29.11.05
Princeton
will make 200 Islamic texts available online
"Our collection really is
a world resource," said Don C. Skemer, Princeton's curator of manuscripts. "Every
single subject you can imagine that you could find in a library, it's all there.
"You couldn't put a price on it. It's a collection that took over 100 years to
put together"...more
Add a comment Decorative
books are a new chapter in interior design
A library inside a newly renovated
home in Connecticut gleams with row upon row of polished leather-bound books that
climb 20 feet to the ceiling. An elegant rolling ladder and a narrow catwalk provide
access to 13,000 books whose rich hues, exquisite bindings and gilt lettering
provide an aura of wealth and sophistication. The homeowners, a wealthy businessman
and his wife, will never read any of them...more
Add a comment CS
Lewis feared film would ruin Narnia
CS Lewis, the author of the Narnia
stories, with which Disney hopes to establish a blockbuster movie franchise to
rival Harry Potter, was "absolutely opposed" to the idea of a live action version
of the stories, it has emerged...more
Add a comment Get
your grandchild a rare classic book from your own childhood
I wish I had
kept all the books from my childhood, because I would love to share many of them
with my grand kids. The good news is there is a growing Website (BookFinder.com)
where you can search the world to find a copy of that book you treasured as a
child and buy it online for your grandchild...more
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28.11.05
Newspaper
rapped over terrorism slur on bookshop
The London Evening Standard has
been rapped for not taking enough care over the accuracy of a story in which it
claimed a bookshop sold books that advocated terrorism...more
Add a comment Paper
dolls from childhood could be treasure in your attic
As a child, I use
to wait eagerly for my mother's McCall's magazine to be delivered. Inside would
be a wonderful treat, the latest Betsy McCall paper doll and her fashionable wardrobe
of the month...more
Add a comment 'Repentant'
Irving to plead guilty but must stay in jail
David Irving, the discredited
British historian of the Nazis, will spend Christmas and New Year in a Viennese
jail after yesterday being refused bail and being remanded for four weeks pending
trial for allegedly lying about the Holocaust...more
Add a comment Bush
wins 61st Annual Stalin Literary Award
In a non-televised awards ceremony
during his recent trip to Mongolia, U.S. President G.W. Bush was awarded the prestigious
Stalin Literacy Award by local citizens...more
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25.11.05
British
Library: adopt a book
Bookworms who want to have an ethical Christmas but
worry that goats are a little, well, passé this year, may find the answer to their
gift prayers at the British Library. The library is inviting bookish types to
help conserve their collection of books and manuscripts by adopting a book in
need...more
Add a comment Nabokov’s
son to keep manuscript
Dmitry Nabokov is not going to destroy the unfinished
manuscript of his father’s The Original of Laura, despite yesterday’s reports
in the U.S. and British press. The manuscript that the great novelist willed to
destroy is still kept in Switzerland...more
Add a comment Library
tries new way of disposing of old books
The Queens Borough Public Library
system is ending used book sales in its branches. Instead, the library has contracted
with a Colorado company to buy the books for resale on the Internet...more
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24.11.05
Gregynog
books going to auction
One example in the collection is The Fables of Esope
translated out of Frensshe in to Englysshe by William Caxton, illustrated by the
Scottish engraver Agnes Miller Parker. It is number 110 in a run of 225 and is
expected to fetch £1,000-2,000, but an American bookseller has a copy for sale
for $6,750 (nearly £4,000)...more
Add a comment Poetry
by a student, who became Bob Dylan, sells for $78,000
A collection of poems
written by Minnesota college student Robert Zimmerman -- later to become the "voice
of a generation" as Bob Dylan -- sold for $78,000 at an auction of rock and pop
memorabilia...more
Add a comment Cottage
gives glimpse of Jack London's life
A painstaking restoration of the cottage
where Jack London lived and died will provide a glimpse into the closing chapters
of the famous author's life...more
Add a comment Longlist
for literature's richest prize announced
The Impac longlist has been announced
and, once again, it's huge - in every. The 132-strong list reads like an alphabetti
of authors, from Chris Abani to Carlos Ruiz Zafon, and a the full gamut of genres
are represented...more
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22.11.05
Investors
turning to old Bibles for strong returns
More people are turning to the
Bible as a safe refuge from a struggling stock market and rising inflation, pouring
large sums of cash into rare 1611 King James Bibles, centuries-old Matthew-Tyndale
Bible leaves, Hebrew scrolls, prayer books and other ancient liturgical texts...more
Add a comment
National
Council on Bookstore Tourism
Larry Portzline, the founder of the grassroots
"bookstore tourism" effort, announced today that he is creating a nonprofit organization
to promote the concept: the National Council on Bookstore Tourism...more
Add a comment
A
triumph of absurdity over common sense
It’s the INPRINT bookshop’s twenty-fifth
anniversary this year, so we are celebrating a quarter of a century of what a
friend once described as, ‘a triumph of absurdity over common sense’...more
Add a comment
21.11.05
Vintage
magazines come out of the attic
With the advent of the Internet, vintage
magazines (1830-1940) have come out of the attic to become a viable and in many
cases lucrative collectible market...more
Add a comment California
is book country
I enjoy the company of books, especially on vacation. No
matter which country I visit -- even such places as China, Japan or Greece, where
deciphering the language is not an option -- I seek out bookstores and hang around.
So when I heard that one of the great Western concentrations of independent booksellers,
more than two dozen establishments at last count, was just a few hours away, a
trip seemed mandatory...more
Add a comment Googling
literature: the debate goes public
If there was any point of agreement
between publishers, authors and Google in a debate Thursday night over the giant
Web company's program to digitize the collections of major libraries and allow
users to search them online, it seemed to be this: Information does not necessarily
want to be free. Rather, the parties agreed, information wants to be found...more
Add a comment
18.11.05
Google
Print renamed Google Book Search
Apparently believing that a controversial
project by any other name won't raise as much stink, Google has rebranded the
much-maligned Google Print as Google Book Search, which Google says better describes
the project's purpose - allowing users to "search the full text of books to find
ones that interest them and learn where to buy or borrow them," according to a
post on the official Google blog (via paidContent) by product marketing manager
Jen Grant...more
Add a comment Stockholm
agrees loan of "Devil’s Bible"
The biggest medieval manuscript in the world,
known as the "Devil’s Bible", is to be exhibited in Prague more than 350 years
after it was carried off as war booty by Swedish troops"...more
Add a comment Jinbo-cho
sellers share book info database
The Jinbo-cho district in Tokyo's Chiyoda
Ward hosts 45 bookstores for new books and 120 offering rare and secondhand books,
with estimated combined holdings of 3 million titles and 10 million books. An
electronic database is now being constructed to catalog these inventories on a
Web site for the public...more
Add a comment
17.11.05
Serious
about comics
Once upon a time, you could safely speak up at a dinner party
and mock comic books as the empty calories of a juvenile diet, the brightly colored
cotton candy of the magazine rack. Those days are gone. Comic books (sorry - graphic
novels) are now treated in some quarters as museum pieces - that is quite literally
the case at the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hammer Museum, which, starting
Sunday, will co-host an exhibit that anoints and annotates the "Masters of American
Comics"...more
Add a comment Reassuring
contempt
William Donaldson, who died earlier this year at the age of 70,
was a man of varied and unusual accomplishments: failed theatrical impresario;
brothel-keeper; compiler of The Henry Root Letters and much else besides. Of all
that he left behind him in the clutter of 139 Elm Park Mansions, however, nothing
will be quite such a gift to posterity as his final, posthumously published work,
The Dictionary of National Celebrity...more
Add a comment Paradise
is Lost as Milton enters the mobile phone age
Milton's Paradise Lost, one
of the most sublime works of Western literature, was reduced to a four-line text
message (txtmsg) yesterday with the blessing of the Lord Northcliffe professor
emeritus of modern English literature at University College, London (fule)...more
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15.11.05
New
lives for old books
"Book people are just over the edge. There's something
about them," said Sewell, who co-owns Ralph Waldo's Vintage Books with Anne Dayton...more
Add a comment Royal
heirlooms for sale to pay death duties
Prince Henry's collection of 2,000
sporting books and artworks of mainly hunting and equestrian scenes reflect his
life as a country gentleman. Highlights of the sale will include The Master of
Game, an exquisite mid-15th century hawking manuscript once owned by Horace Walpole,
which is expected to sell for between £80,000 and £120,000...more
Add a comment Lennon's
school drawings set to fetch up to £90,000
John Lennonmay have left school
without a single O-Level - but his drawings left a lasting impression on English
teacher and housemaster Lancelot Burrows...more
Add a comment
14.11.05
Google
eyes online book rental plan
Google Inc. is discussing a plan with at least
one publisher to all consumers to rent and view online copies of books for a week,
according to a media report Monday. Under the Google plan, the proposed fee would
10% of the book's list price, and it wouldn't be downloadable or printable, The
Wall Street Journal reported in its online edition...more
Add a comment Pro-Franco
history tops bestseller list
A revisionist history book praising the former
Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, whose regime liquidated tens of thousands
of opponents over nearly 40 years, has shot to the top of the bestseller list
in Spain as the country marks the 30th anniversary of his death...more
Add a comment Tercentenary
of Benjamin Franklin's birth
The Library of Congress, which houses the
second largest collection of Benjamin Franklin papers in the world, will celebrate
the tercentenary of the statesman’s birth with an exhibition titled "Benjamin
Franklin: In His Own Words"...more
Add a comment
12.11.05
Author
shoots street vendor selling his book
Bolivian writer Edgar Ra-miro Reynaga
on Wednesday shot and wounded a street vendor in downtown La Paz after accusing
him of selling an illegally printed copy of his book, police said...more
Add a comment Books
Bound in Human Skin
On a daytrip to Providence I stumbled across an unusual
and startling artifact on display at Brown University's John Hay Library - an
anatomy book bound in human skin. While such specimens are unusual, they are not
as rare as you might think. Many older libraries and rare book collectors, including
several at Harvard and in the Boston area, have an almost-literal skeleton in
the closet: anthropodermic bibliopegy, the technical term for books bound in human
skin...more
Add a comment CS
Lewis: The literary lion of Narnia
Let's clear up one popular misconception
at the start. It was not CS Lewis who, at one of the regular readings of new work
in the ale-and-pipe tobacco fug of the Eagle and Child pub in wartime Oxford,
groaned in response to the arrival of yet another of JRR Tolkien's mythic sprites:
"Oh no; another fucking elf"...more
Add a comment
11.11.05
Rare
Books of Mormon stolen
A thief stole two rare copies of the Book of Mormon
from the University of Utah campus, sometime between October 24th and November
8th. One is the 1840 Nauvoo edition and the other is the 1841 Liverpool edition.
Each book is worth about 20,000 dollars...more
Add a comment Searching
for Sherlock Holmes
What's to be made of a bunch of grown-ups who want
to believe that a made-up guy is real? Of all the mysteries that Sherlock Holmes
ever investigated, this is the riddle that might have most baffled and amused
him...more
Add a comment South
Africa to help protect Timbuktu's manuscripts
Mali and South Africa have
laid in Timbuktu a foundation stone for the construction of the Ali Baba Research
and Islamic Documentation Institute. The institute will include a library aimed
at preserving the ancient manuscripts about the history and culture of this Islamic
holy city, reported the Mali news agency on Wednesday...more
Add a comment Old
books are recipe for global recognition
An untitled cowboy photograph by
Richard Prince set a record last night for the most expensive photograph sold
at auction, with a price of $1,248,000...more
Add a comment
10.11.05
Auction
record for photograph
An untitled cowboy photograph by Richard Prince set
a record last night for the most expensive photograph sold at auction, with a
price of $1,248,000...more
Add a comment
A
new used book world
The Internet has changed the culture of used books.
For Thomas Baldwin, owner of Baldwin’s Book Barn in East Bradford, Pennsylvania,
the changes are not welcome. "The used book business is in a deep, deep depression,"
said Baldwin, who grew up in the business...more
Add a comment
London
specialist bookshop launches online
The first online bookstore dedicated
to novels and non-fiction relating to London has launched into one of the digital
sector's most competitive markets. In an attempt to take on the likes of market
leaders including Amazon, The London Bookshop has taken the decision to specialise
in one area...more
Add a comment
Auction
of JFK memorabilia planned in New York
A treasure-trove of John F. Kennedy
memorabilia will be auctioned next month ranging from the watch he wore to his
1961 presidential inauguration to his doodles during talks on the Cuban missile
crisis...more
Add a comment
08.11.05
Selling
books by the page
The book digitisation gold rush took another turn last
week when uber-store Amazon announced a new scheme to sell books by the page.
The online store, which started out selling books before branching out into various
other forms of merchandise, says it has come up with two new propositions for
customers. The first scheme is called 'Amazon Pages' in which a potential customer
can buy just a chapter or even a page of a book that can be read online...more
Add a comment Talking
books' 70th anniversary
The service that has issued more than 75 million
audio books to visually impaired people in the UK is celebrating its 70th birthday...more
Add a comment Books
valued
Some used bookstores are warm, well-lit showcases of softly worn
books. Others are almost comically musty. In some the shelves and floors are overwhelmed
with rows and piles of books -- several lifetimes' worth of reading. But no matter
their condition, used bookstores inoculate their cities and towns against literary
amnesia. And they, in turn, deserve protection...more
Add a comment
07.11.05
Abebooks
acquires BookFinder.com
Abebooks.com, the world's largest online marketplace
for new and used books, has acquired BookFinder.com - the leading price comparison
shopping service dedicated to books...more
Add a comment Author
John Fowles dies
John Fowles, the author of The French Lieutenant’s Woman
and cult novel The Magus, has died aged 79. Mr Fowles, considered a master of
multi-layered storytelling and ambiguous fate, died on Saturday, said a spokeswoman
for his publishers, Jonathan Cape...more
Add a comment Writers
call for blind book funds
Leading authors have called for the government
to act to help end the "book famine" faced by the blind. Crime author Ruth Rendell
and Gosford Park writer Julian Fellowes are backing a Royal National Institute
for the Blind (RNIB) call for government funds...more
Add a comment
05.11.05
Book
of hours is put back together after 300 years
It was one of the greatest
French manuscripts of the 15th century, a prayer book of exquisite beauty created
in honour of the coronation of King Louis XII. But within a century of its production,
the whereabouts of The Hours of Louis XII were unknown. By 1700 its 36 pages were
scattered to the wind, only gradually reappearing in collections in Britain and
France...more
Add a comment Microsoft
to offer 100,000 books free online
Microsoft Corp. struck a deal yesterday
with the British Library to scan 100,000 books from its vast collection and make
them freely available for reading and searching on the Internet next year...more
Add a comment A
literature lover strikes it rich
There's a mother lode of independent bookstores
in two towns in California's Gold Country...more
Add a comment The
splendor of the word
Sometimes the New York Public Library can seem like
the world's most interesting attic. Its well-known treasures include a Gutenberg
Bible and Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. But who knew
that it had one of the country's greatest collections of illuminated manuscripts?
...more
Add a comment
03.11.05
The
theft of culture by and for the rich
For 17 years, I worked at the Library
of Congress in Washington, D.C. During my tenure, I became aware of a systematic
assault on the collection by users of the library. In fact, a ring of thieves
had been razoring out prints with locust-like precision, taking advantage of the
open stacks and the trust the library had implicitly extended to its patrons.
Entire runs of pages of hand-tinted prints from old folios on botany, zoology,
geology, maritime history and exploration were removed and snuck out of the library,
later to be sold as "old prints" in area antiquarian venues...more
Add a comment Google
libraries first batch of books online
Google Inc. and four U.S. libraries
plan to unveil on Thursday the first collection of thousands of mostly 19th century
American literary and historical works as the Web search leader seeks to regain
momentum for its project to put library books online...more
Add a comment Keeping
it real
Non-fiction reigns almost supreme in this year's £10,000 Guardian
First Book Award shortlist, announced today, which also sees a comeback for the
short story...more
Add a comment
02.11.05
Bookseller
on the run
Shah Mohammad Rais, better known as the "Bookseller of Kabul",
says he fears blood vengeance after Åsne Seierstad's bestselling book about him
has been translated in an Afghan language. Rais said he feels like a refugee now,
and is even considering seeking asylum now that the story, which he has tried
to block on the grounds that it was too revealing, puts him in personal danger...more
Add a comment Librarian
sues men involved in robbery
A Transylvania University librarian has sued
four men involved in a robbery of rare books and art, saying they caused her emotional
and physical distress when she was stunned, tied up and blindfolded during the
heist...more
Add a comment Rumours
of the secondhand bookshop's death are greatly exaggerated
Claims are being
made in the media that the number of secondhand bookshops in the UK has fallen
by half in the past three years, from 1200 to 600. This would be nothing short
of a catastrophic collapse if it were true. But is it? ...more
Add a comment
01.11.05
Desert
island bookshelf
When downsizing your library, how do you choose what to
keep? Wendy Lesser, who has moved from a house to a flat, reveals the secret of
her new, small, but perfectly formed, book collection...more
Add a comment Old
books about trees?
One rare first edition, two keen bidders... A story
of hammers and hard cash...more
Add a comment Hunt
for missing Russian treasures
Russian police are looking for 55,000 stolen
works of art worth more than $1.2 billion that have been smuggled abroad and sold
on the black market during the 15 years since the collapse of communism. In what
has been described as the country's largest treasure hunt, the authorities are
trying to retrieve 3400 paintings, 37,000 icons and 1500 rare books, as well as
gems, coins and musical instruments...more
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