consents, we will cut a big hole in the ceiling, pop in some stairs and Bob's your Uncle. (Or Bob's the Boss in our case!)

Which will leave us with one super duper really big bookshop.

We like to think of it, not as losing a branch, but as gaining another 150 square metres to pack books into (or to be more precise, gaining another half a kilometre of linear shelf space).

Suffice to say we are all very excited and a little exhausted and we haven’t even started moving the books!

Which is why Jessica at Courtenay Place won't start buying again, as anything we buy, we then have to move.

Imagine all those books in one place! Bee Heaven!

~ ~ ~ ~

What's New at Arty Bees Courtenay Place

What could possibly be new at Courtenay Place if they are no longer buying books, you ask yourself? Well, the short answer is ‘Tonnes’! The long answer is…

Without all those books being sold to us, we’ve had time to do other stuff.
We have lots of books tucked away in secret places, under stairs and over shelves and in the mysterious realm of Back Room. They are all being dug out to keep our shelves from looking floppy – and to give you goodies to buy, of course. Most of the fiction has so far been given this treatment - so check out the shelves for uncovered goodies. But there are still more gems waiting to be uncovered.

We have also now had time to start work on the seemingly never-diminishing pile of sheet music backlog that we have had for an eternity. Though we’ve been plugging away at it periodically for years, it is now getting the attention that it deserves and at least a metre worth (which is a lot in music terms) is going out each week. This week has seen a stack of Opera, Recorder, Trumpets, Clarinets and Violin music get processed. I think the recorder should become the new ukulele – cheap, portable, relatively simple to learn – the only drawback being you can’t sing along at the same time. And the books all have scary pictures of kids from the seventies on their covers…or is that a plus, I’m not sure?

Complete Orchestral / Vocal scores of all your favourite Operas include

• Rossini
   - Il Barbiere Di Siviglia
   - L'Italiana In Algeri
• Puccini
   - Madam Butterfly
   - La Boheme
• Wagner
   - Tristan Und Isolde
• Donizetti
   - Don Pasquale
   - Lucia di Lammermoor
   - La Favorita
• Verdi
   - Don Carlo
   - Il Trovatore
• Pagliacci
   - Ruggiero Leoncavallo
• Handel
  - 45 Arias for Voice and Piano

Other music gems are:

• Calypso – John Denver
• Don’t Be Cruel (to a heart that’s true) – Elvis Presley
• The Sound of Music – Vocal Selection (twirling on mountain tops optional)
• Modern Mandolin Method (an instrument we don’t see much on)
• How to play the Pocket Harmonica
• Madrigals of the Renaissance
• The Best of the Beatles – Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band
• J S Bach – Inventions & Sinfonias (BWV 772 – 801)
• The Sheik of Araby (with Rudolph Valentino on the cover)
• Lovely Maid in the Moonlight from Puccini's La Boheme
• Funiculi, Funicula by Denza
• A Treasury of Grand Opera by Henry W Simon
• and a classic from the Andrews Sisters - Mister Sandman

Despite this whole ‘not buying’ thing, the odd book does slip through our steely resolve and makes up our Random Reading selection this week.... Some of these are:

• The Hour I First Believed by Wally Lamb. His latest brickseller, I mean, bestseller.
• The Weather Makers – The History & Future Impact of Climate Change by Tim Flannery.
• Sam Spiegel – The Biography of a Hollywood Legend by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni.
• Prisoner of the Turnip Heads – The Fall of Hong Kong and Imprisonment by the Japanese by Gordon Wright-Nooth and Mark Adkin.
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – Our Year of Seasonal Eating by Barbara Kingsolver. I just read this – it’s fabulous (apart from the, count them, three digs at produce coming from NZ). And it’s so much more do-able as we live in agricultural New Zealand and not by the Appalachian mountains. Shame about the bananas though. Would you like some zucchini?
• Marie Claire – Breakfast by Jody Vassallo. The photos in this cookbook were described by one of our staff as ‘gastro-porn’, an apt phrase. OK hungry now...

Some New Zealand titles (we do find it hard to resist good New Zealand books) in over the last few weeks include:

• Coast to Coast Who Was First? By Grant Hunter. Reflecting on 300 years of the Coast to Coast multi-sport race.
• 101 Great Tramps in New Zealand – Revised and Updated 2008 by Mark Pickering and Rodney Smith.
• A Tiger by the Tail – A History of Auckland Zoo 1922-1992 by Derek Wood.
• Edith Collier – Her Life and Work 1885 – 1964 by Joanne Drayton.
• Stitch – Contemporary New Zealand Textile Artists by Ann Packer.
• On the Wings of Mercury – The Lorraine Moller Story by Lorraine Moller (no ghost writer – hurrah!).

What's New at Arty Bees Manners Street

Random Reading to start your Summer Holidays with!

• Julie Kavanagh, Rudolf Nureyev
• The Red Book - Wildlife in Danger by Fisher, Simon & Vincent
• Eine romantische Reise durch Deutschland - A Romantic Journey through Germany -Un Voyage Romantique à Travers L'Allemagne by Hermann Gutmann
• A Key to Soviet Politics - The Crisis of the Anti-Party Group by Roger Pethybridge The Life of John Maynard Keynes by R F Harrod
• The Little Lives of Certain Chairs, a Table or Two, and other Inanimates of Our Acquaintance by Barbara Blackman with illustrations by Charles Blackman (Autobiographical book told through the Blackman's relationship with furniture/inanimate objects they lived with. )
• Methods of Testing for Textiles by British Standards
• Seven Spiders Spinning by Gregory Maguire (the famed author of Wicked this is a 1st edition of one of his early children’s books)
• The Greek Myths by Graves, Robert in a yummy Folio edition - 2 volumes with coloured illustrations on front and back boards and gold titles on spine and boxed all in mint condition.
• A Selection from the Lyrical Poems of Robert Herrick by Palgrave
• Fifteen Minutes a Day The Reading Guide edited by Charles W Eliot
• Hypnotism Today by Leslie M Lecron and Jean Bordeaux
• Noises Off - A Handbook of Sound Effects - Third Edition by Frank Napier
• Glands- Our Invisible Guardians by M W Kapp, M.D
• Childbirth with Hypnosis by William S Kroger

Great Fiction just keeps on coming in regardless of our Not Buying phase apparently - which is just as well as it is the season for lying under a tree and reading a book. I know traditionally it's meant to be lying on a beach reading a book - but honestly (and I think the Cancer Society would agree with me) it is just too crazy hot and bright out there not to grab some shade!
And on top of the masses of new fiction we have been trying to shelve (I don't have any tasty titles or audacious authors to whet your appetite, it's too hot for such tedious work!) we are also planning on hauling out our duplicate boxes over the next few weeks so you can look forward to our shelves being restocked with classic titles as well.

Just in time for the Inauguration of the 44th President of the United States we have some great books on American Political History and Foreign Relations including:

• Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
• Matthew Brzezinski, Red Moon Rising: Sputnik and the Rivalries that Ignites the Space Age
• Sean Wilentz, The Age of Reagan: A History 1974-2008
• Thurston Clarke, The Last Campaign: Robert F Kennedy and the 82 Days That Inspired America
• Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
• J Anthony Lukas, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years

Beautiful books on World War 2 are in store this week

• Rick Atkinson, The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy 1943-1944
• Laurence Rees, Auschwitz: The Nazis & the ‘Final Solution’
• David Kynaston, Austerity Britain 1945-51
• The Great Game - Memoirs of the Spy Hitler Couldn't Silence by Lepold Trepper
• Max Hastings, Nemesis: The Battle for Japan, 1944-45
• Walter Schellenberg, The Memoirs of Hitler’s Spymaster
• Richard Holmes, The World At War: The Landmark Oral History
• The Last Secret Forcible Repatriation To Russia 1944-7. by Nicholas Bethell
• Saul Friedlander, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945
• Alexander Werth, Russia at War 1941-1945
• Andrew Frankel, The Eagle's Nest from Adolf Hitler to the Present Day

We've had some scrumptious History you can really get your teeth into on all sorts of fabulous topics...

• John Adamson, The Noble Revolt
• The Face of Battle - A Study of Agincourt, Waterloo, and the Somme by John Keegan
• David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings that Shaped the Twentieth Century
• Anthony Read, The World on Fire: 1919 and the Battle with Bolshevism
• Adam Zamoyski, Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow
• Adam Zamoyski, The Fall of Napoleon & the Congress of Vienna
• Ataturk by Irfan and Margarete Orga
• Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron: Bismarck, Beichroder, and the Building of the German Empire
• Christopher Duggan, The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796
• Marshall Zhukov's Greatest Battles by Georgi K Zhukov
• Tim Blanning, The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815
• Munro Price, The Perilous Crown: France Between Revolutions 1814-1848
• David Cordingly, Cochrane the Dauntless: The Life and Adventures of Thomas Cochrane
• The Fate of Admiral Kolchak by Peter Fleming
• Ian Kershaw, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions that Changed the World
• Judith Herrin, Byzantium: The Surprising Life of a Medieval Empire
• The Tragedy of the Baltic States: A Report Compiled from Official Documents and Eyewitnesses' Stories by John A Swettenham
• Julian Spilsbury, The Indian Mutiny
• Giles Milton, Paradise Lost: Smyrna 1922 - The Destruction of Islam’s City of Tolerance
• Charles Esdaile, Napoleon’s War: An International History 1803-1815
• Her-Bak: The Living Face of Ancient Egypt by Isha Schwaller De Lubicz, Illustrated by Lucie Lamy
• Orlando Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1924
• Richard M Watt, The Kings Depart: The Tragedy of Germany – Versailles and the German Revolution
• Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment (A history of the momentous years between 1934 and 1939, when millions of people died in Stalin's purges.)
• The Victorian Woman by Duncan Crow
• Vincent Virga and The Library of Congress, Cartographia: Mapping Civilisations
• Anthony Beevor, The Battle for Spain: The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939

And finally we've had an amazing collection of Rosicrucian books come in.
"The term Rosicrucian (symbol: the Rose Cross) describes a secret society of mystics, allegedly formed in late mediaeval Germany, holding a doctrine "built on esoteric truths of the ancient past", which, "concealed from the average man, provide insight into nature, the physical universe and the spiritual realm." Thank you Wikipedia!

• The Conscience of Science and Other Essays by Walter J Albersheim
• The Book of Jasher one of the Sacred Books of The Bible by Albinus Alcuin (translator)
• The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz Anno 1459 by Johann Valentin Andreae ( Translated into English by Edward Foxcroft in 1690 )
• The Technique of the Master, or The Way of Cosmic Preparation by Raymund Andrea
• The Technique of the Disciple. Rosicrucian Library Volume XVI by Raymund Andrea
• Messages from the Celestial Sanctum by Raymond Bernard
• A Secret Meeting in Rome (The Rosicrucian Library, Volume 45) by Raymond Bernard
• Great Women Initiates, or the Feminine Mystic by Helene Bernard
• Cosmic Consciousness: A Study In The Evolution Of The Human Mind by Richard Maurice Bucke
• Zanoni: A Rosicrucian Tale by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton
• Lemuria - The Lost Continent of the Pacific by W S Cerve
• Mystics at Prayer edited by Fr. Many Cihlar
• What to Eat and When by Stanley K Clark
• Egypt's Ancient Heritage (Rosicrucian Library Volume XXXI) by Rodman Clayson
• Son of the Sun - The Life and Philosophy of Akhnaton, King of Egypt by Savitri Devi
• The Cloud Upon The Sanctuary. by Karl von Eckartshausen
• Mysteries of the Great Operas by Max Heindel
• Precious Present by Spencer Johnson
• Herbalism Through the Ages. by Ralph Whiteside Kerr
• Cosmic Consciousness Revisted: Modern Origins and Development of a Western Spiritual Psychology by Robert M May
• Laws of the Fraternity of the Rosie Crosse (Themis Aurea), Facsimile Reprint of the Original English Edition of 1656 by Michael Maier
• The Rosy Cross Unveiled - The History, Mythology and Rituals of an Occult Order by Christopher McIntosh
• The Rosicrucians - The History, Mythology, and Ritual of an Esoteric Order by Christopher McIntosh
• Reincarnation: Physical, Astral, & Spiritual Evolution by Papus (Dr G. Encausse) translated by Marguerite Vallior
• Cares That Infest - Between Man and Happiness by Cecil A Poole
• The Eternal Fruits of Knowledge by Cecil A Poole
• In Search of Reality by Cecil A Poole
• Unto Thee I Grant. (Rosicrucian Library No. V) by Sri Ramatherio
• Secret Doctrine of the Rosicrucian's by Magnus Incognito
• The Real History of the Rosicrucian's by Arthur Edward Waite
• The Rosicrucian Enlightenment Revisited by Ralph White
• Glands the Mirror of Self (Rosicrucian Library, Volume XVII) by Onslow Wilson
• The Mind As Healer - The New Heresy edited by Onslow Wilson
• A Book on Creation by Sepher Yezirah
  
• Mental Alchemy,
• The Conscious Interlude,
• Through the Mind’s Eye,
• Cosmic Mission Fulfilled,
• Whisperings of Self by Validivar,
• The Sanctuary of Self,
• The Immortalized Words of the Past (Rosicrucian Library, Vol. 44),
• Universe of Numbers all by Ralph M Lewis
  
• Mental Poisoning (Rosicrucian Library, Volume XVII, 17),
• A Thousand Years of Yesterdays,
• Self Mastery and Fate with the Cycles of Life,
• Rosicrucian Questions and Answers,
• The Symbolic Prophecy of the Great Pyramid,
• Essays of a Modern Mystic From the writings of H Spencer Lewis (Rosicrucian Library Volume XXVII)
• The Mystical Life of Jesus,
• The Secret Doctrines of Jesus,
• Rosicrucian Principles for Home and Business,
• Mansions of the Soul; The Cosmic Conception all by H Spencer Lewis

Each week, we bring you the most tragic & fantastic piece of cover art that's crossed our desk.
How apt - only 5 days to go - We're really going to miss him... No I can't pull that off with a straight face.

Recently arrived new books. To purchase, click here, type in the tag number and your contact details.

To see the complete list of available new science fiction, click here.
To see the complete list of available new detective books, click here.
To see the complete list of available Rare and Antiquarian books at both shops, click here.

Arty Bees Books. 2 Locations.
17 Courtenay Place, Wellington.
Telephone 04 385 1819
The Oaks, Manners Street, Wellington.
Telephone 04 384 5339
www.artybees.co.nz