31.07.07.
If'n Books demonstration video
I never imagined that bookbinding
could be this much fun! ... more Add
a comment Lifting
the lid on Warhol's Time Capsules
For years, the artist piled the ephemera
of his life into boxes... now they're going on show in Edinburgh, writes Alastair
Sooke ... more Add
a comment Lost
language of Pitmatic gets its lexicon
A dialect so dense that it held
up social reforms has been rescued from obscurity by the publication of its first
dictionary. Thousands of terms used in Pitmatic, the oddly-named
argot of north-east miners for more than 150 years, have been compiled through
detailed research in archives and interviews with the last generation to talk
of kips, corf-batters and arse-loops ... more Add
a comment 'The
worlds biggest book bazaar
Stall-holders offer (almost) anything you
could want at Delhi’s huge weekly book market, Stephen McClarence says ... more Add
a comment
28.07.07.
'Man harassed Harry Potter author
A man has been ordered to stay
away from Harry Potter author JK Rowling after admitting bombarding her with letters
and phone calls ... more Add
a comment Scouting
for Boys: The original 'dangerous' book for boys
First published in 1908,
a few months after the founding of the Boy Scout movement, Scouting for Boys by
Robert Baden-Powell went on to become the 20th-century's fourth highest-selling
book. It is no longer used as a handbook by the Scout Association. Yet it still
has a lot more to offer to 21st-century children than we might imagine. These
extracts give a flavour of Baden-Powell's thinking ... more Add
a comment A
book sale - red in tooth and claw
I warn you: US Library Book sales can
be mean. They are an unhealthy blend of Norman Rockwell and capitalism. Arrive
early and you can witness the sideshow: the wrinkle-shirted book dealers with
their dollies and empty cardboard boxes ... more Add
a comment Why
do kids love Thomas the Tank Engine?
This week the National Autistic Society
(NAS) published a survey concluding that Thomas and his friends' adventures are
educationally valuable to autistic children - helping them distinguish emotions,
as well as colours, numbers and words. Earlier NAS research, from 2001, found
that children with autism and Asperger syndrome have a particularly strong relationship
with Thomas, identifying with him more strongly than any other children's character
... more Add
a comment Gay
Artist Burns Rare $60,000.00 Koran
Charles Merrill, the artist who recently
edited the Holy Bible with a black marker and pair of scissors, has lately burned
a rare Islamic Holy Book, The Koran, valued at $60,000.00, in an undisclosed Chicago
location. "The purpose of editing and burning Abrahamic Holy Books is to eliminate
homophobic hate," Merrill stated. "Both ancient books are terrorist manuals" ...
more Add
a comment
26.07.07.
'World's most valuable comic book'' to be auctioned
Marvel Comics
#1 is the holder of the Guinness world record for the most valuable comic book,
and a copy is to be sold at the Heritage Auction Galleries' Vintage Comic Books
and Comic Art auction, starting August 2nd ... more Add
a comment Kashmir
university digitalises rare manuscripts
Hundreds of rare manuscripts
in Persian and Arabic languages, some dating back to 16th century, housed in Kashmir
university have been digitalised and are now available online in that version,
the university officials said today ... more Add
a comment A
novel idea
New authors should follow in the footsteps of many musicians
and self publish - it's got to be better than playing games with publishers ...
more Add
a comment Got
a bigger book than this one?
Celebrity book-binder Bill Tito is so confident
he is bringing New Zealand's heaviest book to Palmerston North, he will give $100
to anyone who comes along with a heavier one ... more Add
a comment
25.07.07.
Heritage Auction Galleries sued
Dallas-based Heritage Auction
Galleries is being sued in the state of Washington by Henry Gossage, a comic book
collector who says that Heritage’s ex-consignment director spilled a latté on
his rare comics, then paid only $8,000 for damages that will cost $132,400 to
repair ... more Add
a comment
The art of doing nothing
People read fewer challenging books because they
have no time digest them - this summer holiday take some time to not read ...
more Add
a comment Bedtime
stories a problem for many parents
One in 10 parents struggle to understand
the bedtime stories they read to their children, a survey by adult learning organisation
Learndirect has found. Almost a quarter (23%) skip passages they cannot read or
invent words to get to the end of a sentence, the poll found ... more Add
a comment
24.07.07.
Book gets hook
"Bookends" might have been a modest off-Broadway
hit in the early 1960s, when the idea of girls daring to choose careers over marriage
would have been fresh. The irony is, though, that this musical about antiquarian
book sellers fails because it tries to sell its audience a book that feels antiquated
... more Add
a comment
Judge a book by its cover
Investing in modern first editions - usually
those printed after 1900 - has become big business with good profits for those
who do their homework. "Modern first editions appeal to many people because they
are authors they can relate to and quite often have read," according to Roddy
Newlands of Bloomsbury Auctions ... more Add
a comment
Potter magic smashes publishing records
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
has thrown off concerns over internet spoilers and broken embargoes to confirm
its position as the world's fastest-selling book, with Nielsen Bookscan estimating
a staggering 2.7m copies sold in the UK of the seventh and final book during a
hectic period of just 24 hours - a 35% increase on first-day sales of JK Rowling's
last blockbuster, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ... more Add
a comment
Bookbuyer finds rare Mormon texts
It's a book collector's dream -- rifling
through the shelves of a secondhand store and finding a valuable text for a bargain
price ... more Add
a comment
23.07.07.
The interior designer and the bookseller
There was a short post
yesterday in the Good Questions section of the Apartment Therapy New York website
titled How To Start a Book Collection? The post was from an interior designer
whose client has a new apartment with a lot of bookshelves and no books. There
were already over 100 comments to the article when I came upon it and most were
less than the kind ... more Add
a comment
Thrift-store shopper uncovers rare poster
... Sandwiched between the print
and its cardboard backing was a much rarer find: an original "window card" poster
from the 1930 film classic "All Quiet on the Western Front" ... more Add
a comment
Guantánamo's library: adding insult to injury
The following is a declassified
letter from a Guantánamo detainee named Abdul Aziz, who has been held in US custody
without charge or trial for over five and a half years.
Abdul
Aziz traveled to Afghanistan in late September 2001, after taking his final exams
at the Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud University in Riyadh, to search for his brother,
and to persuade him to return home.
He was caught
up in the chaos surrounding the fall of the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, and,
despite never undertaking any kind of military training or raising arms against
the Northern Alliance or the US-led coalition, was treated brutally in US custody
in Afghanistan before being transferred to Guantánamo ... more Add
a comment
It's Hallows and goodbye to all that
She says she's 'relieved', and JK
Rowling is probably not alone. The world went a little bit bonkers last week.
In America grown men and women arranged their weddings
around a reading of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The ultra-sober New
York Times broke the embargo of embargoes and breathlessly published an early
review, to global literary consternation.
In Britain,
the helpline Childline announced the hiring of standby grief counsellors. And
on Piccadilly, in London, children in witches' costumes camped overnight outside
Waterstone's to buy a book that would anyway be on sale (at a supermarket discount)
only a few hours later on Saturday morning ... more Add
a comment
20.07.07.
A bibliophile’s El Dorado
You might come across a priceless gem
if you are patient and browse long enough in Old Delhi's book market, which has
been around for nearly forty years, writes Sanjay Podder ... more Add
a comment Once
upon a time ... e-book revolution
There are now millions of books free
online. So why hasn't the e-book revolution taken off? David Adams reports ...
more Add
a comment Former
curator indicted for allegedly stealing rare atlas
The former curator
for the Rockland County Historical Society has been indicted by a Rockland County
grand jury on a charge of grand larceny in the second degree for allegedly stealing
a rare atlas valued at over $60,000 ... more Add
a comment Cupid
gets indecency rap in Hong Kong
A book with a image of Cupid on the cover
has been banned by Hong Kong's media watchdog which deemed it indecent. The 1798
painting of 'Psyche Receiving the First Kiss of Cupid' by French artist Francois
Gerard was used on a book to be sold at a Hong Kong book fair ... more Add
a comment
19.07.07.
Mein Kampf ban 'should end in Germany'
A leading historian has
called for Hitler's notorious treatise Mein Kampf to be published again in Germany
to expose the nation to the incoherent ramblings of the Nazi dictator ... more Add
a comment Potter
publisher sues over breach
The US publisher of Harry Potter and the Deathly
Hallows is taking legal action against two companies for dispatching copies of
the book early ... more Add
a comment Harry
Potter early copies for sale on eBay
The eagerly-awaited seventh Harry
Potter book is being sold on eBay more than a day before it is due to be released
into British bookshops. One seller, asiamjohnson08, from Georgia in the US, said:
"This is the real copy of the book. This is not a joke. I will send the book overnight
to make sure you get it before the public does" ... more Add
a comment Publishers
reject Jane Austen manuscripts
Her work has endured for two centuries,
sold in its millions and inspired countless film and television adaptations. But
would Jane Austen be able to find a publisher and an agent today? A cheeky experiment
by an Austen enthusiast suggests not ... more Add
a comment
18.07.07.
Vatican Library closure irks scholars
One of the world's oldest public
libraries, the Vatican Library, has closed for rebuilding. It is not expected
to reopen before September 2010 ... more Add
a comment
My beloved, horrible little book stores
One wall smelled like mold. In
the summer, she (the owner) ran a giant fan that was so loud you couldn’t hear.
The dogs were squat little things that liked to defecate near the Westerns. The
owner was a little more than four feet tall and was always eating and sweating
and reading a romance novel ... more Add
a comment
Harry Potter book leaks on to internet
Despite a massive security operation,
the final book of the Harry Potter series has been leaked online three days before
its worldwide release ... more Add
a comment
17.07.07.
Harry Potter and the edition of doom
Our writer thinks bitterly of the
day he failed to take up an offer of a signed first edition from the then unknown
JK Rowling ... more Add
a comment Rare
books, the bookshop and open access
Bookshops are one of the few places
where one can get open access, they are places where anyone can walk into and
see and handle books they only dreamed about. In many cases you have greater access
to rare books at a bookshop than you do at the library. Yes, they might not be
able to afford to buy the book but the experience of handling it is priceless
... more Add
a comment Tiny
tomes
One day, over 35 years ago, when searching at a rare book shop in
Wilbraham, MA for new items for her rare book collection, Anne Bromer discovered
a toolbox on top of some bookshelves. She asked the seller to take it down for
her. When opened, the box revealed dozens of books all less than 3 inches tall
packed tightly into drawers. Bromer bought the whole box, and her passion for
miniature books -- or “treasures” as she calls them -- was born ... more Add
a comment Bell
tolls for Hemingway treasure
Finca Vigia, or Lookout Farm, 10 miles east
of Havana, is the place Ernest Hemingway called home from 1939 to 1960, and it
is there that the author's abundant tastes, in literature and in life, are on
display. For the past two years, a group of American organisations has been working
to restore the battered house and save the manuscripts and books. But US sanctions
against Cuba have hindered the group's attempts to collaborate with the Cuban
government ... more Add
a comment
13.07.07.
15 months for stealing Civil War papers
Denning McTague, 40, worked as
an unpaid intern last summer at the National Archives and Records Administration
branch in Philadelphia to complete a master's degree program. Assigned to organize
Civil War papers, he took to stuffing them into his legal pads and walking out
with them ... more Add
a comment Author's
nude drawings too hot for US publisher
One of Germany's best-selling children's
authors is embroiled in an extraordinary transatlantic row about nudity after
a US publisher refused to accept one of her books because it contained naive sketches
of an art gallery with works depicting naked bodies ... more Add
a comment Will
a bookseller break Harry's spell?
With a week to go until the release
of the final Harry Potter, there are predictions that some retailers may be tempted
to steal a march by selling copies before the midnight embargo ... more Add
a comment Fine
presses and the bookseller
For those unfamiliar with the Alcuin Society
it is a "voluntary association of people who care about the past, present and
future of fine books" based in Vancouver, British Columbia whose two main goals
"are to promote a wider appreciation of books and reading and to support excellence
in book design and production" ... more Add
a comment
12.07.07.
Bid to ban 'racist' Tintin book
The Commission for Racial Equality (CRE)
is calling on high street shop Borders to pull a Tintin adventure from its shelves
completely. Tintin in the Congo has already been moved to the adult section over
complaints that its content is racist ... more Add
a comment New
007 book marks creator's 100th birthday
British novelist Sebastian Faulks
has written a new Bond novel to mark the centenary of creator Ian Fleming's birth.
The new 007 adventure, Devil May Care, will be published on May 28 next year on
what would have been Fleming's 100th birthday ... more Add
a comment First
book written using mobile phone published
Italian author Robert Bernocco
has amazed the literary world by publishing the world's first book written using
a mobile phone. Bernocco published it on Lulu.com, the online marketplace for
digital content and brain-child of Canadian businessman, Bob Young ... more Add
a comment Steal
das book
Rod Shene paid a paltry few grand for a volume worth $500,000
or more. Only one hitch: The German government wants it back ... more Add
a comment
10.07.07.
Six million books a year ... what's that in trees?
With the (Edinburgh)
Book Festival looming, I wonder if director Catherine Lockerbie is losing sleep
over the six billion books printed this past year. We in the UK buy 296 million
books annually. That's one helluva lot of trees ... more Add
a comment 'More
reading' than in 1970s
People in the UK seem to have been reading more
over the past quarter of a century, a study suggests ... more Add
a comment Other
Times
Other Times Books, the West L.A. bookstore had one asset that no
other bookstore could match: its owner, Andrew Dowdy. His health, and the changing
times, write its final chapter ... more Add
a comment
09.07.07.
The Oscar sinners
When six original Oscar Wilde manuscripts surfaced in
New York in April, they were expected to fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But soon doubts were cast on their authenticity — and a dark tale emerged of greed,
forgery and foul play stretching back to the 1920s. Anthony Gardner reports ...
more Add
a comment Harry
Potter worm claims wizard hero is dead
Can't wait to find out what happens
to Harry Potter when the final book in the series comes out this month? Be careful
where you get your spoilers from.
Security researchers
are warning people not to be lured in by online promises of information about
the outcome of the final battle at Hogwarts. Sophos Inc. reported that a new worm
is taking advantage of the Potter mania that is starting to build around the world
... more Add
a comment Leonardo
Da Vinci drawings to go online
Thousands of Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings
and scientific theories will soon be viewable for free on the internet. Until
now the majority of the manuscripts have been seen only by scholars but the National
Museum of Leonardo in his hometown of Vinci has promised to scan about 12,000
pages and create an archive ... more Add
a comment Judge
the book trade by its covers
The artist Harland Miller praises the winning
jackets of the inaugural Penguin Books Design award ... more Add
a comment
06.07.07.
The digital bookshop that prints out on demand
A revolution in publishing
may soon see bookshops stripped of their shelves. Instead, customers will simply
choose the novel they want, punch some numbers into a digital printer and leave
a few minutes later with a freshly printed and bound copy ... more Add
a comment Gibran
manuscripts donated to Princeton
The Princeton University Library is now
the holder of working manuscripts and notebooks for four well-known Kahlil Gibran
books, including the Lebanese-American’s bestselling The Prophet ... more Add
a comment Finding
a niche in erotic books
Granity. Population 230. One part-time library,
one restaurant-cum-video shop, one erotic-books seller ... more Add
a comment The
Heritage effect. The book trade waits
Booksellers will step up to fill
the hole (left by the closure of Heritage) but the money flow will be different
and that will effect a fair number of booksellers ... more Add
a comment
05.07.07.
George Melly dies at 80
I know he was not perhaps best known as an author,
but in a week when little is being written that isn't about Harry Bleedin' Potter,
the passing of a very human being seems all the more poignant.
Surrealist,
singer, critic, libertine, author, raconteur ... but it was his extraordinary
lust for life that has left the greatest impression on me. Loads of obits here,
but this is probably the best.
I
can't resist a couple of quotes:
"I'm
very fond of alcohol but I drink a minute amount compared with what I did at one
period in my life, when I drank at least a bottle of brandy a night, plus gins
and things during the day. Now I'll have a dry sherry around noon, maybe a glass
of wine a lunch and then in the evening I'll have two or three gin and tonics
and half of bottle wine and probably a couple of brandies, which for me is practically
being teetotal."
"As a surrealist, I quite enjoy having dementia." Add
a comment
03.07.07.
A howl for literary freedom
It was 50 years ago this summer that Americans
finally won the unfettered right to read whatever they wanted to read, a half-century
since poet Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" went on trial in a San Francisco courtroom
... more Add
a comment Book
shop offers real-life experience
Kathryn Fisher loves to browse in shops
and unexpectedly come across a book or a gift she hadn't even considered. She
most certainly does not enjoy shopping on the Internet ... more Add
a comment Motion
bids to save manuscripts
Poet Laureate Andrew Motion has called for new
tax breaks to allow literary manuscripts to remain in the UK. The writer has expressed
concerns that work by figures including Tom Stoppard, Ted Hughes and Evelyn Waugh
is being snapped up by US institutions ... more Add
a comment
02.07.07.
A treasury of ancient manuscripts in a fabled city
Mr Muhammad pulled
back its flaps to reveal a sheaf of yellowed papers. Their edges had crumbled
away, but the neat Arabic calligraphy was still clear."A Qur'an," he said. "From
the 1300s." For an outsider, such a remarkable find might seem extraordinary.
In Timbuktu and its surrounding villages like Ber, where Mr Muhammad lives, it
is commonplace ... more
Audio
slideshow: Timbuktu's ancient manuscripts Add
a comment Shakespeare's
status under threat at Oxford
Oxford University is courting controversy
with plans to "downgrade" the importance of William Shakespeare for its English
literature undergraduates. The radical move would mean in-depth examination of
Shakespeare's works would not be compulsory. In exam terms, students could avoid
answering questions on the playwright ... more Add
a comment Book
Baron in Anaheim turning the page
Bob Weinstein is writing the final chapter
on his career as a bookseller. He's closing Book Baron in Anaheim,Southern California,
the used bookstore he opened in 1980 and nurtured to its current size of 400,000
books spread over 20,000 square feet -- bigger than many branch libraries and
chain bookstore superstores ... more Add
a comment Harry
Potter and the Gyrating Book Sales
Sales of children’s books rose last
year at a rate that disappointed the industry, according to a report released
in June by the Book Industry Study Group, a US publishing trade association. Sales
revenue for hardcover books, the format in which new books typically reach the
market, increased just 2.5 percent over the previous year, compared with the more
usual 5 percent to 6 percent. And by some measures -- units sold, for example
-- hardcover sales were almost flat ... more Add
a comment | 
