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- 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.
October
2004 14.10.04
Edinburgh crowned the capital of literature. The United Nations is
today to name Edinburgh the world's first city of literature, following the success
of the ambitious campaign for the Scottish capital which was presented in Paris
yesterday...more Add
a comment. 14.10.04
£11,000 shop assistant joins the Rowling set. The insatiable appetite
for fantasy fiction in the Harry Potter mould has produced another bonanza for
a first-time author.
Stuart Hill, 46, who earns £11,000
a year as a bookshop assistant in Leicester, is expected to earn at least £250,000
for The Cry of the Icemark, to be published in Britain in January...more
Add a comment. 14.10.04
High-tech security for ancient books. Vatican City is home to 1.6
million books, centuries-old manuscripts and the oldest known complete Bible.
Now, librarians at the Vatican Library are using cutting-edge technology to keep
track of the priceless ancient collection...more
Add a comment. 14.10.04
Iraq's looted heritage makes a steady - if slow - comeback. Bagdad
- It's taken months of removing soot, tackling water damage, and reorganizing,
but readers and researchers are back at Iraq's National Library.
Nearly
a year and a half after one of Iraq's chief repositories of historical record
was looted and burned, surviving archives and manuscripts are being cleaned and
catalogued - while the director ventures out occasionally to scour book markets
for lost treasures...more
Add a comment. 14.10.04
Best-selling author accidentally burns manuscripts. A dealer had
recently offered Graham Taylor £100,000 for the first draft of Shadowmancer, which
was destroyed alone with the manuscript of his new novel...more
Add a comment. 13.10.04
Cop 'selling murder manual' on ebay. Greater Manchester Police is
looking into allegations that Sergeant Karl Thurogood has been selling copies
of 'Hitman: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors' on the internet auction
site...more Add
a comment. 13.10.04
Last post for Letter from America. Alistair Cooke's final collection
showcases his incisive and prescient commentary on the country he loved...more
Add a comment. 13.10.04
Edinburgh bids to be book capital. Edinburgh is making the case to
be the first World City of Literature with a submission to the United Nations'
cultural arm, Unesco, on Wednesday...more
Add a comment. 13.10.04
A tsar attraction for book fair. "I remember, I remember" began
a poem recited by one of the Romanov children to her parents on Easter Sunday,
1906 - 12 years before she was murdered alongside her family on a notorious day
in Russian history.
The poem, Tom Hood's Past and
Present, is a poignant scrap of Russian royal childhood that will be preserved
in Australia following its handover by a London bookstore this week...more
Add a comment. 12.10.04
Treasure trove must be bought. It is not every day that an archive
of 19th century papers valued at not less than £45 million is considered for the
National Library of Scotland.
What is remarkable about
the John Murray Archive is that it is probably the biggest single collection of
literary manuscripts and letters, most of which relate to the 19th century - a
time, incidentally, when Britain was believed to be the most powerful country
in the world...more
Add a comment. 12.10.04
Oscar Wilde collection to be auctioned in New York. Important
manuscripts, letters and other items belonging to poet and playwright Oscar Wilde
go up for auction this month, the 150th anniversary of the ever-controversial
Irish-born writer's birthday...more
Add a comment. 12.10.04
British library starts email archive. The British Library is creating
an archive to store the emails of the nation's top authors and scientists, as
the written word is replaced by electronic messages...more
Add a comment. 11.10.04
Rowling writes mini-book for charity. A host of celebrities including
Harry Potter author JK Rowling have written books the size of a thumb for charity...more
Add a comment. 11.10.04
BookPursuit launched. Another new book listing website, this time
based in the Netherlands is launched this month...more
Add a comment. 11.10.04
Rare atlases go under the hammer. Three atlases from the 18th Century
are expected to fetch around £35,000 at auction in Bath on today...more
Add a comment. 11.10.04
Random Acts of Poetry. Promoting poetry, poets and literacy in Canada
nationwide from October 25th- 31st. Twenty-seven acclaimed Canadian poets will
bring poetry to the people, as part of the first annual Random Acts of Poetry
week...more
Add a comment. 10.10.04
Boston Public Library shows off restored Sargent murals. John Singer
Sargent's sweeping series of murals in the Boston Public Library has been called
the Sistine Chapel of America. After a two-year, $2 million restoration, it's
easy to see why...more
Add a comment. 10.10.04
Book con man banned from website. David Holt is being pursued by
organisations such as the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, whose
members have fallen victim to his alleged "vapour books" scams over the past decade.
Holt's modus operandi is to create fictional online
guises and pose as cultivated European book dealers to "sell" valuable titles
he does not own to US and European collectors...more
Add a comment. 10.10.04
Philosopher Jacques Derrida dead at 74. Derrida was known as the
father of deconstructionism, a branch of critical thought or analysis developed
in the late 1960s and applied to literature, linguistics, philosophy, law and
architecture...more Add
a comment. 09.10.04
Festival Draws Thousands of Book Lovers. Approximately 85,000 people
from around the country turned out to celebrate America's creative spirit at the
fourth annual National Book Festival, which took place today on the National Mall...more
Add a comment. 09.10.04
Anti-Semitism Allegations Cloud Book Fair. German authorities have
declined to open a criminal probe following a complaint by a leading Jewish rights
group that Arab publishers were displaying anti-Semitic literature at the Frankfurt
Book Fair...more Add
a comment. 09.10.04
Choosebooks to close.
Choosebooks the US based book listing site will close their site on October 22nd.
Failure to attract additional investment was the reason given in an e-mail to
their sellers. 09.10.04
A rare world of antiquarian books. Antiquarian booksellers from around
the world are gathering in Melbourne for their biennial congress and bookfair.
Stephanie Bunbury reports on the strange fetish for first editions...more
Add a comment. 08.10.04
Film industry hunts stories at book fair. For the first time this
year, literary agents at the Frankfurt Book Fair are making Hollywood-style pitches
on behalf of their authors to film producers...more
Add a comment. 08.10.04
Library Thief Admits Stealing Dozens of Antique Maps. A prolific
art thief today admitted stealing dozens of rare antique maps collectively worth
tens of thousands of pounds. Former landscape gardener
Peter Bellwood, 52, razored 50 irreplaceable maps during six visits to the National
Library of Wales over six months in 2000...more
Add a comment. 07.10.04
Online pioneer
now back in book heaven. The co-founder of Abebooks.com, the world's largest
Internet site for new, used, rare and antique books, has thrown off the virtual
world for a chance to breathe in the aged air, finger 100-year-old binding and
leaf through rare tomes once again...more
Add a comment. 07.10.04
Hieroglyphics Cracked 1,000 Years Earlier Than Thought. It has long
been thought that Jean-Francois Champollion was the first person to crack hieroglyphics
in 1822 using newly discovered Egyptian antiquities such as the Rosetta stone.
But fresh analysis of manuscripts tucked away in long forgotten collections scattered
across the globe prove that Arabic scholars got there first...more
Add a comment. 07.10.04
Buyer bids £160,000 for Bard text. A rare Shakespeare text has sold
at auction for £160,000 after it was inherited by a woman from a relative she
never knew...more Add
a comment.
07.10.04
Nobel Prize for Literature Goes to Austria's Elfriede Jelinek. For
only the ninth time in the 103-year history of the Nobel Prize, the award for
literature has gone to a woman. Elfriede Jelinek was commended for her frequent
critiques of consumerism and the subjugation of women...more
Add a comment.
07.10.04
Dylan's Nomination Sparks Nobel Row. How many roads must a man walk
down, before you call him a ... Nobel Prize-winning songwriter? It’s a question
being asked increasingly in literary circles, as the annual debate over who should
win the Nobel Prize in Literature tosses out a familiar, but surprising candidate:
Bob Dylan...more
Add a comment.
07.10.04
Library Wades Through Hepburn Memorabilia. Beverly Hills - The stuff
of one remarkable life was spread out on 10 large library tables. There were letters,
telegrams, scrapbooks, movie scripts, scores of photographs and other memorabilia
-- all meticulously collected by Katharine Hepburn during her classic 65-year
career...more Add
a comment.
07.10.04
Artist to Correct Library Mural Spelling. It didn’t take a nuclear
physicist to realise changes were needed after a £25,000 ceramic mural was unveiled
outside the city’s new library and everyone could see the misspelled names of
Einstein, Shakespeare, Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo and seven other historical
figures...more
Add a comment.
07.10.04
A windfall of modern poetry. Raymond Danowski has donated a library
he himself created - some 60,000 volumes and tens of thousands more of periodicals,
posters, recordings and other items devoted to 20th-century poetry in the English
language - to the Robert W. Woodruff Library at Emory University...more
Add a comment.
06.10.04
Seattle Antiquarian Book Fair. The region's premier event for book
collectors takes place this coming Saturday and Sunday when the Seattle Antiquarian
Book Fair & Book Arts Show opens its doors at the Exhibition Hall at the Seattle
Center...more Add
a comment.
06.10.04
The Prince of Pages. Antiquarian bookseller Ken Gloss runs a Boston
landmark, and a family legacy...more
Add a comment.
05.10.04
Stolen Books. Elder's Bookstore, widely renowned as a repository
for rare editions of Southern literature, Civil War history and books of local
interest, is also at the center of what is a vigorous book theft trade in Nashville.
A three-month Nashville Scene investigation reveals
that bookstore proprietor Randy Elder has bought books from convicted book thieves
and sells many titles identical to those missing from local bookstores...more
Add a comment.
05.10.04
New book listing
website launched. In an industry were book listing site closures are the norm,
the launch a new one is certain to raise a few eyebrows.
Booksatpbfa,
as the name suggests is the long awaited site for PBFA (Provincial Book Fairs
Association) members, the UK based association that claims to be the largest of
its kind in the world.
Selling on the site is restricted
to PBFA members, who are bound by their code of conduct, and this, together with
the absence of listings bloated by penny sellers, is seen as the site's major
attraction to book buyers.
Members must sign up for
a minimum of 12 months, which will cost £282 (instalments available), and there
are currently about fifty members listing their stock. TBG. Add a comment.
04.10.04
Troubled Germans turn to Lord of the Rings. An insight into the current
German psyche has been revealed in the country's largest ever poll of favourite
books.
In a national project that mirrored the BBC's
The Big Read, the German public placed The Lord of the Rings at the top of their
most loved literature...more
Add a comment. 04.10.04
Bookish expedition: Barter Books, Alnwick. The real world is harsh
indeed after five hours in Barter Books, but now that I know there exists such
a fabulous contrast to Waterstone’s, it also seems like a better place...more
Add a comment.
04.10.04
Henschel comics auction racks up $190,000. Sweet little Irene Henschel
walked around the Wichita Airport Hilton, smiling, welcoming visitors to the auction
of her late husband's comics...more
Add a comment.
04.10.04 Book-trade
history conference. This years conference entitled 'Book Trade Consumers:
Owners, Annotators and the Signs of Reading', will be held over the weekend of
December 4-5, in Bloomsbury, London.
'Recent work
on booktrade history has emphasised readers and the practice of reading. This
conference will bring together leading specialists in the field to explore different
aspects of the relationship between producers and consumers'.
The
cost is £100.00, the course code is FFHI025NACS and you can get further
details on 020 7631 6651. Add a comment. 04.10.04
Priceless collection of prints given to Tate. An America print publisher
who worked with some of the greatest names in contemporary art for nearly half
a century has given the Tate the largest gift of such works since its print collection
began...more
Add a comment.
04.10.04
Fans await another side of Dylan. Bob Dylan fans are relishing publication
on Tuesday of the first part of the singer's memoirs looking back to his 1960s
heyday...more
Add a comment.
04.10.04
Oscar Wilde denounced as the devil by his lover. A book by Lord Alfred
Douglas demonising Oscar Wilde, his former lover, that was never published because
it also libelled the Prime Minister of the day will be sold at auction this month...more
Add a comment. 03.10.04
Ohio library to sell 4 Rockwell paintings. Four original Norman Rockwell
paintings will be sold to raise money for an Ohio library whose finances have
plummeted so abruptly that the Ohio attorney general is investigating the case...more
Add a comment. 03.10.04
Manuscript house hunt. Santiniketan - An antique thief’s confession
in Siliguri has led to realisation that a 750-year-old manuscript worth over Rs
2 crore in the black market is in the possession of Visva-Bharati University...more
Add a comment.
03.10.04
Great expectations. Youssef Rakha wraps up the debates surrounding
the Arab world's guest-of-honour contribution to the Frankfurt Book Fair opening
this week...more
Add a comment.
03.10.04
Scott's house of dreams must be saved. Scotland's literary heritage
will be much the poorer if its greatest writer’s treasured house by the Tweed
is lost to the nation, argues Allan Massie...more
Add a comment.
25.09.04
- 02.10.04 Banned Books Week. Banned Books Week: Celebrating the
Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year.
Co-sponsored
by the American Library Association, American Booksellers Association, and several
other publishing and book-related organizations, this annual event reminds Americans
not to take the precious democratic freedom, freedom of speech, for granted...more
Add a comment. 02.10.04
Vancouver hookers run book club. Between hustling, dates and standing
in line at the food bank, some prostitutes are holing up in the city's' slum alleys
and noisy shelters, turning pages rather than tricks...more
Add a comment. 02.10.04
Sexy self-image that revved up Dirk Bogarde. The billboard outside
the Odeon cinema, Leicester Square, said: "Michael Redgrave and Dirk Bogarde in
The Sea Shall Not Have Them". Passing by, Noel Coward said: "I don't see why not.
Everyone else has"...more
Add a comment.
02.10.04
Stolen books disguised. NZ Police yesterday revealed more details
of methods used by a gang of alleged book thieves to disguise the source of volumes
ransacked from the nation's libraries...more
Add a comment.
01.10.04
The State of Persian Manuscripts: A Call to Action. The total number
of Persian manuscripts in various public and private libraries in the Middle East
and India is estimated to be one million. Of these, only a fraction has so far
been published. The holdings of many small mosque libraries and private collections
are not even catalogued, and we don’t know what exist in these collections. Let
me demonstrate this with an example...more
Add a comment.
01.10.04
Photographer Richard Avedon Dies in Texas. Richard Avedon, one of
the most influential portrait and fashion photographers of the 20th century, died
on Friday at age 81 in Texas, where he had been photographing an essay on democracy
for the New Yorker magazine, a magazine spokeswoman said...more
Add a comment.
01.10.04
'Roadshow' vintage poster dealer no wallflower. Back in the early
1990s, Swann Auction Galleries began holding an annual vintage-poster auction.
These days, the Manhattan auction house hosts five poster sales every year...more
Add a comment.
01.10.04
India school book extols Hitler. Ahmedabad, India (Reuters) - Social
activists and parents have demanded the withdrawal of a textbook extolling Nazism
and Adolf Hitler from schools in India's western Gujarat state...more
Add a comment. 01.10.04
Ukrainian bookseller is Neo-Nazi. Sergei Shalivsky staffs one of
the book tables in the heart of Kiev, but with one difference: Nearly all of the
books on Shalivsky's table are dedicated to Ukrainian nationalism and anti-Semitism...more
Add a comment.
01.10.04
Missing page found 500 years on. A 15th Century Italian Renaissance
prayer book valued at £10m has finally been completed after a stolen page was
reunited with the rest of the volume...more
Add a comment.
01.10.04 Police fear rare stolen books sold overseas. Police who
busted a nationwide ring that was stealing thousands of New Zealand's rarest books
fear some have been sold overseas and may never be recovered...more
Add a comment.
01.10.04. Booktown
update. After a long silence, Carole Nelson, Sedbergh's Booktown co-ordinator,
is the recipient of good news. Rural Regeneration Cumbria has recently agreed
to the 'in principle' funding of a Booktown manager, together with a budget to
market the project.
Funding should commence in December
and will run for three years. Apparently the BBC is currently filming a program
about the town, which will be broadcast later this year. Further details from
Carole Nelson, 015396 20034. Add a comment.
Free from the constraints of government money and
the guiding hand of quanqos, Atherstone could pip Sedburgh to the post and become
England's first functioning Booktown.
James Hanna,
the driving force behind Blaenavon, is hoping that the magic will work again in
this attractive Warwickshire market town. The formula is the same: £21.000 will
buy you a shop lease, shelving, stock, training and ongoing support. A Booktown
HQ should open in the town shortly and the hope is to have six shops trading by
the spring of 2005. Further details from the Booktown International, 01495 793093. TBG.
Add a comment.
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