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.

October 2004

31.10.04  Library thieves have book thrown at them. The young couple at the centre of a Christchurch book-thieving scam are in jail, and their baby Lani has been taken from them - all over $34,000 of library books...more  Add a comment.

30.10.04  Rare Vivaldi manuscript uncovered. Rare manuscripts found in a Gloucestershire castle's vaults have been proven to be by one of the world's most famous classical composers...more  Add a comment.

29.10.04  Handwritten Wilde Chapter Sells for £72,000. An original handwritten chapter of Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray sold for £72,000 at auction today...more  Add a comment.

29.10.04  Student charged for selling Kerry books on eBay. Mount Pleasant graduate student Roger Sachar faces felony charges for allegedly selling two library books by Sen. John Kerry on eBay for about $5,000...more  Add a comment.

29.10.04  Oscar Wilde Auction Expected to Raise £600,000. A collection of rare artefacts relating to the brilliant – and tragic – life of Oscar Wilde will go under the hammer today...more  Add a comment.

28.10.04  Tragic story behind Peter Pan. He was the inspiration for Peter Pan - the boy who never grew up and whose life was an eternity of fun in Neverland. But for Peter Llewelyn Davies there was no fairytale ending. He came to despise the character he had inspired and wound up drunk, disappointed and destitute. Eventually, in despair, he threw himself under a tube train...more  Add a comment.

28.10.04  Wal-Mart refuses to stock another new book. Add George Carlin to the ranks of rankled comedians whose books have been banned from Wal-Mart's shelves...more  Add a comment.

28.10.04  'America (the book)' hilarious, distasteful. Much like "The Daily Show," "America (the book)" weaves absurdity through a professional structure to poke fun at American democratic tradition. Stewart manages to fill every inch of his 228-page, nine-chapter textbook with laugh-out-loud humor about the ironies of the American political structure and American history...more  Add a comment.

27.10.04  Acres of Books a readers paradise. Clicking on a flashlight to augment the watery gray light filtering through the twin skylights of the cavernous warehouse called -- in a profound example of droll understatement -- the Fiction Room, Graham Lee squints at the spines of a batch of new arrivals shelved in a wooden crate that once held 4.5 bushels of Sun Flavor Apples...more  Add a comment.

27.10.04  Lost Rachmaninov manuscript discovered. The lost manuscript of Rachmaninov’s Second Symphony, an opulent, lushly melodic late-Romantic work and an undoubted highpoint of Rachmaninov's orchestral output, has been discovered. It is to be sold at Sotheby’s in London on December 7, and is expected to fetch £300,000-£500,000...more  Add a comment.

27.10.04  £60,000 Dylan book prize launches. One of the world's biggest literary prizes has been launched in Swansea and New York. The £60,000 Swansea Dylan Thomas Prize will be awarded to the best book published in English anywhere in the world by an author under 30...more  Add a comment.

27.10.04  A new leaf. The New Orleans Bookfair celebrates its third year of showcasing 'new and radical and interesting books'...more  Add a comment.

27.10.04  Karadzic's novel big hit at book fair. A novel by Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, the top U.N. war crimes fugitive, was a best seller at Belgrade's international book fair, a publisher and former associate said on Tuesday...more  Add a comment.

25.10.04  National targets set for libraries. The UK government is to try to reverse the downward trend in library book-borrowing by introducing national standards on how many new books public libraries should buy and how often they ought to replace worn-out stock...more  Add a comment.

25.10.04  Book collector celebrates Dalí centenary. As rare book collectors go, Rik Pavlescak considers himself sloppy. Not academic. Not picky. Not snobbish. That might help explain why the West Palm Beach collector of books and other memorabilia related to surrealist artist Salvador Dalí has amassed a collection of more than 500 items in just eight years...more  Add a comment.

25.10.04  My Own Private Library. I wonder whether I am afflicted with something more than a "gentle madness," as Nicholas A. Basbanes described it in his 1999 book on the history of book collecting. You see, I spend more on books than I do on food...more  Add a comment.

25.10.04  Mao fails to sell - again. It seems that no one is interested in Mao anymore. Last week a rare first edition of Mao Tse-tung’s 'Little Red Book' failed to find a buyer at Bonhams in central London. And yesterday, in the first auction of its kind in Shanghai, a gilded book of poetry and lyrics by Chinese former leader Mao Zedong also went unsold...more  Add a comment.

25.10.04  At age 70, artist - bookseller is just hitting his stride. For decades, he's been a bookseller at some of San Diego's best rare and used book shops, beginning with Vroman's, where he often assisted with its adventurous art exhibitions. For the past 15 years, he's been at the distinguished Wahrenbrock's Book House on Broadway...more  Add a comment.

24.10.04  Tartan books that speak volumes about literary city. Ghost stories, tartan guides, clan histories and books about Nessie are hardly in keeping with Edinburgh's status as World City of Literature...more  Add a comment.

24.10.04  Woman turns in stolen Mormon holy book. An unidentified woman dropped off a stolen 1852 edition of the Book of Mormon valued at $17,000 at the Reno Gazette-Journal offices...more  Add a comment.

24.10.04  ‘Golden’ age of children’s literature. New York - Golden Books were the books that children could buy with their allowance, read until the pages were ready to fall out and then toss in the trash as they graduated to weightier material.
    But a funny thing happened to the books with the bright covers and metallic bindings that cost a quarter when they were first published during World War II: They became collectors’ items, and many of the stories remain popular today...more  Add a comment.

23.10.04  Parents want gay literature removed. Iowa - Middle school teacher Sue Protheroe has come under fire by a group of parents demanding she cease using stories in her classroom that feature gay, lesbian or transgender characters...more  Add a comment.

23.10.04  Library show for word rhyming with hunt. Entitled 26 Letters, the latest British Library exhibition sounds inoffensive to the point of blandness. But many visitors have quickly become hysterical with laughter, or just plain hysterical...more  Add a comment.

23.10.04  Tolkien's Gown and Other Stories of Great Authors and Rare Books. Young Rick Gekoski wanted some impressive tomes for his bookshelf so he bought an old set of Dickens for 10 quid. The pleasure they gave was brief, as he didn't read them and had to flog them to pay for his girlfriend's Christmas present. He doubled his money. "Surely," he ruminated, "if you could do this by accident, you could do it better on purpose"...more  Add a comment.

23.10.04  Auschwitz victim's book causes a stir in France. A hidden literary treasure of wartime France is taking the book world by storm, while reviving uncomfortable memories of French collaboration with the Nazis, more than 60 years after its author was sent to her death in Auschwitz...more  Add a comment.

22.10.04  Hi, my name is Jason and I'm a bibliophile. I love books. I love how they smell, how they feel in your hand, I love everything about them. I never saw anything wrong with that until my girlfriend started complaining last week. She said that we never go out and we never do anything together and that I spend all my time with my books...more  Add a comment.

21.10.04  Bidder hooks a classic. A Classic book on fly fishing, which was once part of a library owned by the Manchester Angling Association, has been sold for a record price at an auction. The book, The Natural Trout Fly And Its Imitation, by Leonard West, sold for £16,450 at Bonhams in Honiton, Devon...more  Add a comment.

21.10.04  Booker prize's long-term fame lottery. Mixed results from a survey into how well previous Booker winners have sold demolishes the idea that the prize is either a perpetual crock of gold or a guarantee of literary immortality...more  Add a comment.

21.10.04  Wal-Mart bans 'America'. Images of naked Supreme Court justices has prompted Wal-Mart, America's leading retailer, to ban the comedy book "America" from its stores...more  Add a comment.

20.10.04  Thousandth Miniature book added to collection. The Rare Books and Texana Collections recently celebrated the addition of its 1,000th book to the Miniature Book Collection. The collection contains a variety of subjects such as religious, artistry and Texana Books, which are books about Texas or Texana...more  Add a comment.

20.10.04  Alleged high priestess receives second literature prize. Mexico City - The former alleged high priestess of a drug-trafficking cult imprisoned in connection with the sacrificial deaths of 30 people has been awarded a literature prize for the second year in a row, Mexican media reported Wednesday...more  Add a comment.

20.10.04  The books were fine - but good judges are scarce. The trouble with the Booker Prize is that it gets harder and harder to find good quality judges. Gossip had it that seven or eight prospective judges declined to serve this year...more  Add a comment.

20.10.04  Witty and subtle novel of gay life and Tory elite wins the Booker. On The Booker Prize shortlist ten years ago, Alan Hollinghurst’s chronicling of gay life in London came up against the battering Glaswegian of James Kelman and there was only ever going to be one winner. For the only time in its history, Britain’s most prestigious literary prize went north of the Border...more  Add a comment.

20.10.04  Vatican paper slams 'nihilistc' Nobel literature choice. The Vatican's L'Osservatore Romano newspaper has attacked a novel of 2004 Nobel Literature prize winner Elfriede Jelinek for its "devastating lasciviousness in the name of political and social denunciation translatable in absolute nihilism"...more  Add a comment.

19.10.04  Clinton library architects win award. New York - The architects who designed Bill Clinton's presidential library, a gleaming glass-and-steel building over the Arkansas River that invokes his administration's theme of "building a bridge to the 21st century," have won a National Design Award for excellence in architecture...more  Add a comment.

19.10.04  Mao's Little Red Book Fails to Sell. A spokeswoman at Bonhams in central London said: "We are disappointed but unfortunately it didn’t sell, as bidding didn’t meet its reserve price"...more  Add a comment.

19.10.04  Karadzic writes book in hiding. Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, the UN war crimes fugitive, has written another book...more  Add a comment.

19.10.04  Mao's Little Red Book Goes under Hammer. A rare first edition of Mao Tse-tung’s “Little Red Book”, one of the most influential pieces of 20th century literature, will be auctioned today...more  Add a comment.

18.10.04  Pirates hasten García Márquez book launch. Fans of the Nobel prize-winning author Gabriel García Márquez have waited more than a decade for his latest work of fiction. Now, thanks to bootleggers, the wait has been shortened by a week...more  Add a comment.

17.10.04  The Mecosta Book Gallery. Books fill shelves from the sloping floor to the pressed tin ceiling. Books are stacked on the bygone soda fountain counter and on the round stools. Books cover the ice cream freezer and fill the sink. Apple crates full of books are stacked as end caps on each aisle. An erstwhile beer cooler has become a book case...more  Add a comment.

17.10.04  Bookdealer's Back - When it comes to backs, books are buggers. You probably didn't notice, but last week was Back Care Awareness Week. I might not have noticed either, had I not been suffering from a severe case of Bookdealer's Back....more  Add a comment.

17.10.04  Montefiore manuscripts. Sotheby's New York will offer 450 rare Hebrew manuscripts from the Montefiore Endowment on October 27 and 28, the biggest collection to appear on the market in decades...more  Add a comment.

17.10.04  Literary icon rejects Nigerian award. Lagos (Reuters) - One of Africa's most prominent literary icons, Chinua Achebe, has rejected a national honours award from his government in Nigeria in protest at the "dangerous" state of the country, newspapers have reported...more  Add a comment.

16.10.04  Library wants map thief brought to book. A former landscape gardener who is to be sentenced next month for stealing more than 50 rare maps from the National Library of Wales is suspected of plundering hundreds more maps from public collections across Britain and Europe, many of which have yet to be reported missing...more  Add a comment.

16.10.04  "Booktown" Brownville will host Welsh visitors. Nearly every business in Brownville, a village of 146 in southeastern Nebraska, sells books.
    The Welsh contingent will be greeted by fellow countryman Richard Booth of Hay-on-Wye, founder of the International Booktown movement, who will be in Brownville to work on plans to open a bookstore there next spring...more  Add a comment.

15.10.04  John Tebbel Publishing Historian Dies at 91. Mr. Tebbel's best-known work was "A History of Book Publishing in the United States" (Bowker), a 20-year undertaking published in four volumes from 1972 to 1980...more  Add a comment.

15.10.04  UK Libraries hit by fall in book borrowing . A statistical blow was dealt last night to the government's claim that it has rescued the public library movement from years of decline and underfunding...more  Add a comment.

15.10.04  Naipaul bids adieu to writing. Nobel laureate and renowned writer V S Naipaul today made a shocking declaration at the India launch of his novel `Magic Seeds', saying, "this is likely to be my last book"...more  Add a comment.