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.

31.10.05
At rare book fair, Harry Potter is aside literary giants
At this weekend's 29th annual International Antiquarian Book Fair in Boston, books bearing J.K. Rowling's signature share the same rarified shelves as signed copies of first-edition books written by the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Robert Frost and J.D. Salinger...more   Add a comment

End of village love affair as author quits 'dull' Cotswolds
The novelist Joanna Trollope, whose books include A Village Affair, is bidding farewell to rural life in the Cotswolds. The writer, who has been described as the "Queen of the Aga Saga", has singled out "raked gravel" and gastro pubs frequented by supermodels as symptomatic of the changes that she believes have made the area less exciting...more   Add a comment

Ancient Moslem manuscripts found in Spain
Two 15th century Moslem manuscripts, discovered in 2003 during work on an old Hornachos house, were recently presented to the Estremadura Museum of Modern Art. The Estremadura cultural counselor described these manuscripts, written in a Moroccan script in use in Moslem Andalusia, as "bibliographical jewels"...more   Add a comment

29.10.05
Mandela's comic role means 'fame at last'
Noting with typical self-deprecatory wit that at last he might become famous, Nelson Mandela yesterday launched a comic book series tracing the 86 years of his remarkable life. "You know you are really famous the day you have become a comic character," he said as he presented The Madiba Legacy Series. Madiba is the affectionate family name by which South Africans know Mr Mandela...more   Add a comment

Google to resume controversial book-copying project
Google Inc. plans to resume its controversial copying of library books next week, despite two lawsuits from publishers and authors opposed to the project. The search-engine giant would restart the program November 1, as planned, a spokesman said Friday...more   Add a comment

Auctionexplorer attracts overseas interest
Auctionexplorer's latest on-line rare book auction ended last night, with participation by a number of countries around the world. "These auctions are continuing to attract increasing international interest, and overseas book dealers and collectors are now making up (a considerable) percentage of our clients," says Paul Mills, a director of AuctionExplorer...more   Add a comment

Secondhand bookstores catching on in Tokyo
There are any number of attractive but obscure trades that, from a distance, seem more satisfying than what you're actually doing. The used book trade is one - and interest in it is rising, as a well-attended symposium held early this month in Tokyo's Jimbocho, a neighborhood crammed with used book shops, clearly showed...more   Add a comment

28.10.05
You can judge a person by their book covers
A survey commissioned by the British Airports Authority confirmed what everyone knew: namely, that when we lay out £20 on a book we are prone to see it as not just nourishment for the mind, but a fashion accessory. Books furnish a room and - if carried ostentatiously in the right places - they decorate one's person as elegantly as anything from Nicole Farhi...more   Add a comment

Amazon cuts costs for UK shoppers as growth slows
Amazon has extended its free shipping offer in Britain in an attempt to lessen the impact of an expected sharp slowdown in growth in the run-up to Christmas. The company warned late on Tuesday that group sales were likely to miss Wall Street estimates in the crucial holiday trading period...more   Add a comment

Dead Sea Scrolls scientists dies
Archaeologist Robert Johnston who found a way to reconstruct texts blackened or faded by time, including the Dead Sea Scrolls, died last week at his home after a series of infections and minor strokes, the New York Times reported...more   Add a comment

No News today...
TheBookGuide is away for a couple of days, but he and the news will return on October 28th. However, desperate news junkies can find links to 1,000's of book related stories and articles in our archives.

24.10.05
Inspired, and made rich, by art
Whether it is the massive Jeff Koons oil canvases in his spacious Cologne office or the Albert Oehlen mosaic laid into the floor of the turn-of-the-century building's common eating area, it is not too difficult to guess where the publisher Benedikt Taschen gets his inspiration...more   Add a comment

Wet threat to rare books
Over five million rare and one-off books and items stored in the underground vaults of the Bhasha Bhavan building and the old annexe of the National Library are in danger of being damaged by water seepage. At risk of being destroyed are original manuscripts of Tagore and Netaji, their letters and rare, one-off world maps...more   Add a comment

Manuscripts that illuminate their time
Two exhibitions that focus on medieval and Renaissance manuscripts opened this week, and both are absorbing, smartly conceived and beautifully executed. They include some of the greatest European painting of their time. Manuscript illumination is one of the chief strengths of the Getty Museum's permanent collection, and shows like these build on that intensity...more   Add a comment

22.10.05
Draft 1784 Pittsburgh town plan for sale
If it's authentic, it would be the earliest known draft and only surviving copy of Pittsburgh's town plan, produced in 1784 by surveyor George Woods for the Penn family, which owned the land. But the map, drawn in faded ink on yellowed parchment, is shrouded in mystery, with an unknown provenance and a gap of almost 150 years in its whereabouts...more   Add a comment

Diane Arbus Revelations
London - The V&A will open a major exhibition this autumn on Diane Arbus, the legendary New York photographer whose work captured 1950s and 1960s America and transformed the art of photography. Diane Arbus Revelations is the largest retrospective of her work ever assembled and is the first international Arbus exhibition for over 30 years. The exhibition runs through January 15, 2006...more   Add a comment

Missing masterpieces
Since it has a material dimension, literature partakes of the vulnerability of its substance. Every element conspires against it: flame and flood, the desiccating air that corrupts, the loamy earth that decays. Paper is particularly defenceless; it can be shredded and ripped, stained and scrubbed away. Countless living things, from parasites and fungi to insects and rodents, can eat it. It even eats itself, burning in its own acids...more   Add a comment

21.10.05
Library in Dublin holds invaluable copy of Quran
The 1003-year-old Quran, which was written in 391 Hejira in Baghdad, during the era of Amir Bahaa ol-Doleh Deilami, is one of the most ancient Qurans of the world...more   Add a comment

Andersen is most translated Danish author
Danish fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen, whose writings have been translated into 91 languages, is Denmark's most translated author. Second is Karen Blixen, also known under her pen name Isak Dinesen, the "Out of Africa" author whose books can be read in 28 languages...more   Add a comment

Downloads send European audio book markets soaring
With an iPod generation coming of age and more bestsellers like "Harry Potter" available for download, audio book markets in continental Europe will soar 20 percent this year and next, industry insiders predict...more   Add a comment

Banned books brighten boys' world
"Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress" is a movie about books and how the best ones can transform people's lives. The heroes are a pair of Chinese city kids, Luo (Kung Chen) and Ma (Ye Liu), sent to work in the country in the early 1970s during the later stages of the Cultural Revolution...more   Add a comment

20.10.05
Time's Greatest Books
Time magazine has just released their list of the Top 100 Greatest English Language Novels, from 1923 through today. Why such an odd year, one might ask? Because that's the first year Time was in business... and, as one of the critics involved in the selection process, Richard Lacayo, put it: "[this] means that Ulysses (1922) doesn't make the cut"...more   Add a comment

Genre specific
What is it that makes genres inferior to Man Booker juries? Why is crime writing, with its conscious structure and ability to raise big moral issues, such a poor relation of literary fiction? The literary world is happy, but wrong, to judge books by the categories they fit into, says Peter Preston...more   Add a comment

Ghostly happenings haunt library
Sharon Helfrich never thought the stories she'd heard about unexplained occurrences at the Andrew Bayne Memorial Library in Bellevue were anything more than the product of some fertile imaginations. But then she took over as the library's director in 1998...more   Add a comment

19.10.05
Publishers sue Google
The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today announced the filing of a lawsuit against Google over its plans to digitally copy and distribute copyrighted works without permission of the copyright owners.
     The lawsuit was filed only after lengthy discussions broke down between AAP and Google's top management regarding the copyright infringement implications of the Google Print Library Project...more   Add a comment

Solzhenitsyn papers destroyed
A fire has destroyed the country cottage where Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the former Soviet dissident, wrote some of his most famous works and stored part of his family's archive...more   Add a comment

The accidental election of an anarchist
The Italian playwright Dario Fo is hoping to stand for election as the centre-left candidate for mayor of Milan next year. Mr Fo won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 and is known for plays such as the Accidental Death of an Anarchist...more   Add a comment

Children need to be taught the joy of literature
Children's reading is turning into a major subject for debate. It's about time, too! This year the Commons education committee noted that one in six 11-year-olds fail to reach the expected levels in reading and concluded that this is "unacceptably high"...more   Add a comment

18.10.05
Revered Chinese Author Ba Jin Dies at 100
Ba Jin, one of China's most revered communist-era writers who attacked the evils of the pre-revolutionary era in novels, short stories and essays, died Monday in Shanghai, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He was 100...more   Add a comment

Pullman attacks Narnia film plans
Author Philip Pullman has attacked plans to turn The Chronicles of Narnia into a movie series, calling CS Lewis' books "racist" and "misogynistic"...more   Add a comment

Library jobs and branches cut
Over-dependence on profits from DVDs and videos has led Buckinghamshire county council to cut 18 staff jobs and plan the closure of eight branch libraries...more   Add a comment

Poetry bid to reduce suicide rate
A poet is to be appointed in a drive to reduce the number of people taking their own lives in the Highlands. The poetry will be read at workshops and schools in a bid to encourage young men to talk about their emotions...more   Add a comment

14.10.05
Harold Pinter awarded the Nobel prize
'In Pinter you find expressed the great struggle of the 20th century - between primitive rage on the one hand and liberal generosity on the other'...more   Add a comment

$6,318,720 worth of American history
The $30 hardcover catalog for the Jay T. Snider collection of historical Americana, which sold at Christie’s on Tuesday, June 21, could serve as a text for American History 101 at any university. It chronicles the shifting American frontier from early Colonial times to the end of the Plains Indian War and is illustrated with rare books, manuscripts, and maps...more   Add a comment

Darcy overcomes prejudice to top literary heroes poll
His arrogance and swagger have fought off boy wizards, street urchins and the world's greatest detective. Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, who captured the heart of Elizabeth Bennett in Jane Austen's novel Pride and Prejudice, has just been voted the greatest hero in literature...more   Add a comment

Emblem books: First multimedia experience
Between roughly 1500 and 1800, emblems were put into collections with prose and poetry in order to interplay with the text to provide meaning. Of these emblem books, the University of Illinois library has "one of the best collections in the world"...more   Add a comment

13.10.05
Boycott Waterstones and Amazon says Alan Bennett
Alan Bennett urged readers to boycott mainstream high street retailers and to return to independent bookshops. He appealed to book-buyers to protect towns and cities from "Identikit" shopping centres.
    Speaking yesterday at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, the writer urged his audience to avoid the high street store Waterstone’s and the internet bookseller Amazon...more   Add a comment

Transylvania rare book theft detailed
Court documents show the men used color-coded nicknames -- "Mr. Black," "Mr. Green," "Mr. Pink" and "Mr. Yellow" -- inspired by the 1992 movie "Reservoir Dogs." The film was about a botched robbery...more   Add a comment

Nobel winner's work is violent porn, says juror
A member of the Swedish Academy that will award this year's Nobel prize for literature today has attacked last year's surprise winner, Elfriede Jelinek, dismissing her work as "whingeing, unenjoyable, violent pornography"...more   Add a comment

Beethoven manuscript, lost 115 years, is found
Heather Carbo, a no-nonsense librarian at an evangelical seminary outside Philadelphia, was cleaning out an archival cabinet one hot afternoon in July. It was a dirty and routine job. But there, on the bottom shelf, she stumbled across what may be one of the most important musicological finds in years...more   Add a comment

11.10.05
A rare letter, a polite duel
A 1493 copy of Christopher Columbus' letter describing his first voyage to the New World has been sitting among the rare books and manuscripts in Yale University's Beinecke library for more than 50 years, but now the owner wants it back - to sell...more   Add a comment

Banville book sales soar 300% after prize win
Sales of John Banville’s novel The Sea have shot up by 300% since scooping last night’s Man Booker Prize. Other authors on the shortlist have also seen their sales continue to increase after the announcement...more   Add a comment

US veterans group shreds books
Jim Cabaniss spoke from the tail of the flatbed truck on a makeshift loud speaker of the "filth and smut that have polluted our libraries." He orchestrated the shredding of 'symbolic' books - which he made clear were not the ones on the group's list but books he owned privately - representing what he wanted to do to the more than 70 titles the group was protesting...more   Add a comment

10.10.05
Guard admits to Harry Potter theft
A security guard who tried to sell stolen copies of the latest Harry Potter novel has appeared in court where he admitted theft and possessing an imitation gun...more   Add a comment

The book town where the gold rush has begun
The first time I visited Wigtown, it looked like the backdrop to a spaghetti western. In place of drifting tumbleweed there were beer and coke cans. Instead of a saloon door hanging on its last hinge, there were boarded-up shop windows and a stamp collection of For Sale signs...more   Add a comment

Beat goes on for Ginsberg's Howl
With nearly one million copies in print, Howl is one of the most widely read poems of the 20th century. Still, critics disagree about the place Ginsberg's best-known work holds in American letters. But even its detractors acknowledge that his provocative assault on the Cold War and conformity roared across the cultural landscape in a way that continues to resonate a half-century after its storied debut at a San Francisco art gallerye...more   Add a comment

07.10.05
Community investment rescues a bookstore
Kepler's Books and Magazines, an independent bookstore and Silicon Valley institution that went out of business August 31, plans to reopen Saturday thanks to investment from area residents and executives.
    Geoff Ralston, the chief product officer for Yahoo and a new investor in Kepler's, said he felt that, although technology provides conveniences like online shopping, it should not be seen as a replacement for great experiences, like browsing a bookstore...more   Add a comment

Scheme to provide books to two and three-year-olds
Bookstart, the UK's national 'books for babies' programme, has announced the launch of two new packs designed for toddlers and three-year-olds...more   Add a comment

Forbes collection sale
New York - Following the highly successful sales of The Forbes Collection of American Historical Documents, Part One and Two staged in 2002, Christie’s is pleased to offer Part Three on November 15. Primarily focused on Presidential letters and manuscripts, this third installment is expected to fetch between $4 - $6 million...more   Add a comment

Mystery of Napoleon's death solved
A manuscript which experts claim confirms that Napoleon Bonaparte died of cancer and not poisoning has been uncovered in a remote Scottish cottage. Historians have long argued over the cause of death of the French Emperor, with many believing he was the victim of a murder plot...more   Add a comment

06.10.05
Language lands children's author in trouble
Bum, bogey, fart, crap and a joke about Harry Potter not being "the only gay in the village" would not cause much shock in the playground. But when a bestselling author turned the air a pale shade of blue during a school talk to promote literacy, he was ejected by shocked teachers...more   Add a comment

Diplomat 'was real Shakespeare'
An Elizabethan diplomat named Sir Henry Neville was the real author of William Shakespeare's plays, a new book claims...more   Add a comment

Devil's Bible
The Devil's Bible, the largest medieval manuscript written in the Czech lands in the early 13th century and looted by Swedes during the Thirty Years' War will temporarily return to the Czech Republic to be displayed in the National Library, its director Vlastimil Jezek said...more   Add a comment

Gallery snaps up Hughes portrait
A rare sketch of the West Yorkshire poet Ted Hughes, drawn by his wife Sylvia Plath in 1957, has been bought by the National Portrait Gallery...more   Add a comment

05.10.05
Have your say on UK charity (book) shops
The Centre for Policy Studies (a right-wing think tank) is preparing a pamphlet on the Charities Bill and would welcome comments on the effect of charity shops on small businesses in the high street. The contact is Philip Whittington on 020 7222 4488 or email philip@wittington.com   Add a comment

04.10.05
Lesbian fears over banned books
UK Government censors in the 1930s feared that banning books about lesbianism would prompt interest in the subject, National Archive records show...more   Add a comment

Nicolas Cage gives Superman's birth name to son
Oscar-winning actor Nicolas Cage's wife of 14 months gave birth on Monday to the couple's first child together, a son they named Kal-el -- a moniker recognised by comic book fans as the birth name of Superman. Cage is known as an avid comic book devotee who once sold his personal collection, including a copy of Superman's 1938 pulp debut, at auction for more than $1.6 million...more   Add a comment

Bookstore builds its niche
Changing Hands Bookstore used to cater to an eclectic group of customers who loved to share used books and provocative conversations. The small used-book shop founded by a trio of hippies 30-plus years ago survived not only because of its charm but because it used textbook techniques for finding a market niche...more   Add a comment

03.10.05
Medieval texts preserve African heritage
A collection of medieval manuscripts from Timbuktu which academics hail as proof of an African scholarly tradition went on public show on the continent for the first time on Friday...more   Add a comment

Man breaks display case to read rare book
A man smashed a display case at the Wisconsin Historical Society to steal a Revolutionary War-era book worth $5,000, authorities say...more   Add a comment

Leading US playwright Wilson dies
Pulitzer Prize-winning US playwright August Wilson, who wrote a series of landmark dramas about 20th Century life in black America, has died...more   Add a comment

Rare book dealers in bind
These are tight times for New York's rare book dealers. The Internet is proving to be real competition. Richard Chalfin, owner of The Better Book Getter on the upper West Side, said modern technology has put serious pressure on him and the scores of rare book dealers in the city...more   Add a comment

01.10.05
A browse around the bookshop of the future
In his article on the problems facing booksellers in the digital age (September 27), Harry Reid touched on a number of issues, but did not suggest a way forward. Here is one suggestion...more   Add a comment

Common objects get royal treatment
"A beautiful hand-bound book is part skill and part art," says Mark Wessel, co-owner of Wessel and Lieberman Booksellers, where Cohen's work is on display. "It's fine for Claudia to say she's not an artist. But it can't be lost that the reason for her success is her sense of design and aesthetic. She may be a bookbinder first, but there's a lot of artistry involved"...more   Add a comment

Unique manuscript of Bach's cantata discovered
Assistant Professor of the St.Petersburg Conservatory Tatyana Shabalina has discovered an unknown version of Bach's Cantata 199. The authenticity of the find raises no doubts...more   Add a comment