31.05.07.
A Titanic survivor's manuscript goes on display
A warm bath at the ready.
The ship's engines whirring rhythmically. "Then the shock came." So reads a survivor's
handwritten account of the 1912 sinking of the Titanic, a manuscript that went
on view last week for the first time at a private Paris museum ... more Add
a comment Edinburgh
crowned literary capital
A survey for Sky Arts examined 15 cities which
were ranked according to the number of new and second-hand bookshops per head
of population, the number of libraries per capita and the amount of money given
to them by the local authority ... more Add
a comment Religious
zealot fails to remove Harry Potter from schools
In Georgia, a holier
than thou Christian by the name of Laura Malloy has tried, and failed, for the
5th time to remove Harry Potter from Gwinnett County government school library
shelves. Malloy says the books cause children to embrace witchcraft ... more Add
a comment No
takers on Steinbeck manuscript
An expected bidding war failed to materialize
for John Steinbeck's handwritten draft of a novel, the starting bid of $300,000
apparently set too high ... more Add
a comment Secrets
sought from ancient Irish manuscript
For a manuscript written 1,200 years
ago and revered as a wonder of the Western world practically ever since, little
is known about the Book of Kells and its splendidly illustrated Gospels in Latin.
But the book may be about to surrender a few of its many secrets.
Experts
at Trinity College in Dublin, where the Book of Kells has resided for the past
346 years, are allowing a two-year laser analysis of the treasure, which is one
of Ireland's great tourist draws ... more Add
a comment
19.05.07.
No news today ...
I'm prising myself away from the computer for a little
R&R, but I'll be back with the usual mix of the sublime and the ridiculous
on May 31st. Add a comment
18.05.07.
How goat skin DNA solved Dead Sea scrolls mystery
Scientists at the Hebrew
University's Koret School for Veterinary Science near Rishon Lezion are helping
to piece together some of the 10,000 fragments of Dead Sea Scrolls found decades
ago in Qumran by examining the DNA profiles of the goats whose skin was used to
make the parchment and reducing the number of possible matches ... more Add
a comment Has
rare bible been auctioned abroad?
Worshippers at a Hampshire church fear
a treasured Bible is being hawked around antique markets in the US or Far East
for a four-figure sum ... more Add
a comment David
Irving asked to leave Polish book fair
Organizers of a Polish book fair
on Friday asked British writer David Irving, who was sentenced to prison in Austria
for denying the Holocaust, to leave the event ... more Add
a comment
17.05.07.
Bad books won't get boys reading
The Department of Education's list of
books designed to encourage reading among teenage boys may actually put them off
... more Add
a comment Letters
reveal Darwin's caring, comic side
In his own word, it was a "presumptuous"
idea which - more than any other - opened up a long-standing rift between the
sciences and religion. Now a database of Charles Darwin's correspondence with
colleagues, family and friends has made it possible to follow the evolutionist's
thinking as his ideas took shape, and he agonised about the consequences of them.
At the same time, the letters, which are going online, give a rich and moving
portrait of Darwin as a compassionate and caring family man ... more Add
a comment
Southbank hosts first festival of literature
Blake Morrison, Mark Thomas,
Armando Iannucci and John Hegley have joined the line-up for the first London
Literature Festival at the revamped Southbank Centre ... more Add
a comment Librarian's
11-month jail sentence slashed
A Massey librarian who was imprisoned last
month for stealing rare books has had her sentence slashed after the High Court
upheld her appeal. Karen Dale Churton, 48, was sentenced to 11 months' jail by
Judge Gregory Ross on April 2, but Justice Alan MacKenzie reduced that to four
months yesterday ... more Add
a comment
15.05.07.
British Library ruined 300-year-old diary
A historic diary written by
a prominent Jacobite as he plotted the 1715 rebellion has been severely damaged
while in the care of the British Library, The Times has learnt. Its private owner,
a descendant of Thomas Tyldesley, the diary’s author, has described how he "wanted
to weep" when he collected the 96-page manuscript last week and discovered that
someone had spilt oil across its pages -- staining them and making some of them
completely illegible ... more Add
a comment Second-hand
booksellers now have shelters
India -- It was a dream come true for 37
second hand booksellers in Sector 15, Chandigarh, who finally got pucca platforms
with pre-fabricated structure roofing and equipped with the basic facilities of
electricity, drinking water, parking and toilets. The booksellers have been in
the business for the past four decades, and have been pursuing their case for
proper shelters for running their business ever since ... more Add
a comment Rain
refuses to deter Edinburgh book lovers
From 6.30am a queue formed outside
the Parish Church of St Andrew and St George on George Street in anticipation
of the 10am opening of the famous Book Sale. By 9.45am the queue snaked past a
couple of bus stops right down to St Andrew’s square ... more Add
a comment
14.05.07.
Polar library to be auctioned
On May 24 Swann Galleries in New York will
auction off 160 items from the Polar Library of Dr. John M. Levinson, a past President
of the Explorers Club, who has assembled an collection of works on Arctic and
Antarctic exploration. One of the star lots in the auction is one of only 65 extant
copies of the first book published in Antarctica, Ernest Shackleton's Aurora Australis,
1908 ... more Add
a comment 101
year old gets job as a journalist
It's not often that you meet a centenarian,
let alone one like Rose Hacker. In her time she's been a fashion designer, politician
and sex therapist. Now, at the age of 101, she's sharing her experience as a newspaper
columnist ... more Add
a comment Rowling
plans eighth Potter book
"I might do an eighth book for charity, a kind
of encyclopedia of the world so I could use all the extra material that's not
in the books," she has been reported as saying ... more Add
a comment St.
Martins Booktown
St. Martins on New Brunswick's Bay of Fundy Coast has
just announced that it is a Booktown. I can't help feeling that this is a little
premature, as they only appear to have ONE bookshop. ... more Add
a comment
12.05.07.
Australia's first book town?
Clunes, with it's classic, largely intact,
gold-rush era architecture, is the latest town to try the Book Town route to economic
recovery ... more Add
a comment Curling
up with a good ebook
It has long been predicted that traditional books
are about to be replaced by little machines on which you can download any novel
you fancy. But the technology has never really been up to the job - until now.
Here Andrew Marr, who treasures his smelly, beautiful library of real books, spends
a month with one of the new gadgets ... more Add
a comment New
voyage begins for book that saved sailors' lives
It is more than 250 years
since Edinburgh physician James Lind presented his new book to the secretary of
the navy, John Clevland. "A Treatise of the Scurvy" laid out the conclusions of
a small but scientific trial: Lind's tests with different diets proved that feeding
oranges and lemons to sailors with scurvy was a cure.
A
copy of Lind's 1753 book, believed to belong to Clevland's family and inscribed
"From the Author", goes on sale in London next month. It is one of just three
copies to reach the market in the last 35 years ... more Add
a comment New
book illuminates medieval manuscripts
New understanding of illustrated
manuscripts developed in the late 13th and early 14th centuries is provided in
an art history book written by Elizabeth Moore Hunt, assistant professor in the
University of Wyoming Department of Art ... more Add
a comment Sentence
for books theft 'excessive'
A Massey University librarian who was sent
to prison for stealing $23,000 worth of rare books appealed her sentence in the
High Court at Palmerston North yesterday ... more Add
a comment
10.05.07.
War poet's medal turns up in attic
A long-lost Military Cross, awarded
to a poet who articulated the futility of war, has been found in a Scottish attic.
The medal, presented to Siegfried Sassoon and thought to have been thrown away
90 years ago in disgust at the slaughter of the first world war, is expected to
fetch up to £25,000 when it comes up for auction at Christie's in London next
month ... more Add
a comment Bible
thief steals ancient books
Eight antique bibles have been stolen from
churches in Hampshire, including a rare example from the 18th Century ... more Add
a comment Vienna
library starts erotica hotline
This isn't the typical whispering you might
expect to hear at a library. Vienna's City Hall has launched a "sex hotline" to
raise money for the capital's main public library ... more Add
a comment Gaelic
documents may return north
Three of the most important documents in the
history of Gaelic Scotland may soon return home to the Highlands and Islands in
a unique touring exhibition ... more Add
a comment
09.05.07.
Jennings and memories of childhood
It was a damp afternoon smelling of
the spring and I had just dropped into the Cromarty Gallery for a cup of tea.
Shelves with secondhand books were all around me but my eye had fallen on one
with its cover cunningly presented to the world -- "Jennings Goes to School" by
Anthony Buckeridge ... more Add
a comment We
LOVE our bookstores
The Seatle Times offers more of their readers' favorite
Northwest book dealers ... more Add
a comment Tattooed
fat lady art for sale
A grotesque caricature of a fat, tattooed woman
who inspired Sir Edward Burne-Jones to put pen to paper after he spotted her in
Brighton in the 1890s is among previously unseen drawings by the pre-Raphaelite
master that have come to light ... more Add
a comment
08.05.07.
Newly discovered Steinbeck papers to be auctioned
A handwritten draft
of John Steinbeck's novel "Sweet Thursday," along with an unpublished story and
other works will be auctioned by a writer who says they had been sitting in a
closet for 50 years ... more Add
a comment Islamic
and Eastern world manuscripts brought to light
Ancient manuscripts on
mathematics, geography and astronomy from the Islamic and Eastern world in the
archives of Bogaziçi University Kandilli Observatory have finally been compiled
into a catalog, which has recently been published for researchers after a 12-year
wait for funds ... more Add
a comment A
room full of strange tails
When Alex Dove opened the 16th-century book
on witchcraft, something black and scaly fell out into her hands. Dove, who works
in the books department at auctioneers Lyon &Turnbull, was horrified when she
realised it was the body of a frog, wizened by time and pressed flat between the
pages.
Perhaps it is not so surprising given the singular
nature of the collection, and its owner. The painter Robert Lenkiewicz, who died
in 2002, had amassed thousands of volumes on philosophy, witchcraft, superstition
and the occult, including a "death room" in which he kept the embalmed body of
a former friend ... more Add
a comment
04.05.07.
No news today ...
I'm off on a combined book buying/selling, mother visiting,
child minding trip. If I survive, the news will be back on May 9th. Add
a comment
03.05.07.
Tributes to a man of words
Eric Moore, the founder of Eric T Moore Books
in Hitchin, has died aged 94 ... more Add
a comment Happy
ending for stolen rare book
A rare book, worth more than £2,000, stolen
five years ago from an Alnwick bookshop has been returned home -- all the way
from America. George Adams Senior’s 1746 title -- Micrographia Illustrata, First
Edition -- was swiped from Barter Books in 2002 and later taken across the Atlantic
to an Alabama antiques store ... more Add
a comment Become
part of history: email the British library
Blunders, romance and tales
from far-flung places which find their way into email users' inboxes could soon
be archived alongside the stirring speeches of Churchill and the works of Shakespeare.
The British Library, home to some of the world's most historic documents, has
asked Britons to forward all manner of emails to create what it says will be the
first email archive ... more Add
a comment Ancient
Vatican library to close
One of the world's oldest libraries, at the Vatican,
is to close for three years for rebuilding, in an unexpected blow to scholars
around the world ... more Add
a comment
01.05.07.
Eureka! (as the ancients put it)
When a medieval scribe 'recycled' ancient
manuscripts to make a prayer book, his pious work obscured significant texts.
Now yet another jewel has been revealed, reports Andy McSmith ... more Add
a comment Book
lovers get the royal treatment in Welsh town
Hay-on-Wye, Wales - Most
people come to this medieval town in search of rare, collectible or bargain books,
or to attend its spring festival of author events, films and concerts. But I had
come to Hay for more than the literature, music and brushes with celebrity. I
sought an audience with the king ... more Add
a comment Leafing
through some tiny treasures
Starting tomorrow, the Boston Public Library
has an exhibition in the Cheverus Gallery called "Miniature Books: 4,000 Years
of Tiny Treasures." The show, which runs through Sept. 2, is curated by Boston
rare-books dealer Anne C. Bromer, and parallels a show by the same name at New
York's Grolier Club Library.
The
range of objects in the show, most of them a couple of inches head to foot, is
eclectic, including an illuminated manuscript of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address,
a set of the complete works of Shakespeare (2 inches high and said to be perfectly
readable), a book illustrated by Picasso, the smallest Bible in the world (chained
to a minuscule lectern), and the world's tiniest world atlas ... more Add
a comment One-man
mission to distribute books by bicycle
Tokyo - Kazuhiro Doi is on a one-man
mission to change the world by pulling a mobile library on a bicycle around Japan.
For more than two years, the 28-year-old has been distributing books on the environment,
civil disputes and other social issues on a custom-made bicycle with a waterwheel-shaped
bookshelf ... more Add
a comment | 
