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.

November 2004

14.11.04  Contemptuous Booksellers. I never cease to be amazed by the contempt with which some secondhand bookshop owners treat their customers.
    I visit a flea market in a nearby town every Friday. You have to get there early in order to stand any chance of finding anything, but I deliberately hang about waiting for the bookshops in the town to open.
    Two of the shops are supposed to open at 9.30 and the other at 10.00. Last week NONE of them were open at 10.15. There were people waiting outside all of them, and in every case, the shop owners have complained to me recently about how bad business is! Add a comment.

14.11.04  TheBookGuide's workhorse resurrected. Apologies for the lack of news stories over the last few days. The machine I use to do all this stuff on, died on Thursday, and has taken longer to resurrect than anticipated. I'm now going to be away from the office for the next few days, so no news until I return on November 17th. Add a comment.

10.11.04  Whitbread stays with popular favourites. This year's shortlist includes a clutch of former literary prize winners, some newcomers, several high sellers and two Guardian columnists...more  Add a comment.

09.11.04  Evolution textbooks row goes to court. Dallas - Two historical documents pulled from a high-profile Sotheby's sale because of questions over their ownership are returning to the auction block. The two printed handbills, or broadsides, that helped spread news of the Texas Revolution were among four items pulled by the auction house this summer after concerns that they may have been stolen from Texas state archives years earlier...more  Add a comment.

09.11.04  Wordsworth Trust acquires library. A collection of 1,300 rare books, described as one of the greatest collections of Romantic literature still in private ownership, has been bought by the Wordsworth Trust...more  Add a comment.

09.11.04  Texas gives up claim to historical documents. Dallas - Two historical documents pulled from a high-profile Sotheby's sale because of questions over their ownership are returning to the auction block. The two printed handbills, or broadsides, that helped spread news of the Texas Revolution were among four items pulled by the auction house this summer after concerns that they may have been stolen from Texas state archives years earlier...more  Add a comment.

09.11.04  Australiana on the block. Jonathan Wantrup, executive director of Australian Book Auctions, describes the Davidson collection as the most important of its kind to be offered for sale by auction in Australia.
    "The most significant item of international interest in the collection," says Wantrup, "is Willem de Vlamingh's only published account of his 1696 scientific expedition to West Australia, financed by the Dutch East India Company. He explored the coastline and discovered and named the Swan River...more  Add a comment.

09.11.04  Special books, special place. Stacked away on the second floor of USC’s Thomas Cooper Library, in a labyrinth of small, locked rooms, are the letters of Ernest Hemingway, the tattered, leather briefcase, of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the largest collection of Scottish literature outside of Scotland, and a complete, original set of John James Audubon’s "Birds of America." The value of the Audubon illustrations alone is estimated at more than $8 million...more  Add a comment.

08.11.04  The Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair. Now in its 28th year, the Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair is one of the oldest antiquarian book fairs in the country, featuring museum-quality works on paper for display and sale.
    This year more than 135 dealers will gather at the Hynes Convention Center from November 19-21 to exhibit and sell rare, collectible and antiquarian books, modern first editions, manuscripts, autographs, maps, and much more...more  Add a comment.

08.11.04  Barnes & Noble Introduces the $1,000 Gift Card. "Gift cards are a great solution for the person who has everything, because one never can have enough books," said Steve Riggio, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. "Books are timeless gifts and what better way to enable someone to build the library of their dreams than with our $1,000 gift card"...more  Add a comment.

08.11.04  The Private Lives of Books. The National Library of Scotland's exhibition on the lives of books is both fascinating and humbling, says Sophie Cooke...more  Add a comment.

07.11.04  A man of many words dies at 91. David Shulman, a self-described Sherlock Holmes of Americanisms who dug through obscure, often crumbling publications to hunt down the first use of thousands of words, died on October 30th.
    Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary, said Mr. Shulman contributed uncountable early usages to the 20-volume lexicon...more  Add a comment.

07.11.04  Booking profits: The art of rare book collecting. With 50 boxes of rare books packed into a white Dodge van, Michael Slicker, owner of Lighthouse Books in St. Petersburg, will pull into the Antiquarian Annex at the Miami Book Fair International on Thursday...more  Add a comment.

07.11.04  $1.2m benefactor mystifies library. The late Frank Z. Ringalo, a former Methuen firefighter who preferred to read in a corner rather than join his uniformed brothers in a hand of cards during down time, has left a $1.2 million bequest to the Nevins Memorial Library...more  Add a comment.

06.11.04  NZ Library thieves jailed. Three thieves have been jailed for their systematic plundering of library books, mainly from Christchurch public libraries...more  Add a comment.

05.11.04  Making the Changes: Jazz in South African Literature. Rustum Kozain reviews Making the Changes: Jazz in South African Literature and Reportage, which investigates the role and manifestations of jazz in South African literary culture...more  Add a comment.

05.11.04  "The sale of a lifetime". The dealers wore long black or pinstriped sartuks (frock coats), dinner-plate sized velvet yarmulkes or high-topped velvet fedoras; their faces were framed by straggly beards and thick peyot, or side locks. They spoke to each other in Polish-accented Yiddish, comparing catalogue notes, commenting sarcastically that one item or another was a "graiyzer metzieh" (a big bargain). Occasionally, a cell phone rang, playing a Chasidic melody.
    "They all seem to know each other to a terrifying extent," said James Stourton, deputy chairman of Sotheby’s Europe, who orchestrated the sale of the manuscripts...more  Add a comment.

05.11.04  New book claims Lincoln was gay. Resurrecting a four-decade old debate questioning the sexual orientation of President Abraham Lincoln, a new book asserts - based largely on circumstantial evidence - that the 16th president was gay...more  Add a comment.

04.11.04  Amazon sued over book recommendations. Cendant Publishing has filed a lawsuit against Amazon.com, alleging patent infringement. The suit claims that the online giant infringed on Cendant's "370 patent" for providing people with recommendations of goods or services to purchase based on a database of previous purchasing histories of other customers...more  Add a comment.

04.11.04  Volunteering with a Tibetan papermaking project in India. In the fall of 2003 I spent six weeks in Dharamsala, India, volunteering with a Tibetan papermaking and paper products project.  In January, I'd logged onto VolunteerTibet's web-site, thinking it might be interesting to work in Dharamsala. I was amazed to find a listing for a paper designer at the Tibetan Welfare Office (TWO). I applied and was accepted...more  Add a comment.

04.11.04  Book burning. Craig Stark’s evangelistic bookselling articles are rarely to my taste, but his recent piece promoting book burning struck a cord...more  
    I attempt to rationalise my own enthusiasm for book burning, seeing it as the liberation of innocent words from undeserved imprisoned in bad books:) Add a comment.

03.11.04  Chief of US Library of Congress Visits Iran. The Bush administration said Wednesday it approved this week's visit to Iran by the head of the U.S. Library of Congress, James Billington. But the State Department is downplaying the political significance of the trip...more  Add a comment.

03.11.04  Preview of Clinton Library. Oragami-like chandeliers hang from a 40-foot ceiling illuminating a massive reception hall. Drawn gold drapes part to reveal a full-size replica of the Oval Office...more  Add a comment.

03.11.04  Gerry and the book takers. Campainers have rallied around a veteran Crouch End street bookseller after he lost his plot. Licensing officers accompanied by police seized £1,500 worth of books and videos from Gerry Ingram in a crackdown in London on Saturday...more  Add a comment.

03.11.04  Greg Shaw dead at 55. American pop music collector and promoter whose 1966 fanzine spawned Rolling Stone magazine...more  Add a comment.

02.11.04  Jarman's manuscripts go on display. "My earliest memory is of a lawnmower," wrote Derek Jarman on a page ripped out of an A4 exercise book. It was 1991, his health and eyesight were failing, his elegant, swooping italic hand was unravelling a little, but he was still scribbling down his thoughts on gardens and gardening, subjects close to his heart and inextricably bound up with his output as filmmaker and writer...more  Add a comment.

02.11.04  Hanged Woman's Letter Up for Auction. A letter written by Ruth Ellis two months before she became the last woman to be hanged in Britain is expected to sell for £500, it emerged today...more  Add a comment.

02.11.04  Mini Potter book nets £11k for charity. K Rowling's smallest ever Harry Potter book - measuring just one inch high - has sold for £11,000. The highest bid was for boxing legend Muhammad Ali, who drew a sketch of himself fighting arch-rival Joe Frazier...more  Add a comment.

02.11.04  Graham Greene at 100. He’s been called one of the best writers of the 20th century, and he was certainly one of the most popular - but will his work last? ...more  Add a comment.

02.11.04 Nerina Shute dies aged 96. Nerina Shute, who began writing about films in the 1930s along with fellow reviewers Graham Greene and John Betjeman, and who, some 60 years later, rounded off her literary career with a frank memoir about her bisexuality...more  Add a comment.

01.11.04  Snowed-under Briggs resorts to eBay. Raymond Briggs, the children's author and illustrator, has been bombarded by so much Snowman merchandise that he is now forced to sell it on eBay...more  Add a comment.

01.11.04  Floods destroy documents at Hawaii library. Heavy rain sent water as much as 8 feet deep rushing through the University of Hawaii's main research library, destroying irreplaceable documents and books, toppling doors and walls and forcing a few students to break a window to escape...more  Add a comment.

01.11.04  Jewish heritage under threat. At Sotheby's in New York last week, a superb collection of Hebrew manuscripts, including religious books, treatises on religion, astronomy, medicine, mysticism and philosophy as well as volumes of poetry, drama and music, were sold for £4.3 million.
    The sale added to the growing concern among scholars that Britain's Jewish community is breaking up key parts of its heritage for short-term convenience and gain...more  Add a comment.

01.11.04  Turn over an old leaf. This year's bicentenary of the Royal Horticultural Society has thrown up an unexpected delight: the British Library's Writer in the Garden exhibition. Unlike the disappointing Art in the Garden exhibition at Tate Britian, also timed to coincide with the bicentary, this exhibition looks set to be a visual tour de force and a delight for all garden-lovers...more  Add a comment.

01.11.04  British Library may inherit Peel's music. John Peel, the influential broadcaster who died last week, held talks with the British Library about leaving his extraordinary record collection to the nation, it emerged yesterday...more  Add a comment.