We're merging stores and expanding like an exploding custard factory!

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.

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!

~ ~ ~ ~

And so, we regret to say it's time for one of our NOT BUYING Periods.

Our usual Not Buying periods are in the immediate lead up to Christmas and over New Years, and over our March Stocktaking time, and this year with 60,000 books to move three city blocks from the Courtenay Place branch, and about 40,000 of the Manners Street branches titles to move upstairs we have decided to start a little early.

One of our biggest problems is that over the next six weeks we no longer have any room to store the books that we can't use and normally go to charity, as our usual storage area has already become a building site.

(N.B. if you are aware of a school, church, or charity that would like books for a fair we would love to hear from them)

It is now time for our Annual Stocktake / Once-in-a-Lifetime*-Moving-the-Whole-Shaboozle Buying Holiday.

We will not be purchasing stock from
Tuesday 10th MARCH 2009
until
sometime in early to mid APRIL after Easter
(our plans are still quite fluid so please ring ahead)

We regret any inconvenience this may cause - as usual we are still taking small exchanges and credits to shop cards.

* Once-in-a-Lifetime because as this will be my fourth (!) bookshop move there is a good chance a fifth move would kill me - I'm not as young as I was... BGH

What's New at Arty Bees Courtenay Place

As Flight of the Conchords so aptly sing - It's Business Time! Let the moving and shaking begin... (or to be more acurate the packing and moving and groaning of staff!)

As we get closer to this monumental event we can share more information about it with you. Not because it was top-secret, but simply because up until now we were still working out the precise details.

So, anyway, barring unforeseen events, Courtenay Place will close for the last time at 6pm on Sunday 22nd March. In the days leading up to this we will be operating at reduced hours, (see below). You may also have to navigate around a lot of us taking books off shelves and packing them for their short journey west.

We may also be closing a little early on Thursday 26th and Friday 27th of March at the existing (and soon-to-be vastly improved) Manners Street shop - simply because the store may look a little like this... (except it will still hopefully have a ceiling)

If you have been in lately you will have noticed the shelves are a little looser than the usual packed to the gunnels* look we’re so fond of. If there are any books that you’ve had your eye on at Courtenay Place, now is the time to secure them. Don’t miss out! You have been warned.

If you have been in Manners Street lately you will have noticed all the banging and dust coming from upstairs. It’s called progress and the team of builders, plumbers, electricians etc are making a lot of it. Walls and ceilings have been torn down and put up. Everywhere is now gib lined and waiting for a splash of colour. I’m betting yellow or black, but you never know, we may go crazy and make them purple. The top of the external stairs has been covered over (more room for books) and the beginnings of the new internal stairs are well on their way to completion. Behind the scenes the Bees have a new kitchen area installed for all that tea making, and an office for the boss – it’s never happened before! There is also lots of space to store our duplicate books and works in progress. The floors are also mostly completed and awaiting that all-important finishing touch of carpet. And that’s when we get to do our thing and start Operation Overload, where we pack up over 60,000 books and do a lot of carrying.

In the meantime, Courtenay Place is soldiering on, still providing the locals – hey, we’re only going to Manners St, you’ll still be local! – with quality pre-loved books.

I’d like to thank you for your support and patronage of Arty Bees for the last 11 years that the shop, and I (I started part-time here about a few weeks after it opened) have been at this location.

It’s not goodbye, it’s just au revoir!

Ka kite ano,

Arty Bees Final Hours at Courtenay Place, March 2009

* Gunwales! Who'd have known...
I have been reliably informed that this is the correct spelling. Like so many other nautical terms that lazy sailors shorten until no-one can remember what the original word was, like Focsle for Forecastle, and Bosun for Boatswain.
Sailors! Mangling the Queen's English!
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Rare and Antiquarian Books recently added to Courtenay Place

What's New at Arty Bees Manners Street

Some fantastic New Zealand titles have come in recently, including some extremely scarce early pioneer first editions.

• Making Peoples - A History of The New Zealanders from Polynesian Settlement to the end of the 19th Century by James Belich
• Indirections - A Memoir 1909 - 1947 by Charles Brasch
• Early History of New Zealand - Brett's Historical Series (1890 Hardback 3/4 leather edition with title page other wise good) published by Bretts - Sherrin & Wallace and edited by Thomas W Leys
• James Brodie's The First Seven Thousand - A Jubilee History of Scots College 1916-1990 and Terawhiti and the Goldfields
• Censored - A Short History of Censorship in New Zealand by Paul Christoffel
• The Trees of New Zealand by Cockayne & Turner
• Cyclopedia of New Zealand Vol 1 - Wellington Provincial District (1897)
• Dalley & McLean's Frontier of Dreams - The Story of New Zealand in hardback
• Kate Sheppard - The Fight for Women's Votes in New Zealand by Judith Devaliant
• Hands Off the Tom Tom - essays by A R D Fairburn
• Cook Bicentenary Expedition in the South-West Pacific 1969 by Ronald Fraser
• Scholars & Gentlemen Both - G M & Allan Thomson in New Zealand Science & Education by Ross Galbreath
• Come Be a Pioneer in Times of Old Cape Runaway by Jock Hindmarsh
• Enlightenment and New Zealand 1773-1774 - Essays Commemorating the Visit of Johann Reinhold Forster & George Forster with James Cook to Queen Charlotte & Dusky Sounds ediied by Michael E Hoare
• M H Holcroft's The Deepening Stream - Cultural Influences in New Zealand
• R Hudson & Co Ltd - Diamond Jubilee Souvenir Containing the History & Development of the Company From 1868 to 1928
• Talking History - A Short Guide to Oral History by Megan Hutching
• Gold, Quartz and Cyanide - The Story of the Barewood Reek - And the Astonishing Tale of Otago's First Submarine by John Ingram with Gladye McDonald
• David Johnson's Wellington By the Sea - 100 Years of Work and Play
• Jane Kelsey's The New Zealand Experiment - A World Model for Structural Adjustment?
• Old Wellington Days by Pat Lawlor
• White Feathers - An Anthology of New Zealand and Pacific Poetry on the Theme of Peace edited by Locke, Low & Winslade
• From a South Seas Diary 1938 - 1942 by 1930's Fiji Governor Sir Harry Luke
• Charles Fleming - Environmentalist Patriot by Mary McEwen
• Canoes of Kupe - A History of Martinborough District by Roberta McIntyre
• The Marine Fauna of New Zealand: Basket-Stars and Snake-Stars (Echinodermata: Ophiuroidea: Euryalinida) by D G McKnight
• McLaren and Griffiths' Whitcombe's Story Books - A Trans-Tasman Survey
• National Art Gallery & Dominion Museum, New Zealand - Souvenir Catalogue of Pictures and Works of Art for Opening Exhibition, August, 1936 (With programme of opening ceremony)
• Otago Museum's Woven Images - Traditions in Weaving From Indonesia
• An Account of the Settlements of the New Zealand Company (First edition 1841 hardback 3/4 leather) by Henry William Petre
• Nigel Prickett's Historic Taranaki - An Archaeological Guide and Archaeological Excavations at the Omata Stockard and Warea Redoubt, Taranaki
• Historic Huts - The Story of the Buildings Erected and Occupied By Early Explorers in the Ross Dependency, Antarctica by Leslie B Quartermain
• The History of the Wellington Branch of the National Council of Women 1916-2006 - The Story of Energy & Enterprise by Lois Robertson
• Clendon House - Rawene by Ruth Miriam Ross
• Lead in the Environment in New Zealand by The Royal Society of New Zealand
• Sargeson, Frank A Man & His Wife
• Who's Who in New Zealand by Guy H Scholefield 1939 edition
• Peter Shaw & Peter Hallett's Waitangi
• Captain James Cook - After Two Hundred Years - A Commenorative Address Delivered Before the Hakluyt Society by R A Skelton
• No Left Turn - The Distortion of New Zealand's History by Greed, Bigotry and Right-Wing Politics by Chris Trotter
• Memoir of the Life and Episcopate of George Augustus Selwyn (1879 volume one only) by H W Tucker
• Early Wellington - 1929 2nd printing signed by author Louis Ward
• The Founding of Hawke's Bay by James Gordon Wilson
• Matthew Wright's Quake - Hawkes Bay 1931
  
• Anon Ko Nga Upoko Ewitu O Te Pukapuka A Te Poropiti a Raniera me Te Pukapuka Ano Hoki A Te Poropiti A Hona - (an 1840 Maori Religious text)
• (A cheap facsimile of) The Land of Tara - Polynesian Linguistics - The Ngati-tuharetoa Occupation of Taupo-Nui-A-Tia - Mummificatin Among the Maoris by Elsdon Best
• Anthropology in the South Seas - Essays presented to H D Skinner
• Hariru Wikitoria! - An Illustrated History of the Maori Tour of England 1863 by Brian Mackrell
• How To Learn Maori (1883 card covers ) by Edward Shortland
• The Maori People of New Zealand by Siers & Ngata which includes The Maori People, Maori Love Legends andThe Story of Maori Music
• The Great New Zealand Myth - A Study of the Discovery and Origin Traditions of the Maori by David R Simmons
• Maoris on Maria Island - Punishment by Exile by John Tattersall
• Maori and English Dictionary - New & Enlarged Edition of A Leaf From the Natural History of New Zealand, or A Vocabulary of its Different Productions, etc, \With their Native Names (1870 card covers) by the Reverend Richard Taylor, with William Atkin & George Chapman

New Zealand Art Books in over the last two weeks include...

• Colin McCahon - A Survey Exhibition by the Auckland City Art Gallery with Docking & O'Reilly
• Early Watercolours of New Zealand by Auckland City Art Gallery with Hamish Keith
• Ascent - A Journal of the Arts in New Zealand Vol 1 No 2 July 1968 edited by Leo Bensemann
• Doreen Blumhardt - Teacher & Potter by Blumhardt & Marion McLoed
• Artists & Craftsmen in New Zealand by Peter Cape
• May Davis - Her Story
• Potters in New Zealand by Harris & Brodie
• The Studio - April 1948 New Zealand Issue Vol 135 # 661
• 10 Years of Pottery in New Zealand by Helen Mason
• J Moffett's Russell Clark - A Selection of Reproductions From His Works
• Stewart Bell Maclennan, OBE, ARCA, NRD, FRSA, 1903-1973 - The Complete Artist by Packwood & Quirk
• Edith Collier in Retrospect by the Sarjeant Gallery
• Greer Twiss - A Survey 1959 - 1981 by the Wellington City Art Gallery with Hamish Keith
• New Zealand Photography From the 1840's to the Present - Nga Whakaahua O Aotearoa Mai I 1840 Ki Naianei by William Main & John Turner
• John Turner's beautifully produced Eric Lee-Johnson, Artist with Camera
  

The earth could move for you if you are interested in Geology this week - We've had...

• Geology of the Wellington Area by Begg & Mazengarb
• Geomorphology of New Zealand - Part 1 - An Introduction to the Study of Land-Forms by the legendary Professor Charles A Cotton
• Geological Society of New Zealand Geological Society of New Zealand Newsletter - 50th Anniversary Issue #138 Nov 2005
• Rodney Grapes& Hamish Campbell's local classic Red Rocks
• Greater Cook Strait - Form and Flow by T F W Harris
• Geological Society of New Zealand - 1955 - 2005 Our First Fifty Years by Bruce W Hayward
• E F Lloyd's Geology of Whakarewarewa Hot Springs - New Zealand Geological Survey Bulletin 111
• The classic Rugged Landscape - The Geology of Central New Zealand by Graeme Stevens
• The First Forty Years - New Zealand Oceanography Institute 1954 - 1994 by Rose-Marie Thompson
  

We've had lots of books on Quakers in New Zealand and early Quaker pioneers

• Audrey Brodie's About Quakers and Quakerism - A List of Books in New Zealand Libraries
• Audrey & James W Brodie's Seeking a New Land - Quakers in New Zealand - A Volume of Biographical Sketches, Keeping Track - Quakers in Nineteenth Century New Zealand and John Holdsworth and the House called Swarthmoor
• Go Anywhere, Do Anything - New Zealanders in the Friends Ambulance Unit in China 1945 - 1951 by Caitriona Cameron & edited by the Brodies
• The New Zealand Journeys of Lucy Violet Hodgkin by Frances Henry with Audrey & James W Brodie
• A View of the Bay - Its Inhabitants Seen Through the Eyes of the 53-year-old Lucy Violet Holdsworth, the Newly-Wed Wife of John Holdsworth of "Swarthmoor" in Havelock North by Lucy Violet Hodgkin & edited by the Brodies
• Helen R Huges' A Quaker Scientist - The Life of Theodore Rigg KBE
• Traveller Under Concern - The Quaker Journals of Frederick Mackie on His Tour of the Australasian Colonies, 1852-1855 edited by Mary Nicholls
• Haddenham Quaker History 1660 - 1870 - Being a Summary of Records Relating to the Old Haddenham Meeting from Years 1660 to 1870 ... by Walter Rose & edited by the Brodies
  
  

We've had some facsinating books on Stamps and postal history come in, in the last 2 weeks including History of the Government Life Postage Stamps by James W Brodie, The Image Maker - The Art of James Berry (A boxed limited edition leatherbound hardback No 11/100 copies with original stamps mounted on plates that were used in the production of the book) by J R Tye and the scarce limited edition The Postage Stamps of New Zealand Volume VIII by Brian G Vincent

Some more beautiful Old Atlases have come in including:

• The World-Wide Atlas of Modern Geography, Political and Physical (containing 112 plates and complete index) 1892
• The British Empire and Japan, Illustrated Descriptive Atlas by William Bisiker 1909
• The Citizen's Atlas of the World by Bartholomew 1952
• Statistical Atlas of Christian Missions - Containing a Directory of Missionary Societies, A Classified Summary of Statistics, An Index of Mission Stations, and a Series of Specially Prepared Maps of Mission Fields 1910

Random Non Fiction includes some Antique Books and books on Antiques this week:

• Photograms of the Year 1937 - The Annual Review of the World's Pictorial Photographic Work
• Cadbury Bournville, A Century of Progress 1831-1931
• Little Songs for Me to Sing (1870) by Henry Leslie & Illustrated by J E Millais
• A fabulous facsimile of The Guide to the Great Siberian Railway (1900) by Dmitriev-Mamonov & Zoziarski revised by John Marshall
• The Dictionary of Blue and White Printed Pottery 1780 -1880 by Coysh & Henrywood
• Spode Printed Ware by Drakard & Holdway
• Korean Celadon and Other Wares of the Koryo Period by Grompertz
• English Blue and White Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century by Bernard Watney
• Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower, The Guns of August, A Distant Mirror - The Calamitous Fourteenth Century and Practicing History
• The Invention of the Sewing Machine (United States. National Museum. Bulletin) by Grace Rogers Cooper
• Barrie Trinder's The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire
• Bath & Bristol - Painted by Laura A Happerfield Described by Stanley Hutton (1915)
• English Lake Scenery - illustrated with a series of coloured plates from drawings by A F Lydon (1880) by John Walker & Co
• The New Landscape in Art and Science by Gyorgy Kepes
• The Subversive Stitch - Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine by Rozsika Parker
• The Life and Explorations of David Livingstone, LL. D. , Carefully Compiled from Reliable Sources (no date circa 1850s Large embossed and decorated leather edition)
• Threads of Tradition - Textiles of Indonesia and Sarawak by Joseph Fischer
• Celtic Art - The Methods of Construction by George Bain

Each week, we bring you the most tragic & fantastic piece of cover art that's crossed our desk.
A new vice? ... Chocolate covered marshmellow frogs?
...Stamp collecting?
... Cat biscuit Sniffing?
OK I give up what was he selling?

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