Shelf:Life - what's new in the world of books and book collecting, links to the news stories that matter, and occassional comments by TheBookGuide.  Archived Stories.

31.03.05 Services mark Charlotte Brontë's death. A minute's silence will be observed at noon at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth to mark the 150th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë's death in 1855. The life of the Jane Eyre author will also be commemorated at a wreath-laying ceremony at the Parish Church of St Michael and All Angels in Haworth, where she was laid to rest.It will coincide with another wreath-laying service organised by the Brontë Society in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey...more  Add a comment

31.03.05 Handwritten Atwood book tops WWF auction. Toronto - An original 15-page handwritten and illustrated book by Margaret Atwood will be up for bid on eBay as a fundraising tool for the Canadian chapter of the World Wildlife Fund...more  Add a comment

31.03.05 Export bar on Blake pictures. The government imposed an export bar yesterday on Blair's Grave, a sequence of 19 watercolours by the visionary artist William Blake, illustrating the poem The Grave by the 18th-century Scottish author Robert Blair. The sequence includes seven paintings which were never engraved and were unknown until they were rediscovered in a Glasgow bookshop five years ago...more  Add a comment

31.03.05 U.S. Rabbi Rescues Sacred Scrolls Lost in Holocaust. From a crowded bookstore in an bland strip mall in suburban Washington, D.C., Rabbi Menachem Youlus runs a worldwide effort to rescue sacred Torah scrolls from oblivion...more  Add a comment

30.03.05 Controversial gospel to be translated. About 2000 years after the Gospel according to Judas sowed discord among early Christians, a Swiss foundation says it is translating for the first time the controversial text named after the apostle said to have betrayed Jesus Christ...more  Add a comment

30.03.05 Let them eat books! Have you read the latest version of "S'mores and Peace" or perused the Ten Commandments in gingerbread form? These are just some of the creations spawned around the world during the International Edible Book Festival, a fund-raising event created in 1999 for book centers and libraries. Participants make fantastic food creations in the form of their favorite books to be viewed, enjoyed and eaten during the April festival...more  Add a comment

30.03.05 'Rarest' Zane Grey book donated to cabin. Working into the nights on the kitchen table in a dingy room, Zane Grey penned and rewrote his first book "Betty Zane". When the Western novelist's cabin opens to the public later this year, a rare copy of "Betty Zane," inscribed to Charles (Buffalo) Jones, the man who introduced Grey to Arizona, will be part of the cabin's historical treasures...more  Add a comment

29.03.05 Squeeze inside the Cranbury Bookworm. From top to bottom, each room on both floors have little nooks of shelves, filled with world history, American history, trashy romance, sci-fi, horror, cookbooks, sports, nature, gay and lesbian themes, timeless classics, literature, literary criticism, nonfiction, fiction, art, music, self-help - just name it...more  Add a comment

29.03.05 Sales slip at bookseller Ottakar's. Bookseller Ottakar's says recent same-store sales have slipped, the latest in a string of retailers reporting tough trade. The book store chain said on Tuesday like-for-like sales had fallen 1.6 percent in the seven weeks to March 19th...more  Add a comment

29.03.05 Treasure lost. Kashmir - The research library of the department of Archives and Archaeology, which could boast, of housing rare books and historical documents is in shambles. Thanks to the indifference of the officials, the library with thousands of rare books and manuscripts has turned into a heap of rags...more  Add a comment

28.03.05 Book fair popular despite Internet. The 23rd annual Akron Antiquarian Book Fair which ended on Saturday drew more than 60 vendors and 1,000 shoppers to Emidio & Sons Exposition Center...more  Add a comment

28.03.05 Astounding roll of scrolls. New Delhi - Till now it was believed that the number of ancient texts and treaties lying neglected and unseen across the country was 10 to 20 lakh (a lakh = one hundred thousand). But officials at the National Mission for Manuscripts were taken aback when they launched a survey. They found a staggering 50 lakh manuscripts after their pilot survey in three states...more  Add a comment

28.03.05 Used books, Internet: a good combo. Korea - On a street uphill from Geumho Station in central Seoul, four small shoebox bookstores stand side by side and share a rather quirky name, "Goguma," or "Sweet Potato." And, appearances notwithstanding, business is good...more  Add a comment

27.03.05 Parts of Looted Manuscripts Return to Ethiopia. Two pages ripped out of an old Ethiopian holy manuscript and looted during the British invasion in 1868 were returned to Ethiopia on Wednesday. The whereabouts of the original holy manuscripts is not yet known by those working for the return of Ethiopian treasures...more  Add a comment

27.03.05 Exhibit showcases the fine art of medical quackery. "Quack, Quack, Quack," a new exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, showcases the prints, posters and pamphlets that guaranteed everything from "animal magnetism" to cures for "the indiscretions of youth" -- and were the precursors of today's spam e-mails and late-night infomercials that also promise the moon but rarely deliver...more  Add a comment

27.03.05 Anger spreads over Japan's 'twisted' history books. Drafts of a new edition of a history textbook used in Japanese schools have again sparked waves of criticism. Japan's Asian neighbours including China and the Republic of Korea say they have been "deeply hurt" by the "twisted history" in the school books which "again" fail to mention the atrocities the Japanese committed during World War II...more  Add a comment

26.03.05 Germans can't get enough of Hitler books. Germans are snapping up books about Adolf Hitler in unprecedented numbers, the Telegraph reported Friday. Many of the books seem almost whimsical about the Nazi leader with such titles as "A Strawberry for Hitler" by a horticulturist who wants to name a subspecies of the fruit after the fuhrer...more  Add a comment

26.03.05 San Francisco literary underground celebrates decade of dissent. When the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair started in 1995, it was a rather small collection of like-minded radicals getting together to talk politics, not certain if they were just preaching to the choir. Ten years later, thanks to shared enemies like the Bush Administration and the Patriot Act, the fair has become a popular rallying point for the far left and the focus of an entire weekend of dissident cultural events, from punk rock concerts to soccer games...more  Add a comment

26.03.05 Ancient Easter pages return to Canterbury. A 1,000-year-old manuscript outlining readings for Holy Week has been returned to Canterbury Cathedral after five centuries, just in time for Easter. The double-page spread, called a bifolium, which was part of a devotional book owned by the cathedral in the middle ages, was recently bought for £7,000 from a London bookseller who had found it in Germany...more  Add a comment

25.03.05 Poet's family fights against sale of book. The families of Afrikaner poet NP Van Wyk Louw and his brother have turned to the Cape High Court to prevent the public from getting hold of a book of letters.
    Herman Giliomee, one of the evaluators of the manuscript, commented that if the letters were published, they would be "the death knell for the Louws' reputation" and could therefore do enormous damage to Afrikaans and to Afrikaans literature. He said the letters were "crawling" with positive images about Nazis...more  Add a comment

25.03.05 The treasure hunter. Catherine Keenan meets Rick Gekoski, whose quest for ever more rare and wonderful books has led to the Booker prize...more  Add a comment

25.03.05 Reading books on cell phones. Your eyes probably hurt just thinking about it: Tens of thousands of Japanese cell-phone owners are poring over full-length novels on their tiny screens.
    In this technology-enamored nation, the mobile phone has become so widespread as an entertainment and communication device that reading e-mail, news headlines and weather forecasts - rather advanced mobile features by global standards - is routine...more  Add a comment

25.03.05 Leona Rostenberg, a rare-book scholar and dealer dies. Leona Rostenberg, a rare-book scholar and dealer who with her partner of 50 years, Madeleine B. Stern, discovered a series of racy novels written by Louisa May Alcott under a pseudonym, died on March 17. She was 96...more  Add a comment

24.03.05 Best-selling author's life in the fishbowl. Two years and 25 million copies later, Dan Brown, the author of "The Da Vinci Code," has all but vanished into hiding...more  Add a comment

24.03.05 Belgian bookworms crazy for comic books. Almost two-thirds of the books bought in Belgium are comic books, according to a study published on Wednesday. La Derniere Heure reported that Wallonia’s culture minister Fadila Laanan had commissioned a survey into the state of reading in the French-speaking community...more  Add a comment

24.03.05 Bookseller loses fight to trade in London street. Bookseller Jerry Ingram has lost his long-running battle to run a stall on Crouch End Broadway. Mr Ingram, who had a stall outside what is now Tesco for six years, was ordered to stop trading last October when Haringey Council licensing officers seized his stock for trading without a licence...more  Add a comment

23.03.05 San Francisco rare books and manuscripts sale report. The rare 1640 first collected edition of William Shakespeare's Poems, selling for $25,875, despite lacking the frontispiece and five other leaves, was a highlight of PBA Galleries' recent auction of rare books and manuscripts, featuring the autograph collection of Florence S. Walter, Part I...more  Add a comment

23.03.05 Looted Manuscript to be returned to Italy. This will be the first time that a UK national institution has returned an artwork or manuscript looted during the Nazi era. A change in the law will be required, since the British Library is legally barred from deaccessioning the manuscript...more  Add a comment

23.03.05 Women writers: dull, depressed and domestic. Their novels are part of the literary canon, their struggle to be recognised well chronicled, but the efforts of George Eliot, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters and Virginia Woolf have done little to change negative views of women writers...more  Add a comment

22.03.05 Failure to study Burns ‘a weakness for Scotland’. The failure to make the study of Burns mandatory in schools is a weakness of modern Scotland, the head of the Cultural Commission is to claim today. In a speech at the Scottish parliament, James Boyle is to focus on the literary scene in Scotland, which he says is one of the nation's greatest cultural successes...more  Add a comment

22.03.05 The eBay era: Going once, going twice. In January, eBay announced steep fee increases, which took effect last month, prompting sellers to post caustic comments on community bulletin boards both on and off the company's Web site. Petitions have been circulated, sellers have debated an eBay boycott and those unhappy with the company seem evenly split over whether "FeeBay" or "GreedBay" is the most apt epithet for it...more  Add a comment

22.03.05 'Sexy' Harvard library worker pursues discrimination case. Boston - Desiree Goodwin thought she had the perfect resume to succeed at Harvard, working in the largest academic library system in the world. But Goodwin found herself rejected each time she applied for a promotion. She claims in a lawsuit that the Ivy League university has been discriminating against her because she's black and is perceived as merely a "pretty girl" whose attire is too "sexy"...more  Add a comment

22.03.05 Lost file reveals Hitler's paranoia. Fascinating insights into the final days of Hitler's life, unearthed in a Moscow archive, are published today in an account called The Hitler Book...more  Add a comment

21.03.05 Surrealist poet Philip Lamantia dies at 77. Philip Lamantia, the rapturous San Francisco poet who embraced Surrealism and later associated himself with the West Coast Beat community, died on March 7 at his apartment in San Francisco...more  Add a comment.

19.03.05 Anarchist Book Fair March 25-27. Edmonton, Canada - In addition to being a source of hard-to-find books, the 2005 Anarchist Bookfair taking place in Edmonton on the weekend of March 25-27 will feature films, workshops and lectures on themes as diverse as organic gardening and anti-corporate sabotage...more  Add a comment.

19.03.05 Cape Farewell. On March 6 a group of scientists and artists embarked on an expedition to the Svalbard archipelago as part of the Cape Farewell project. The aim is to find new ways to raise awareness of the devastating impacts of climate change, in an area where temperatures are rising at twice the global average.
    The artists who joined the third Arctic expedition in this three-year project were Turner prize winners Antony Gormley and Rachel Whiteread, author Ian McEwan and choreographer Siobhan Davies...more  Add a comment.

19.03.05 Gift of Historic Manuscript. Sam Fogg, the well-known London bookseller and Orientalist, has presented the Institute of Ethiopian Studies Library with an important 19th century manuscript copy of the Ge'ez Fetha Nagast, or "Laws of the Kings"...more  Add a comment.

18.03.05 Rare European manuscripts at the Hermitage. An exhibition of Western European manuscripts of the 5th-16th centuries from the depositories of the Hermitage and Russian National Library was opened in the State Hermitage...more  Add a comment.

18.03.05 Andre Norton, science fiction author dies. Nashville - Science fiction and fantasy author Andre Norton, who wrote the popular "Witch World" series, has died. She was 93...more  Add a comment.

18.03.05 'Mein Kampf' becomes best-seller in Turkey. Ankara - Cheap cover prices and a rise in nationalist sentiment have made an unlikely best-seller in Turkey of Adolf Hitler's infamous autobiography, "Mein Kampf"...more  Add a comment.

18.03.05 Obituary: Patience Gray. The cookery writer who introduced Mediterranean tastes to Britain with her two seminal cookery books, Plats Du Jour and Honey From A Weed, has died aged 87...more  Add a comment.

18.03.05 Prague library secures rare book at Paris auction. The director of the Prague national library, Vlastimil Jezek, paid EUR 346.644 (USD 463.617) at a Paris auction Thursday for a manuscript history of Bohemia. Jezek said the 14th century manuscript was the most valuable work about Bohemia to go on the market in the last 80 years...more  Add a comment.

17.03.05 'Goblet of Fire' book signed by 27 cast members. A copy of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire donated by actor Jamie Waylett (Vincent Crabbe) and signed by 27 cast members from the upcoming film adaptation is to be raffled in August by the New York Kiwanis International...more  Add a comment.

17.03.05 Children's writer told £200,000 prize is no fantasy. British novelist Philip Pullman, the author of the acclaimed His Dark Materials fantasy trilogy, was awarded a prize bigger yesterday than most of the country’s top literary awards put together. The £200,000 he won for this year’s Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is thought to be the largest sum yet won by a British writer of children’s literature...more  Add a comment.

17.03.05 Reclusive poet wins £60,000 prize. A reclusive County Durham teacher who lives without a television or washing machine has scooped one of the UK's most lucrative literary prizes...more  Add a comment.

17.03.05 £1m spent on poet’s home. A £1 million investment in making Wordsworth’s Cockermouth birthplace a major visitor attraction is paying off for the National Trust. The poet’s revamped birthplace and childhood home has already seen annual visitor numbers increase by 40 per cent, despite the fact that it did not reopen until the end of June last year...more  Add a comment.

17.03.05 Persian poet Rumi conquers America. Washington - He is the most popular poet in the United States. Barely known here only a decade ago, classes on his work have sprouted up on university campuses throughout the country. Community lectures and public readings of his poetry are announced in the cultural sections of newspapers in virtually every major American city. In perhaps the ultimate measure of his celebrity, a group of movie stars and singers has made a recording of his poems...more  Add a comment.

17.03.05 Want to buy some Dead Sea Scroll fragments? That's exactly what Lee Biondi did and he smiles as he recalls the encounter. The fragments were on a hotel conference table in small jewelry boxes resting on cotton. "Some of them still had Scotch tape on the back", he recalls...more  Add a comment.

16.03.05 Vatican appoints official Da Vinci Code debunker Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Archbishop of Genoa and a possible successor to the Pope, has been appointed by the Vatican to rebut what the Catholic church calls the "shameful and unfounded errors" contained within Dan Brown's global bestseller, The Da Vinci Code...more  Add a comment.

16.03.05 Crumb's comforts. Robert Crumb's sexually explicit, politically incorrect cartoons are being celebrated in two new exhibitions in London. John Preston meets the artist hailed as a Bruegel for our age...more  Add a comment.

16.03.05 Harper's Jane Friedman Warns of 'Devaluation of the Word' Adding yet another chapter to the ever-growing bleak story of book sales, HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman says she foresees the popular "three-for-two" sales practice - in which British chains sell three books for the price of two - heading across the pond...more  Add a comment.

15.03.05 Racy fluff or reading aid? Increasing numbers of school and public libraries in Maine are devoting shelf space to Japanese manga comic books. The purpose is to lure young readers to libraries by giving them what they want. But some people dispute the value of books that feature female characters dressed in sexy outfits and sometimes behaving in ways that conform to sexist stereotypes...more  Add a comment.

15.03.05 Ex-Satan's Slave wins book prize nomination. A tattooed former biker chick has been nominated for this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction. Joolz Denby, a "punk poet" and ex-member of the Satan’s Slaves biker gang, has made the longlist for the £30,000 award...more  Add a comment.