28.01.06
No
News today...
TheBookGuide is away for a few days but he and the news will
return on February 2nd. However, desperate news junkies can find links to 1,000's
of book related stories and articles in our archives.
27.01.06
How
much tragedy in Literature Lost?
"Paradise Lost" is stupendous, of
course, but as Dr. Johnson observed, "None ever wished it longer than it was."
Suppose then that, in addition to his great epic poem, John Milton had as planned
delivered himself of a blockbuster about the court of King Arthur called "The
Arthuriad," as well as something that sounds like a reworking of "Macbeth."
... more
Add a comment Two
manuscripts get National Heritage Status
Two rare manuscripts of the medieval
period, belonging to the oriental research institute in Jodhpur, have been granted
National Heritage Status, a senior official of the institute said here today
... more
Add a comment Japanese
poetry prints at Cornell
Two current exhibitions at the Johnson Museum
spotlight Japanese art and the response from its Western contemporaries. The museum
hosts these very remarkable collections: Japanese Poetry Prints: Surimono from
the Schoff Collection and Japonisme. The exhibits display European artists and
the allure of Japan through art work and objects primarily from the nineteenth
century
... more
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26.01.06
Writers
vie for £60,000 Dylan book prize
Organisers of the world's highest paying
literary prize, which celebrates the legacy of Dylan Thomas and boasts Catherine
Zeta-Jones as its ambassador, will tonight officially invite entries for the £60,000
inaugural award
... more
Add a comment Burns
poem halves back together
A manuscript of a Robert Burns poem separated
more than a century ago has been put back together in time for the Bard's birthday
celebrations. The poem is a savage lampoon of a Kirk elder, Willie Fisher, who
criticised Burns' friend, Gavin Hamilton, for working on the Sabbath. It satirises
the religious hypocrisy and bigotry of the fornicating churchman who prays that
God will punish Hamilton - and overlook his own womanising
... more
Add a comment Petersfield
Bookshoper owner dies
I'm sorry to have to report the death of Frank Westwood,
the owner of the Petersfield Bookshop, who died on January 19, aged 77. An obitury
appeared in The Independent on January 25, which we are seeking permission to
reprint. The good news is that there are no plans to close the shop. Add a comment
25.01.06
The
Biblion site is to close indefinitely
Leo Harrison, director of Biblion
Ltd emailed the wesite's dealers today to tell them that the site will close on
Friday January 26. The state of the site's five year old servers are said to be
the cause of the problems they have been experiencing. It was therefore decided
that: 'the best course of action in the short term is to close the site temporarily,
whilst we investigate the full extent of the options ahead of us.'
Add a comment
24.01.06
Heritage's
latest comic auction realizes $3.8 million
Heritage Auction Galleries held
its most recent Comic and Original Comic Art Signature Auction January 19 - 21,
in Dallas, Texas. In all, 2,860 bidders competed for 3,022 lots, with 529 successful
bidders pushing the overall total to $3,823,592, though the final total will likely
be even higher, as after-auction sales are still ongoing
... more
Add a comment New
York Public Library restores beautiful map room
A steady stream of visitors
has been transfixed by the restored Beaux Arts ceiling in the New York Public
Library’s Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division. Carrère and Hastings
designed the two rooms and mezzanine that comprise the 7,000-square-foot space
in 1911. It was closed for nine months while New York firm Davis Brody Bond completed
the $5 million renovation, and reopened on December 15
... more
Add a comment Burns:
the original punk rock people's poet
As novelist Irvine Welsh recently
pointed out, there was nothing respectable about Robert Burns. The same applied
to Shakespeare. Yet both have been appropriated by the literary establishment
and either made respectable or used to give the mainstream a bit of street cred
... more
Add a comment
23.01.06
New
manuscript museum for Georgia
"The most important thing that we wish to
show to the world is our manuscripts. This is why we have made the decision to
restore the Institute of Manuscripts," Saakashvili stated at the Friday briefing
at the institute
... more
Add a comment 10
centuries old manuscripts found
Around 150 manuscripts and palm scripts,
believed to be more than 10 centuries old have been found in Mahanteshwar Hiremutt
of Aland in Gulbarga district recently. Among the things found are palm scripts
on anatomy, ancient epics, medicine, mathematics, ayurvedic science; manuscripts,
scrolls and valuable works on vachana sahitya by Basava and other sharanas as
well as works composed by Harihara
... more
Add a comment Tudor
papers bought by university
The treasure trove of family and estate papers
from Hengrave Hall, Suffolk - worth almost £1m - was in danger of being broken
up and sold at auction. But following a campaign to save the papers by Cambridge
University Library their future is now safe
... more
Add a comment Logue
in vogue
He has written pornography, edited Pseuds' Corner and spent the
past 45 years reworking The Iliad. Now, at 80, poet Christopher Logue is up for
a long overdue honour - the Whitbread Book of the Year Award
... more
Add a comment
21.01.06
Carroll's
work goes under the hammer
The sought-after, first-edition copy of Carroll’s
1886 publication, Alice’s Adventures Under Ground, was given by the writer in
January, 1887 to Alexandra Kitchin, affectionately known as Xie. Her dad, George
Kitchin, was the last dean of Durham Cathedral to govern Durham University, where
he worked from 1908 until his death in 1912
... more
Add a comment Bookbinders
are main story at UK awards
Students from two Barnes studios owned by a
husband and wife team have enjoyed outstanding success at a designer bookbinding
competition. Barnes has become a key focus for bookbinding in the UK, as 10 of
the 18 prizes awarded at the British Library were won by students from studios
run by Mark and Midori Cockram
... more
Add a comment Russian
Duma approves return of rare books
Russia's Duma, parliament's lower house,
approved a law on Friday authorising the return of a collection of precious books
belonging to the Sarospatak Calvinist College Library in NE Hungary. The volumes
were taken away by Soviet troops in November 1945
... more
Add a comment
20.01.06
Rent
party to save bookstore
A longstanding pillar of liberalism on the west
side of Cleveland is struggling to survive, and its friends are organizing to
keep it going.
The Bookstore on West 25th, located
for a quarter-century at 1921 West 25th Street, was started by Mike O’Brien in
1976. Ever since then it has been a bastion of personal liberties, emerging from
his counter-culture beliefs in individual freedom
... more
Add a comment Tale
of two Peter Pans upsets children's hospital
For more than a century, fans
of J M Barrie's classic story Peter Pan have had a few mysteries to ponder. How
did the boy who never grows up lose his shadow? Why were the boys lost? And what
became of Neverland?
Now, a century after the story
first caught the public's imagination, two rival publications are jockeying to
proffer answers
... more
Add a comment Big
price for huge book
Scotland's biggest book is expected to fetch more than
£5000 at an auction. The hefty tome, weighing 15kg and more than 21in long, shows
the dress, tartan and arms of the clans of the Highlands. It was published in
1845 to mark the centenary of the final defeat of the Jacobite Rebellion
... more
Add a comment Narnia
book to sell for £10,000
A rare first edition collection of CS Lewis's
The Chronicles of Narnia is expected to fetch £10,000 when it goes up for sale
at a major art and antiques fair at the National Exhibition Centre this week
... more
Add a comment
19.01.06
"125
Kilos of Books" exhibition
From March 23 to April 30, 2006 in the Octagonal
Gallery, the Canadian Centre for Architecture presents 125 Kilos of Books. Celebrating
the designation of Montreal as UNESCO World Book Capital City for 2005-2006, the
exhibition presents a selection of printed architectural works dating from the
15th century to the present from the CCA's collection in order to provoke thought
about what seems, at first sight, the most banal fact of any book: its size
... more
Add a comment 'Tosh'
it may be, but this old book is now worth £100,000
James Joyce's Ulysses
has baffled readers for a century with its dense prose, obscure puns and allusions
to The Odyssey, by Homer. Virginia Woolf declared that she had never read such
"tosh".
But in the world of 20th century rare books,
nothing is rarer than an original Ulysses and yesterday it was named as the most
valuable 20th century first-edition novel by Book & Magazine Collector magazine
... more
Add a comment ‘Day
of tears’ as Kenny’s closes doors
Thousands of people from all over Ireland
thronged Kenny’s Bookshop and Art Gallery at the weekend to say farewell to the
famous bookstore, which closed for good on Saturday
... more
Add a comment
18.01.06
Maritime
Museum to get Nelson funeral sketches
A collector, who wished to remain
anonymous for fear of 'visits in the night', plans to donate documents to the
National Maritime Museum, to commemorate the bicentenary of Nelson's funeral.
The artefacts include a pencil sketches of Lord Nelson's State Funeral by painter
Henry Singleton
... more
Add a comment Classic
Lennon lyrics to be sold in auction
John Lennon's original draft of the
lyrics to the Beatles' classic "A Day in the Life" went on sale Tuesday, the 39th
anniversary of the date Lennon was inspired to compose the song after reading
his morning newspaper.
The manuscript will be sold
in a sealed-bid auction ending March 7, Bonhams auction house announced. The British
auctioneer, with offices in New York and on the West Coast, didn't identify the
seller
... more
Add a comment Judge
says book thieves can sell their story
Four men who pleaded guilty to stealing
rare sketchings and books from the Transylvania University library can sell their
story and keep the proceeds, a federal judge decided last week. In
court documents, U.S. District Court Judge Jennifer Coffman said she could not
enter an order that would limit the defendant's ability to profit from the sale
of their stories, citing a 1991 U.S. Supreme Court decision which ruled against
the government's attempts to regulate a defendant's ability to profit
... more
Add a comment
17.01.06
Readex
to digitise more early American newspapers
Readex a division of NewsBank,
Inc. and a publisher of online historical collections, announced that it will
begin publishing Early American Newspapers, Series II, 1758-1900 and Series III,
1829-1922 in March 2006.
Complementing
Early American Newspapers, Series I, 1690-1876, these new series offer fully searchable
digital facsimiles of more than 350 18th-, 19th-, and 20th-century newspapers,
totaling nearly 3 million pages. These and all Archive of Americana collections
are published in cooperation with the American Antiquarian Society (AAS)
... more
Add a comment 13th
century Zen manuscript revealed
Mumonkan, The Gateless Gate, was originally
compiled and published in the first year of Shaoding Period (1228) by Zen master,
Wu Men Hui Kai (1183-1260). The book ranks with the Christian Bible and Muslim
Koran as one of the most important religious books.
It
is a collection of Zen Koan (a subject for contemplation in Zen Buddhism, usually
one of the sayings or significant incidents of a great Zen master of the past).
The 70-page manuscript is written with black ink on paper. All pages are dotted
with red ink notations by earlier Japanese collectors
... more
Add a comment Duffy
wins TS Eliot poetry prize
The Poetry Book Society, which awards the prize,
said: "This year's TS Eliot prize highlights a (some would say) rare moment of
agreement between the critics and the booksellers as to what constitutes great
poetry" ... more
Add a comment E-read
all about it
The world of publishing stands on the cusp of the greatest
innovation since Gutenberg. With cheap, portable electronic readers just around
the corner, what is the future of the printed book?
... more
Add a comment
16.01.06
Beat
museum opens in California
A museum dedicated to literary giants of the
Beat generation has opened in the San Francisco neighbourhood where the movement
took off 50 years ago
... more
Add a comment Where
have all the poets gone?
The problem with the Eliot Prize is not simply
that a small group of people is regularly asked to make painful decisions affecting
the lives of their friends, but that the results can be so bland, says Robert
Potts ... more
Add a comment Building
dust damages rare books in Trinity College
The university has discovered
to its dismay that a quarter of a million books, many of them irreplaceable and
dating from the earliest days of print, have been damaged by building dust. The
new Ireland is thus having a detrimental effect on the old, since this unwelcome
side-effect of Dublin’s extraordinary building boom will cost millions to put
right ... more
Add a comment
14.01.06
Yeats
treasures to go on display in National Library
Priceless family treasures
belonging to William Butler Yeats were handed over to the National Library of
Ireland on Wednesday for its first major exhibitionon the Nobel prize-winning
poet ... more
Add a comment Connected
collecting
Rare book collecting has always been big business - a first
edition of 'Ulysses' recently sold for more than 100,000 - but the web is changing
the area. Eoin Burke Kennedy writes about pursuing his passion in an online world
... more
Add a comment How
David can fight Goliath
Susan Hill browses in small bookshops and sees
where they are going wrong
... more
Add a comment
King
family Bible will be auctioned
The old family Bible, stained and worn and
encased in black leather, is inscribed simply "Alberta W. King, Feb. 23, 1962."
Once owned by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s mother, the holy book will be
sold to the highest bidder Jan. 31 by a New York auction house
... more
Add a comment Map
may show Chinese explorer discovered America
A map due to be unveiled in
Beijing and London next week may lend weight to a theory a Chinese admiral discovered
America before Christopher Columbus
... more
Add a comment Foreskin
paintings
Of all the freshly deposited Bookworm
Droppings my favorite has to be: Woman walks into bookstore and asks
"Do you have any foreskin paintings". It therefore came as a pleasant surprise
to discover that the art of fore-edge painting is alive and well, as Martin
Frost demonstrates. Add a comment
12.01.06
The
written word of early 1800s
The significance of the handwritten word in
early-19th-century Baltimore, including the teaching of handwriting, writing accouterments
and examples of correspondence and other written materials, is the subject of
... as I write to you ... , a focus exhibition that opened last week at Homewood
House ... more
Add a comment Torn
Mozart manuscript reunited
A Mozart manuscript that was torn in two by
the composer's widow 170 years ago is to be joined together. The manuscript, written
when Mozart was 17 and living in Vienna, will be housed at the British Library
... more
Add a comment Review:
The Adventure of Arthur Conan Doyle
Julian Barnes takes us to the twilight
of the Victorian era to resuscitate a real-life story about the brief but legally
significant intersection between the creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle, and George Edalji, a young British-born solicitor of Indian descent, who,
due to racist malice, police incompetence, judicial stupidity and governmental
indifference, is jailed for a crime he did not and could not possibly commit.
Along the way, Barnes casts a quizzical light on such
topics as xenophobia, the nature of national identity, the role of the celebrity
intellectual in public affairs, psychic phenomena and how societies ought to be
judged. It’s a heady brew, but it goes down easily
... more
Add a comment From
the margins of society, a lust for literature
Two years ago, while sitting
in a cafe in Brooklyn on a cold winter night, I ran into "Chicago Mike." In the
crook of his arm he held a thick and tattered book. I asked him what he was reading
and he told me it was the "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," by Edward Gibbon.
I asked him if it was the abridged edition. "No, it's one volume of the unabridged
text. Who needs to read the edited version?"
After
ordering a cup of coffee, and with a smile on his face, he got on his bike and
rode off into the snow. Mike delivered weed for a living
... more
Add a comment
10.01.06
2005
numbers crunched
The U.S. book industry enjoyed strong growth in 2005,
posting a 9.3% year-over-year increase, according to Nielsen BookScan
... more
Add a comment Elvis
fan auctions vast collection to win back love
According to auction organisers,
longtime Presley fan Jim Curtin decided to sell his vast collection after his
girlfriend broke up with him, giving him an ultimatum: choose Elvis or choose
her ... more
Add a comment Book
thieves want right to sell tale
A federal judge in Lexington will soon
decide whether the four men involved in the real-life 2004 heist of rare books
from Transylvania University should be allowed to keep the profits if they decide
to sell the book, TV or movie rights to their story
... more
Add a comment
09.01.06
Stolen
books are hot
If the New York Times were to compile a "Most Stolen Books"
list, up near the top would be the Beat Generation classics "Howl," by Alan Ginsberg,
and "On the Road," by Jack Kerouac. Also up there, not surprisingly, would be
"Steal This Book," the popular '70's hippie guide on how to live for free, by
Abbie Hoffman. And topping the list, in some cities at least, would be none other
than the Holy Bible itself
... more
Add a comment Book-swapping
fever robbs bookshops of more than £10,000
An online book swap scheme,
set up by two friends in their spare time, has robbed bookshops of more than £10,000.
The site, ReadItSwapIt, allows book lovers to swap books over the internet - free
of charge ... more
Add a comment A
fictional kingdom in Vermont
They're shelved away in the strangest spots,
often in tiny villages far off the beaten track. Their inventories are massive,
their customer traffic sparse, and their staff usually a single person, all of
which makes you wonder how they survive. Yet they do
... more
Add a comment
07.01.06
The
end is nigh...
Although electronic books, or e-books, have been around
for several years, previous versions, using LCD screens, have never caught on.
The biggest complaint is that readers' eyes quickly become tired from the glare
and flicker of the conventional computer screen.
However,
the Reader displays its text on a page of high resolution electronic paper which
is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Electronic paper also needs
relatively little power, so the life of a battery should not be a problem. (Thanks
to Ivor of Clent Books for the story)
... more
Add a comment
The
manifold beauties of books
Nicholas Basbanes has had books and writers
running through his veins for most of his lifetime, which makes picking up "Every
Book Its Reader" the equivalent of browsing through a rare-book store, spending
the morning in a public library, and visiting your most literate friend -- all
in the course of a few hours
... more
Add a comment Collection
a gold mine of newspaper history
Created from the British Library's castoffs
-- rescued by a New England champion of the printed word -- a major collection
of American newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries now resides at Duke
University ... more
Add a comment Books
bound in human skin 'not uncommon'
Brown University's library boasts an
unusual anatomy book. Tanned and polished to a smooth golden brown, its cover
looks and feels no different from any other fine leather. But here's its secret:
the book is bound in human skin
... more
Add a comment
06.01.06
China opens National Library branch
A Branch National Library for Chinese
ancient books opened in Beijing today, with more than 2.6 million volumes on the
shelf ... more
Add a comment South-west
England joins reading adventure
South-west
England today sees the launch of this year's Great Reading Adventure, the UK's
biggest book club, in which over 100,000 people are expected to join in reading
Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne's classic tale of Phileas Fogg's
race to circumnavigate the earth ... more
Add a comment The
Lion, the Witch, and the wardrobes
For
CS Lewis fans it is the literary equivalent of the holy grail: the humble piece
of furniture that dispatched four plucky children to a magical land of talking
beavers and wicked dwarfs. But in what has been dubbed "the war of the wardrobes"
two rival Christian colleges in the US have claimed ownership of the armoire that
inspired Lewis's bestselling Narnia books ... more
Add a comment
05.01.06
Poet wins prize for epic work
After more than 40 years of work, the poet
Christopher Logue completed Cold Calls, his contemporary version of Homer's Iliad
... more
Add a comment Knight’s
1430 book is put up for auction
A magnificent hunting book made for a
Norfolk knight in the 1430s has surfaced among more than £1m-worth of property
to be auctioned from the estate of the late Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester
... more
Add a comment Poet
Irving Layton dies in Montreal at 93
Irving Layton, whose gritty, satiric
and erotic poems left an indelible mark on Canada's literary landscape, died Wednesday.
He was 93 ... more
Add a comment
04.01.06
Koreans spend practically nothing on books
Koreans are a stingy nation
when it comes to books and other printed matter but splurge on accessories and
haircuts, figures suggest
... more
Add a comment Librarian
stumbles on lost Byron work
A poem by Lord Byron has been discovered in
a 19th-century book within the archives of University College London. It is the
only known manuscript of the untitled poem that appeared in print four years later,
in 1816. It was assumed that the original had been lost, but a librarian stumbled
across it during a routine cataloguing
... more
Add a comment Latest
statistics show mixed fortunes for UK libraries
While visits to public
libraries increased by over three million last year, statistics released today
show that the number of active borrowers and the number of books issued continue
to fall ... more
Add a comment
03.01.06
Atlantic Monthly's move turns up treasure trove
In metal filing cabinets
and cardboard boxes, there are thousands of little treasures of American literary
history: a letter from author Truman Capote complaining about editors who cut
his story, an editor's rejection note for a manuscript written by anthropologist
Margaret Mead, words of praise from North Pole explorer Admiral Robert Peary
... more
Add a comment British
Library hopes to acquire Byrd manuscript
William Byrd stands alongside
Henry Purcell, Benjamin Britten and Edward Elgar as one of the greatest of British
composers, and certainly ranks as the greatest of the Elizabethan age
... more
Add a comment Publishers
toss Booker winners into the reject pile
They can’t judge a book without
its cover. Publishers and agents have rejected two Booker prize-winning novels
submitted as works by aspiring authors
... more
Add a comment | 
