Book News - TheBookGuide's selection of book related news stories from around the world.

June 2004

30.06.04. Man who stole books from library is headed for prison. A 33-year-old man has been sentenced to six years in prison for stealing library books from the University of Oregon and selling them on eBay
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29.06.04. Creator of Jennings dies at 92. Anthony Buckeridge, creator of the prep school boy whose rudest curse was "Fossilised fish-hooks!", died yesterday at his home in Sussex...more

29.06.04 .Bank Pays $300,000 for Pushkin Poem. State-owned Vneshtorgbank has bought a handwritten Pushkin poem for a reported $300,000 and gifted it to the Russian Academy of Sciences...more

29.06.04. Moe’s Books lives on. Doris Moskowitz readily admits that she keeps one foot planted in the past while charting a new course for her business. She is the proprietor of Moe’s Books, a Berkeley landmark named after her father who was an icon in his own right. Upon the death of Morris "Moe" Moskowitz on April 1, 1997 at the age of 76, then Mayor Shirley Dean declared a "Moe’s Day," closing the block on Telegraph Avenue where the store is located to allow people to come and pay tribute to its famous owner...more

TheBookGuide is away for a few days but he and the news will return on 30.06.04

26.06.04. Books Make You a Boring Person. There's a new piety in the air: the self - congratulation of book lovers. Long considered immune to criticism by virtue of being outnumbered by channel surfers, Internet addicts, video maniacs and other armchair introverts, bookworms have developed a semi-mystical complacency about the moral and mental benefits of reading...more

26.06.04. The Bookseller. Nicholas Clee on the latest news from the publishing industry...more

24.06.04. Saving Shakespeare's blog. The British Library, famed for a collection that includes a First Folio of Shakespeare, two Gutenberg Bibles and the scribbled lyrics to "I Want to Hold Your Hand," is starting the initial phase of a project that may eventually lead to it archiving all U.K. Web sites...more

24.06.04. Tien Center project reaches $42 million goal. With more than 800,000 volumes, the the University of California's East Asian Library ranks as one of the three largest collections of its kind outside of Asia and includes tens of thousands of rare books and treasured artifacts that date back more than 1,000 years...more

24.06.04. Auction includes ledger noting claim of Clemens brothers. Snippets of Nevada's history, including a ledger from Unionville documenting the purchase of a mining claim by Samuel Clemens and his brother, Orion, will be sold at auction this weekend...more

23.06.04. Clinton book sells for $675 on eBay. Some people love Bill Clinton and some hate him. And at least one person was willing to fork over $675 for an autographed copy of his new book...more

23.06.04. Muslims Upstaged Europeans In Mapping The Marvels. In Oxford an exhibition has just opened revealing an astonishing Muslim grasp of the cosmos at the very time when northern Europe was emerging from the Dark Ages...more

23.06.04. Rare book shop opens in Depoe Bay, Oregon. When Betsy Ogden decided to open a rare bookshop she didn't have to look far for her inventory: she owns more than 8,000 books...more

23.06.04. Man accused of editing library books. Raymond Barber is accused of scratching out words in books from the Crandall Public Library in Glens Falls, substituting biblical phrases in the page margins, and writing "God is Enough" inside many covers...more

22.06.04. Bryson gives away Aventis winnings. Bill Bryson, who last week won the 2004 Aventis prize for science books despite his almost complete lack of scientific background, today announced his decision to donate the £10,000 prize money to the Great Ormond Street Hospital...more

22.06.04. Unintended mysteries haunt used-book stores. New York -- A book is a good place to stash personal, valuable, embarrassing stuff. Unless, forgetting all about the stuff, you sell the book to a used book store...more

22.06.04. Cash fails to dispel library gloom. The government yesterday allocated an extra £2m to public libraries in England to help allay anxieties over their future...more

22.06.04. Beyond things, to the people. If you sit in the Victorian mahogany armchair, which Katharine Hepburn liked to call her throne, and put your foot up on her gout stool, will you take on $15,600 worth of her natural authority? ...more

22.06.04. Holocaust prayer books destroyed in surge of synagogue attacks. Arson attacks on two synagogues in north London which destroyed prayer books rescued from the Holocaust have raised new fears of an upsurge in anti-semitic violence...more

21.06.04. Macclesfield Psalter. Sotheby's describes the Macclesfield Psalter as "the most important discovery of any English illuminated manuscript in living memory" and expects it to fetch between £800,000 and £1.2 million...more

21.06.04. Childhood home of Wordsworth brought back to life. £1m restoration of poet's birthplace in Cockermouth where he spent his 'sweet childish days' aims to inspire new generations ...more

21.06.04. The Mystery of the Voynich Manuscript. New analysis of a famously cryptic medieval document suggests that it contains nothing but gibberish...more

21.06.04. Priceless Caxton book goes on show. A priceless medieval history book, printed and signed by William Caxton, is to be made available to the public after being locked in a town council's safe for 83 years...more

20.06.04. Money, glitz, gossip - of course Johnson would've approved. What, wonders Robert McCrum, would Samuel Johnson make of the prize that bears his name? ...more

19.06.04. Big Price for Big Book. The master copy of the working draft of the book "Alcoholics Anonymous," which belonged to William Wilson, a co-founder of A.A., was sold at auction yesterday for $1.576 million...more

19.06.04. Texas memorabilia sells for $2 million. Historical documents and early-Texas memorabilia fetched more than $2 million Friday at Sotheby's in New York City, even after the auction house pulled four letters dating back to the Alamo because of concerns they may have been taken from state archives...more

19.06.04.The Bookseller. Nicholas Clee on the latest news from the publishing industry...more

18.06.04. Busy Paris bookstore remains an open book to guests. Smoothing his wispy hair, George Whitman peered out of a second-floor window of his Shakespeare & Company bookstore in Paris at the customers lingering on the sidewalk below...more

18.06.04. Readers treasure secondhand troves. Great finds, low prices - and that old-book smell. The owners of a dozen of Montreal's English-language used bookstores have something the big chains don't - plus their own Web site...more

18.06.04. Books can change your life. Can a book really change your life? According to novelist Jeanette Winterson, a collection of books can...more

18.06.04. Stolen from the Texas State Library? New York - On the eve of the most significant auction of Texana documents in more than a generation, collectors and dealers are questioning whether some of the items may have been looted from the Texas State Library some 40 years ago...more

18.06.04. Marvelous collection of ancient books. After more than 30 years collecting books, Mr. Pham Chi Thien from Binh Giang in the northern province of Hai Duong, now owns a library of 20,000 books. Many of them are ancient texts, which cannot be found in the National Library. Thien's wealth of books has become a valuable reference for historians, researchers and book-lovers...more

17.06.04. Readers turn the tables at book festival. A host of leading authors who will take part in the world's biggest book festival in Scotland later this year...more

17.06.04. Book beetles damage books in national library. Beetles chewed holes in hundreds of books at a Israel's national library, but spared the letters of Albert Einstein...more

17.06.04. Readers treasure secondhand troves. Great finds, low prices - and that old-book smell. The owners of a dozen of Montreal's English-language used bookstores have something the big chains don't - plus their own Web site...more

17.06.04. Cornell acquires historic Native American collection. On June 15 Huntington Free Library signed papers to transfer the library's Native American collection -- one of the largest in the world -- to Cornell Library...more

17.06.04. Dissent Greets Isaac Bashevis Singer Centennial. "I profoundly despise him," said Mrs. Grade, the 75-year-old widow of the Yiddish writer Chaim Grade...more

16.06.04. André in wonderland. In 1928 the first photobooth arrived in Paris - and for Breton and the surrealists, it was a dream come true...more

16.06.04. Gulf Air launches Bookshop in the Sky. In addition to sales of bestsellers and new publications from popular authors, the service will also feature screen interviews with authors, and signed copies for selected titles...more

16.06.04. Colonial-era books stolen in Peru. Some 100 old books -- including two priceless colonial-era tomes about Spanish conquistadors and the colonization of the Incas -- are missing from a public library in the former Inca capital of Cuzco...more

15.06.04. Huge American Indian literature collection. The 1,400-volume collection of American Indian literature was recently unveiled at Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago...more

15.06.04. Documenting a bittersweet past. Books, artifacts recall life before and during the rise of the Nazis...more

15.06.04. Court bans Internet cut-price book sale. A court banned a journalist from selling his review copies of books online, saying the discounts breached German price-fixing arrangements that forbid price competition...more

14.06.04. Dubliners love their Ulysses. A 10-ft sausage dressed as James Joyce strolled along Dublin's central thoroughfare. The cream of academia sat at wooden benches stuffing themselves with free black pudding while two men in gorilla suits crouched on a kerb for the scraps...more

14.06.04. Borders is becoming an urban pioneer. The book retailer is opening stores in Chicago, San Francisco and Detroit in once-devastated retail areas or in commercial or industrial areas that have never had many places to shop...more

14.06.04. Expensive chapter in family history. Civil War memorabilia bought back for $24,000 after it was sold to a collector for $1,800...more

14.06.04. Journals of 2 Former Slaves Draw Vivid Portraits. The scene sounds like one conjured up by a screenwriter for a Civil War epic. As the Union Army converges on Richmond in 1862 and white residents frantically pack their silver, a group of slaves gathers in a hotel tavern after closing time...more

13.06.04. Lord Neil captures his castle. Another piece of Dylan Thomas's legendary life in Laugharne is snapped up by the star of Men Behaving Badly...more

13.06.04. My Name Is the Big Book. Sotheby's is planning to auction what it says is Wilson's master copy of the working draft of "Alcoholics Anonymous," the Big Book's disarmingly straightforward official title...more

12.06.04. Portrait of the artist. Have I read Ulysses? I can honestly say I have spent time gazing with admiration at almost every page in the book...more

12.06.04. Kafka, fun guy. Sportsman, dandy, flirt, insurance man...it must be Franz Kafka...more

12.06.04. Casting doubt upon the Dead Sea Scrolls. Professor James C. VanderKam was startled recently when he noticed what appeared to be the Arabic numerals "3" and "2" written between lines and in the margins of the documents supposedly written more than 2,000 years ago...more

12.06.04. 500-year-old Vatican Library goes high-tech. Dealing with bug infestations, normal wear and tear and even the occasional thief, keepers of the 15th century Vatican Apostolic Library face an ever-challenging task. Their latest step to keep their invaluable collection intact has been to employ some 21st century technology...more

11.06.04. Hepburn auction draws crowd to Sotheby's. What would the famously practical Hepburn, a thrifty, no-nonsense New Englander to her core, have thought about someone plunking down $10,200 for an outdoor plant stand she never even stood a plant on, or $10,800 for a pair of well-worn address books, filled with the names and phone numbers of people long departed from this world? ...more

11.06.04. Scotland's forgotten war poet. Bob Burrows was clearing out his late mother’s house when he found a small brown book. Though it was sepia-tinted with age, he could just make out the title: Ballads of Battle by Sergeant Joe Lee of the Black Watch, illustrated with his own sketches, published in 1916...more

11.06.04. "Lasting Impressions". Regarding books not only as literary but also as visual treasures, the library of the Grolier Club is an awesome repository of the history of printing and collecting in the Western world...more

10.06.04. Reagan relics. The clamor for Reagan memorabilia is high because "Reagan established an emotional bond with the American people," says Rick Frese, a professor of government at Bentley College near Boston...more

10.06.04. "Bird man" Sketch discovered. A rare original sketch by legendary "bird man" John Gould has been discovered by Australian Museum staff while rummaging through the Rare Books room in the National Library...more

10.06.04. Katharine Hepburn auction in US. Film icon Katharine Hepburn's possessions, valued at more than $1m (£555,000), are to be auctioned in a two-day sale in New York from Thursday...more

TheBookGuide is away for a few days but he and the news will return on 10.06.04