30.05.06.
First
audio-only novel launched
The world's first audio-only novel will be launched
this week in a sign that the surge in demand for downloadable books is set to
provide a new medium for budding authors and performers … more
Add a comment Scholarly
squeeze
Allowing undergraduates into the British Library's reading rooms
has led to exclusion, not inclusion … more
Add a comment Oxford
students 'to sell' library
Students at Oxford University have put the
Bodleian library up for sale on eBay in a symbolic effort to "raise enough money"
to pay off rent debts. The building and its contents have a reserve price of £189m
- the estimated value of loans incurred by Oxford's 11,000 undergraduates … more
Add a comment BookExpo:
cover to cover
Visions of publishing's future -- whimsical visions, nightmare
visions -- loomed over BookExpo America (BEA), the book industry's vast annual
get-together here last weekend. And John Updike, the country's grand old man of
letters, wasn't happy with that future … more
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27.05.06.
Hay-on-Wye:
a podcast guide
Going up to the festival this year and want to know where
to eat, drink and book-shop? Author and long-time friend of the festival Tiffany
Murray took me on a tour of Hay-on-Wye and introduced me to some of her favourite
haunts … more
Add a comment 26.05.06.
Bookshop
battle hits the mark
The owners of a Hoddesdon bookshop, who set up a
campaign to save local stores like theirs from extinction, say the start of their
crusade has been an "overwhelming success" and promise it will get even better
… more
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26.05.06.
Circus
strongwoman seeks phone books to save show
A circus strongwoman who rips
up telephone directories as part of her act has launched an appeal for 500 phone
books to ensure her show can go on … more
Add a comment The
scent and seduction of the secondhand bookshop
As the smell of baking
bread pumped out of a bakery is to the hungry, so the aroma within 10 feet of
the Book Stop's open door is to the book lover. The irresistible and intoxicating
smell of books - old books - pulls him or her in … more
Add a comment Front
Page splash at British Library
Front Page, a new British Library exhibition
celebrating 100 years of British newspapers, shows that "quality broadsheets"
and "red-top rags" not only document historical events, but reflect a nation's
ever-changing culture and attitudes … more
Add a comment Bidding
books adieu
Alain Frölich is what is known as a bouquiniste -- one of
what he estimates to be about 200 used booksellers who hawk their wares from rows
of giant, dark-green storage boxes affixed along the top of the River Seine's
quays. At the end of June, however, Frölich is calling it quits … more
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25.05.06.
Playing
it by the book
Discount book site, Read4Charity, donates 15 per cent of
every book sale to a purchaser’s preferred charity and in its pre-launch period
has already raised over £5,000 this year for charities such as The Children’s
Society, Scope and Education Action International … more
Add a comment Russian
philosopher's papers going home
Three Russian television crews jostled
for space in the special collections reading room at Michigan State University's
main library Monday afternoon, their cameras trained on a table spread with notebooks
and letters, photographs and sketches. Behind the table was a delegation from
the Russian government who had come to retrieve a once-rejected piece of Russia's
intellectual heritage … more
Add a comment Letters
show Bronte feared libel action over Jane Eyre
Charlotte Bronte had to
write an apology to avoid a possible libel action over her depiction of a school
in Jane Eyre, according to letters that have just come to light … more
Add a comment 600-year-old
manuscript on sale
Sarajevo: It survived the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi
invaders, the Bosnian war and the ravages of time. Now, for the first time, replicas
of the Sarajevo Haggadah - a 600-year-old Jewish manuscript - are being sold to
the public … more
Add a comment
23.05.06.
Serial
killer uses 'own law' to block book and film deals
The serial killer known
as the Son of Sam, whose murder spree brought terror to 1970s New York, is suing
his former lawyer under the very law that was introduced to stop him from profiting
from his crimes … more
Add a comment Children
ditch books and switch on internet
Fewer children in the UK are reading
books for pleasure as they ditch the traditional after-school activities in favour
of going online, according to a study. In the early 1990s, 45 per cent of girls
aged 12-13 said they enjoyed reading after school, but this has dropped to just
25 per cent … more
Add a comment 7
deadly books?
In the USA, a northwest suburban high school board member
seeks to ban seven books from classroom use because she thinks the profanity,
depiction of graphic sex, and drug and abortion references in the literature are
inappropriate for teenagers.
Leslie Pinney admits
she only read passages of the controversial selections, including Kurt Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse-Five and Toni Morrison's Beloved, which were on the American Library
Association's 100 most challenged books list between 1990 and 2000 … more
Add a comment
As
a product of District 214 schools, located in Arlington Heights, Illinois (USA),
I have to say that I sincerely hope the administration and English teachers prevailed
over Ms. Pinney. I wonder what she would have thought had she known we were required
to read The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne)? Good heavens, sex! Or the possibility
of such a thin ... Cheers, Sandra Morris. Fringe
offers an eclectic alternative to Hay
Following the success of the first
Fringe last year, based in and around the Poetry Bookshop, the alternative Hay
programme is bigger and more varied this year … more
Add a comment
22.05.06.
Chant
from rare manuscript to be heard after 500 years
Researchers in Canada
are studying a rare medieval manuscript from the 1500s in preparation for a choral
performance of the work in 2007. Dalhousie University music professor Jennifer
Bain is doing painstaking work over the piece of choral music which comes originally
from a Cistercian abbey outside of Brussels … more
Add a comment Oxford
University want stolen book back
Oxford University has become embroiled
in a bitter argument with the most unlikely of foes. The Nikkon Dental University
is refusing to return a rare 16th Century book which was stolen over ten years
ago. The book, ‘De Humani Corporis Fabrice’ by Andrea Vesalius, was stolen from
Christ Church along with seventy-three other books by music lecturer, Simon Heighes,
in 1995 … more
Add a comment Congressional
library publishes rare images of Civil War
Margaret Wagner is a senior
writer and editor at the Library of Congress. Her new book is "The American Civil
War: 365 Days." It has nearly 500 photographs, lithographs, paintings, drawings
and cartoons from the hundreds of thousands in the library's keeping. She says
many of them are rarely seen and some may never have been published… more
Add a comment How
Einstein struggled with his grand theory
An archive which goes on sale
in London next month with a price tag of $1.5m (£800,000) shows how after transforming
physics and securing unprecedented celebrity status with his general theory of
relativity in 1916, Einstein suffered years of frustration as he failed to top
that with "a grand theory of everything" … more
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20.05.06.
England's
first public library
Rev Francis Trigge, Mayor of Grantham, collected
more than 300 books and donated them to St Wulfram's Church in 1598 to create
the chained library, which still exists today and is named after its benefactor
… more
Add a comment Rare
scrolls roll out historical 'manga'
The Japanese passion for manga is
not purely a modern phenomenon. In fact, arguably the first manga-like works -
in the sense of using images and text to propel a narrative - were the emaki illustrated
hand scrolls that came into vogue in the early Heian Period (794-1185). … more
Add a comment Charity
sells Hanks copy of Da Vinci book
A copy of the best-selling book The
Da Vinci Code signed by actor Tom Hanks was put up for auction for charity yesterday.
This is the copy Hanks had on set while filming the movie at the Rosslyn Chapel
in Roslin, Midlothian, last year … more
Add a comment Bound
to appreciate
It can pay to judge a book by its cover. Virginia Blackburn
says contemporary bookbinding has become highly collectible, with some books doubling
in value roughly every seven years … more
Add a comment
19.05.06.
Bookstore
tourism has readers traveling
Tourists in New York are duty bound to see
the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. But if Larry Portzline has
his way, they'll also be stopping by the city's best bookstores, too. Mr. Portzline
is an advocate of what he calls "bookstore tourism" - bringing tourists to a city
to visit its independent bookshops … more
Add a comment
Hooke manuscript is returned home
The long-lost manuscript belonging to
pioneering scientist Robert Hooke has returned to the Royal Society. The hand-written
notes are thought to contain a "treasure trove" of information about the early
endeavours of the UK's academy of science … more
Add a comment Man
Ray photo Fetches Record $439,400
New York photography dealer Howard Greenberg
paid £232,000 ($439,400) for a Man Ray image of a light bulb at a London auction
this week, setting a record for a so-called rayograph by the artist … more
Add a comment Saddam's
novel on sale in Japan
Saddam Hussein's fourth novel, which was reportedly
completed on the eve of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, has been published
in Japan. The manuscript of Devil's Dance, which tells the story of an heroic
Arab tribesman who defeats a Judaeo-Christian plot to take over his town, was
smuggled out of Iraq by his eldest daughter, Raghad … more
Add a comment
18.05.06.
Westmeath
company to publish banned book
A controversial book which was banned in
the early 1970s is set to be released this week for the first time, after 34 years
in the wilderness. Amazingly, Lee Dunne (age 72) now holds the honour of being
the most banned author in Europe. Seven of his books, along with two films (Paddy
and Wedding Night) were banned in Ireland … more
Add a comment Recovering
from devastation, one rare book at a time
It would be hard to say whether,
in her work of acquiring old literary treasures, there are more thrills or more
disappointments for Katja Lorenz. For she has the seemingly enviable job of using
somebody else's money to buy first editions of late Renaissance and Enlightenment
classics … more
Add a comment US
Random House vows to use 30% recycled paper
Leading U.S. publisher Random
House plans to invest millions of dollars to raise the proportion of recycled
paper it uses to print books to at least 30 percent from under 3 percent at present
… more
Add a comment Amputated
leg pulled from auction
The leg was viewed by 20 people but no bids had
been placed before it was withdrawn at 9am yesterday. The leg sports a tattoo
of an open book which Mr Torrance said symbolised emotional blackmail from his
time being "locked up" … more
Add a comment
16.05.06.
Vintage
children's books at Auction May 21
Wizard of Oz, Tom Swift, Alice In Wonderland
and other children's books from the late 18th & early 19th century, many with
color plates will be featured in the Pop Culture auction May 21 at Saxonville
Auctions … more
Add a comment Biographer's
detective work turns up stolen Gould material
An American fan of Glenn
Gould has been charged with stealing artifacts that once belonged to the famed
Canadian pianist. Barbara Moore, 62, of Austin, Texas, is accused of taking photographs,
books, compositions, sound and video recordings, published and unpublished writings,
correspondence, doodles and personal items that Gould had donated to Library and
Archives Canada before his death … more
Add a comment Allen
Ruppersberg exhibition in Edinburgh
Allen Ruppersberg collects ephemera
and his exhibition at first seems to be just a vast random collection, especially
of books, brought together in unexpected ways to push at the boundaries of our
accepted ideas of order … more
Add a comment 21
Full Grown Elephants? That’s a Lot of Books
The year 2005 saw 172,000 new
books released in the United States, according to Bowker, the world’s leading
provider of bibliographic information. but what does 172,000 titles mean? … more
Add a comment
15.05.06.
Scan
this book!
In several dozen nondescript office buildings around the world,
thousands of hourly workers bend over table-top scanners and haul dusty books
into high-tech scanning booths. They are assembling the universal library page
by page … more
Add a comment Man
Ray features at London Photo Week
Seven Man Ray ``rayographs,'' found
in a French attic, will star in a week of London photography auctions and gallery
shows. Photo books, increasingly popular with collectors, also will be sold at
Christie's International and at a photo fair … more
Add a comment What
are independent bookstores really good for?
Thanks to the indies, it is
thought, high-quality but inaccessible books can slowly build their reputations
through reader word-of-mouth and eventually take the literary world by storm.
This is what people fear is disappearing forever; just last week the famed Cody's
of Berkeley announced it is shutting down because of Internet and superstore competition.
But does this idealized vision ring true? What exactly are we losing with the
passing of the independent bookstore? … more
Add a comment From
an original story by ...
Plagiarism has always lurked in the bloodstream
of the book world like an unappeasable strain of some deadly virus, but recently
our obsession with it has approached bird flu proportions. Is the threat not exaggerated
and in danger of distorting our judgment? … more
Add a comment
13.05.06.
JK
Rowling 'deluged' with paper
Harry Potter fans have sent JK Rowling reams
of paper, after the author complained of a notepad shortage near her home in Edinburgh
… more
Add a comment Amelia
Earhart documents to be auctioned
On June 7th, Dallas-based Heritage Auction
Galleries will be selling Earhart's original flight plan from the 1928 transatlantic
flight, as well as a photograph and several other related documents … more
Add a comment Pressed
for time
On 4 April, 1508, a small, leather-bound book emerged from the
newly established printing press of Andrew Myllar and Walter Chepman in Edinburgh's
Cowgate, or "South Gait" as it was then known.
The
quincentenary of that first publication from a Scottish press is almost two years
away, but on the 30th of this month, the National Library of Scotland will annouce
a rolling programme of events to celebrate 500 years of printing in Scotland …
more
Add a comment Krakow
opens first "Paper Clinic"
Poland's Jagiellonian Library in Krakow has
been rescuing manuscripts, books and newsprint papers since 2002. Now for the
first time, the general public is to have a chance to see the machines which extend
the lives of documents and valuable books as much as 500 years … more
Add a comment
11.05.06.
Manuscript
sale raises issue of ownership rights
Writer Haruki Murakami in the March
issue of a monthly magazine accused one of his editors of selling several of his
manuscripts to bookstores without his permission. The accusation has raised questions
in the publishing industry as to who has ownership rights to manuscripts and whether
such unpublished writings should be on the market at all … more
Add a comment Book
to make the flesh creep is back with rightful owners
An ancient book bound
with human skin has been reunited with its rightful owners. The grisly artefact
was discovered in a bin on The Headrow in Leeds city centre. Pictures of the book
put online sparked so much interest that West Yorkshire Police's website almost
crashed when 118,000 people logged on … more
Add a comment Britain
overtakes America as top publisher
Readers on both sides of the Atlantic
Ocean made bestsellers last year of "The Da Vinci Code" and the latest Harry Potter
adventure, but British publishers for only the second time in 20 years churned
out more new book choices than their American counterparts … more
Add a comment Chronicler
of San Francisco wins best gay read award
Tales of the City, Armistead
Maupin's six-volume chronicle of gay and straight life in San Francisco, was hailed
yesterday as Britain's favourite lesbian or gay novel … more
Add a comment
09.05.06.
How
much should you pay for sex?
Erotica as an investment? At the Paris sale,
an anonymous buyer paid a world-record auction price for an erotic book - £227,000
for the sole surviving copy of Pietro Aretino's sonnets, Sonnetti Lussuriosi,
published about 1527, with woodcuts of copulation in various positions … more
Add a comment Bed
Books
A publisher has come up with the idea of printing text sideways
on the page so that readers can lie in bed on their side and read at the same
time. (Via http://www.strangenewproducts.com) … more
Add a comment America's
Battle of the Books
Students choosing to read classic and meaningful literature.
Groups discussing their reading and reinforcing their understanding. Avid readers
from different schools working together as teams. Sound too good to be true? America's
Battle of the Books invites schools to join in a reading incentive program that
combines exceptional literature with friendly competition … more
Add a comment Net
store sparks young people's interest in secondhand books
Tokyo - More
and more young Japanese people are getting interested in secondhand books, not
only buying them to read but also taking pleasure in selling them at flea markets,
thanks largely to an enterprising young woman who launched a secondhand bookstore
on the Internet … more
Add a comment
08.05.06.
'Golden
books' banned in China
For years, gifting of "golden books" have remained
a popular form of social exchange as well as bribery in China. The Chinese government
has finally clamped down on the production and sale of such books made of gold
and silver foils … more
Add a comment Book
tours: a fate worse than death?
Being a writer is mostly a pleasant enough
way to turn a buck. There's no dress code, no heavy lifting, no time clock to
punch. But as with every job, it has its dark side. Lounge singers get second-hand
smoke syndrome; lawyers get lawyer jokes; cowboys who spend too much time in the
saddle get hemorrhoids ... Writers get the book signing tour … more
Add a comment Man
charged with Spiderman comic book fraud
A New York City man has been charged
with defrauding a Manassas, VA, resident out of $10,000 in an online auction fraud
in which the defendant allegedly sold on Ebay a collection of Spiderman comic
books that he neither owned nor possessed … more
Add a comment Joyce
expert turns profit on draft deal
She was the head of the ReJoyce festival
in 2004, but it was Laura Barnes herself who had cause to rejoice after selling
a cache of James Joyce manuscripts to the Irish state for 1.2m Euros.
The
American academic, who bought the material from a Parisian book store about a
year before reselling it to the National Library, refuses to say how much she
made. But she insists that, despite her previous links to the library, where she
has acted as a consultant, the deal was "kosher beyond kosher" and she did not
have privileged information. … more
Add a comment
06.05.06.
Life,
but not as we know it - the celebrity book invasion
Autobiographies by
those who don't write for those who don't read have become a publishing sensation.
The figures are astonishing. Of the top 50 bestselling titles last year in the
biography and autobiography category, half were by or about celebrities (broadly
defined as anyone whose fame is TV-based) … more
Add a comment Rare
Black Beauty for sale
The owner of the book wishes to remain anonymous,
but Charles Bingham-Newland, from Christie's East Anglian branch, said: "This
discovery is very exciting. It has come down the family. The inscription makes
it very personal and a piece of literary history. Christie's book specialist Nicholas
Worskett added. The book has a printed dedication to Anna's mother but the written
dedication in this one gives it something extra special, hence the estimate of
£5,000-£8,000" … more
Add a comment Free
Comics! (No, really)
Bart Simpson would be in heaven: Comic book stores
across North America -- including several in London -- will give away comics to
kids and adults today in celebration of a little-known annual event now in its
fifth year … more
Add a comment When
books are more than books
Charles Seluzicki has been an antiquarian and
rare book dealer for 30 years, but it was only recently that he realized he’d
had a parallel career that could eclipse the one on his business card … more
Add a comment
05.05.06.
Blake
dispersal described as "heartbreaking"
The Louvre in Paris has acquired
the finest of the Blake watercolours which were sold at Sotheby’s in New York
on Tuesday. Death of the Strong Wicked Man went for $1,584,000 (including buyer’s
premium) … more
Add a comment Texas
librarian asks police help on overdue books
One librarian in Texas is so
fed up with overdue books -- she wants the violators arrested. Bonham police chief
Mike Bankston says if Barbara McCutcheon says books aren't returned, then officers
will make reports and begin to seek arrest warrants … more
Add a comment £750,000
to help secure John Donne portrait
A portrait of poet John Donne has come
a step closer to being secured for the nation. A campaign was launched by the
National Portrait Gallery to buy the painting from the estate of Lord Lothian,
to whose family the work, dating from about 1595, was bequeathed by Donne … more
Add a comment
02.05.06.
Branching
out
Welcome to the Idea Store, London's answer to the fusty old public
library - and maybe America's too … more
Add a comment (Thanks
to J. Godsey's excellent Bibliophile
Bullpen for the link.) The
best travel books of all time
This month marks World Hum’s five-year anniversary.
To celebrate, we asked some of our favorite writers and contributors to help us
come up with the top literary travel books of all time - the kind of books that
transcend travelogues, that inspire distant wanderings, that change lives. Each
day this month, we’ll be counting down our picks, starting with No. 30 tomorrow,
and ending with the best travel book of all time on May 31 … more
Add a comment Library
acquires archives of prominent literary magazine
The archives of The Hudson
Review, one of the most distinguished and influential American literary magazines,
will permanently reside in the Princeton University Library … more
Add a comment Internet
culture spells doom for strait-laced orthographers
If you believe the internet
is the fount of all wisdom, giving free rein to bloggers to exercise their vocal
cords, think again. Ancient English cliches and expressions are being mangled
by the culture of cut and paste and the spread of unchecked writing on the internet
… more
Add a comment
01.05.06.
Indonesian
author Pramoedya Ananta Toer dies
Renowned Indonesian author Pramoedya
Ananta Toer, who overcame imprisonment and censorship to publish dozens of stories
and novels about his country, died at home among family today, his daughter said.
He was 81. Pramoedya, internationally acclaimed as an outspoken champion of democracy,
"dedicated his whole life to this country through his work," his daughter Tatiana
Ananta told The Associated Press … more
Add a comment World's
largest floating book fair of accused Christian proselytism
The Doulos
ship travels around the world with thousands of books about diverse subjects on
board. Now it is in Chennai, and some Hindus who went have dismissed it as a mere
"bible fair". Organisers and the Catholic community say the accusations are unfounded,
motivated only by ideological fanaticism … more
Add a comment Starbucks
eyes books to expand caffeine empire
Buoyed by the success of its partnerships
with the music industry, Starbucks is seeking to expand into films and books with
the help of an influential talent agency, reports the New York Times … more
Add a comment Dog
Ears has cozy corners, rare finds
Northport USA - Used bookstores are
the cozy corners of the literary world - the places where famous and not-so-famous
writers mingle democratically, in angled piles on table tops, along worn shelves,
in stacks leaning against walls already lined with books … more
Add a comment | 
