“How to Sharpen Pencils: A Practical and Theoretical Treatise on the Artisanal Craft of Pencil Sharpening” (Melville House, $19.95), by David Rees, is not your average book about pencil sharpening. In ...

In the barroom outside the shotgun performance hall at Pete's Candy Store, a woman's singing threatened to drown out a free lecture on artisanal pencil sharpening. "They're making an acetate record ...

I got a peek inside David Rees’s pencil-sharpening kit last week at his appearance in Williamsburg, sponsored by the bookstore Word, at Public Assembly. It was the last stop on his book tour (“How to ...