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30.09.08.
Pullman defiant over US protests
Philip Pullman
has revealed he was delighted to discover his novel Northern Lights
was one of the most "challenged" titles of the year in America,
with numerous calls made to have it removed from libraries ... more
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Scholars
hunt missing pages of ancient Bible
A quest is under
way on four continents to find the missing pages of one of the world's
most important holy texts, the 1,000-year-old Hebrew Bible known
as the Crown of Aleppo ... more
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Banned Books
Week a thorny issue
I'm ambivalent
about Banned Books Week, which runs through Saturday. On the one
hand, we clearly still need such a public affirmation, as the recent
tumult over Sarah Palin and her "rhetorical" inquiries to the Wasilla,
Alaska, public library show. On the other,
Banned Books Week offers up the sort of toothless, feel-good spectacle
that makes us less likely to consider the actual ramifications of
free expression. ... more
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29.09.08.
Author attacks academic behind 'pornography' claim
An academic who
called a controversial book about the Prophet Mohammed "softcore
pornography" has been told by its author to apologise after the
home of its publisher was targeted in a suspected petrol bomb attack
... more
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Roy and Lesley
Adkins's top 10 Nelson books
Where do you
start with the hundreds of books about Horatio Nelson? To mark his
250th birthday, two historians single out the 10 best ... more
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New twist
in battle to stop rare books sale
The controversial
sell-off of 18,000 rare books will be looked at again as councillors
bid to halt the move. Cardiff council’s Plaid Cymru group is claiming
victory in the first battle of the war over the historic texts ... more
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26.09.08.
Bull market for books on economic disaster
As the US government
worked on a plan to prevent a financial disaster, readers are seeking
out books about economic crises - past, present and future ... more
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Bibliotherapy,
the new shelf-help
A new solution
to reader's block involves seeing a 'bibliotherapist'. Once, people
just sought the advice of ordinary bookshop staff ... more
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25.09.08.
Banned books to take center stage
According to
Judith Krug, director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom at
the American Library Association, Banned Books Week seeks to “bring
to the attention of the American public [ the fact ] that the rights
that we enjoy in this country are fragile and that we have to use
them in order to protect them.
The way that we celebrate this freedom
is by printing a list of all those material in a given year that
somebody or has determined should not be in a library or a book
store … ” Krug stressed that today's public is far more resistant
to the idea of censorship.
When the event was first staged, “Hundreds of
books were removed from libraries. Last year, we only had 40 books
removed—when you put that against the hundreds of books, we've made
substantial progress” ... more
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Prized book
fuels ownership dispute
A book dealer
and a world renowned doctor are butting heads in an ethical battle
over ownership of a valuable book and the moral dilemma may soon
give way to legal combat. According to world renowned autism doctor
Sid Baker, when he packaged up 22 cartons of books from his collection
and donated them to the Montauk Library last summer, he mistakenly
included a volume of significant monetary value and, for him, even
greater personal importance ... more
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Sir Peter
Blake’s Alphabet on show
For this touring
exhibition from the Tate, Sir Peter Blake has created an alphabet
of “found” letters. He says he came up with the idea having seen
an exhibition of Polaroid pictures by Walker Evans, which featured
shots of items that surrounded him, such as signs ... more
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Manuscripts
lying undecoded
Thousands of
manuscripts are reportedly lying in the Dhaka University's central
library for decades with the authorities apparently taking no steps
to 'identify' or 'decode' the rare and precious documents. According
to the library officials, there were over 30,000 old manuscripts
in various languages including ancient Bangla, Sanskrit, Persian,
Arabic, Urdu and Maithali - and most of them are yet to be identified
... more
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24.09.08.
Uni hopes to stop rare book sale
A university
has said it hopes to find funding so that it can house and look
after some of Wales' oldest and rarest books which a council plans
to sell ... more
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French author
in dock over Rwanda
A prominent French
writer, Pierre Pean, is on trial in Paris accused of inciting racial
hatred in a book on the Rwandan genocide ... more
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Convict's
1821 pardon up for auction
With the flick
of his pen, King George IV saved the life of a Norfolk convict in
1821. And now the pardon which saved Yarmouth man John Plummer from
the gallows, on condition he be transported to Australia, is to
go under the hammer ... more
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Is e-literature
just one big anti-climax?
When I first
ventured online, the internet struck me as the last word in literary
experimentation. I was in good company. For Kathy Acker, and other
pioneers who were already pushing the envelope on papyrus, cyberspace
(copyright William Gibson) was truly the final frontier ... more
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23.09.08.
King's recipe book to go online
A 14th-century
recipe book compiled by King Richard II's master cooks is to put
online for the first time to give modern-day chefs an insight into
the delicacies of the Middle Ages ... more
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Author of
"Anne of Green Gables" death a suicide
Lucy Maud Montgomery,
author of "Anne of Green Gables" and its sequels, died in 1942 at
her own hand, her granddaughter revealed Saturday in Canada's "Globe
and Mail." The paper had run a series of articles on mental health
and Kate Macdonald Butler, the daughter of Montgomery's youngest
son, felt compelled to come forward with the truth of her grandmother's
death ... more
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Letters brought
to life in the Paris' Manuscript Museum
In Paris, you
can now visit the Museum of Letters and Manuscripts...in the dark...The
letters of famous French people from history are read by actors
to bring visitors back to when the letters were written and into
a hidden world of politicians, hangmen and...survivors from the
Titanic. Judith Prescott visited the museum in the company of a
tourguide's torch and heard some of the history that's hidden in
the museum's letters ... more
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Cracking
the Chinese code
If someone could
read the strange pictographs on a yellowing book of some 30 pages,
he or she could not only pick up a 10,000-yuan reward, but also
be privy to understanding the birth of the Chinese written language,
thousands of years ago ... more
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Berlin libraries
research books stolen by Nazis
Up to 150,000
of the books on the shelves of Berlin's Central and Regional Library
headquarters (ZLB) are thought to have been stolen by the National
Socialists from Jews, freemasons, social democrats and many other
minorities persecuted under Hitler's regime ... more
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19.09.08.
Unknown Mozart fragment found in French library
The previously
undocumented music fragment gives insight into Mozart's evolving
composition style and provides a clue about the role religion may
have played for the composer as his life neared its turbulent end,
one prominent Mozart expert says ... more
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Bid to repatriate
Chronicles of Mann is abandoned
The Manx Government
has abandoned efforts to repatriate the exiled Chronicles of Mann.
Chief Minister Tony Brown has written to Tynwald members saying
that 'regrettably' negotiations with the UK had come to nothing
and it would serve no useful purpose to pursue the matter any further
at present ... more
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How book
lovers saved Wigtown
Wigtown was once
a wealthy harbour town, but centralised industry stole its jobs
and its youth until it withered into a coma. But the grand architecture
of the town's heyday gave Wigtown the potential to awake as a chocolate-box
pretty literary haven ... more
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18.09.08.
Maurice Sendak celebrates 80th birthday
The prolific
writer-illustrator celebrated his 80th birthday Monday night with
Meryl Streep, James Gandolfini, Catherine Keener and director Spike
Jonze, who has adapted 1963's "Wild Things" for a film to be released
in October 2009 ... more
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Book stolen
from presidential library traced to England
U.S. Attorney
Tom Secor said Tuesday the book known as “The Freeman Code” was
sold through a book dealer in Philadelphia and purchased for $35,000
by someone in England. But he said returning it could be difficult
because the U.S. has limited authority overseas ... more
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Reading to
children losing out to TV and dinner
A survey of more
than 1,500 parents by books charity Booktrust found that only one
in three parents are reading to their children daily, down from
43% two years ago ... more
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Row over
secrecy of planned rare book sell-off
Councillors were
not told of year-long discussions with Cardiff University over the
city’s collections of valuable, historic texts before their sale
was agreed, it has emerged. The city council is facing an accusation
of maladministration over its failure to disclose the discussions
in a report which recommended the sale of the works for up to £3m
... more
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13.09.08
No News today...
I'm away in Dorset for a few days -- hopefully the weather won't
be so ghastly that I have to spend ALL my time in secondhand bookshops
:) Normal service will resume on 18.09.08.
12.09.08.
Why libraries are back in style
Reading rates
are down and Americans say they love casual living. And yet, one
of the most popular rooms in big new houses is a library. Rather
than being about books, their appeal is often about creating a certain
ambiance. "Libraries connote elegance and quality," says New York
architect and interior designer Campion Platt, adding that most
of his wealthy clients want one, even if they do most of their reading
online ... more
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Bodleian
Library expansion denied
A public inquiry
has ruled against Oxford University's plans for its world-famous
Bodleian Library ... more
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Suspected
book thief caught
A man was arrested
Wednesday and is being held on a federal charge of stealing a $100,000
book from the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center Library ... more
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11.09.08.
Review: Burning Books by Matthew Fishburn
Who qualifies
as the biggest book-burner in history? Caliph Omar, the Muslim potentate
who (as legend has it) torched the library at Alexandria? Savonarola,
with his Bonfires of the Vanities? Josef Goebbels who, whenever,
he heard the word culture, reached for his petrol can? ... more
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'Sex in confessionals'
instruction book criticised
The authors of
101 Places To Have Sex Before You Die, which is published in Britain
later this year, suggests that couples take the risk of making love
in the booths because “the odds are the Pope is pretty displeased
with you already” ... more
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BBC to air
Rushdie fatwa documentary
BBC2 is to screen
a feature-length documentary marking the 20th anniversary of the
publication of The Satanic Verses and the fatwa on author Sir Salman
Rushdie ... more
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Rare collection
of Ottoman manuscripts on display
The manucripts,
dating from the 16th century onwards, will be the subject of a special
exhibition to be held at the Foreign Press Association, in Carlton
House Terrace, from 1st to 4th of October. They will be on display
in Britain for the first time ... more
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09.09.08.
Rowling's legal wizardry gets Potter guide banned
JK Rowling's
wizardry extends beyond the power of the written word, as she proved
when she waved her magic wand over a proposed encyclopaedia of the
Harry Potter books and poof! it was gone ... more
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The devils'
Bible?
A year ago, a
New Testament arrived at a rare book dealership in Los Angeles.
It appeared to be signed by 19 defendants of the Nuremberg War Crime
Trials, including some of the most high-ranking Nazis - Hermann
Goering, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Albert Speer and Julius Streicher
... more
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Lost Enid
Blyton manuscript discovered
A long lost manuscript
belonging to children's author Enid Blyton has been discovered in
an attic in Dorset. The title 'Five Go Mad And Batter A Wog' is
full of Blyton's whimsical characters and lashings of un-PC rhetoric
(and ginger beer!) ... more
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Google expands
search in old newspapers
Google Inc has
stepped up efforts to digitize dozens of historical newspapers and
make scanned images of the original papers available online, the
Internet search leader said on Monday. In a blog post on the Silicon
Valley-based company's website, Google said it is looking to make
old newspapers searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers
to digitize millions of pages of news archives ... more
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05.09.08.
Greek Postmen win oddest book title prize
The people have
spoken and the oddest book title of the past 30 years has been selected:
Greek Rural Postmen and their Cancellation Numbers. The impenetrable-sounding
book, a comprehensive record of Greece's postal routes, is published
by the Greek Hellenic Philatelic Society of Great Britain, which
"exists to encourage the collection of Greek stamps and to promote
their study" ... more
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Minister
hits out at rare books sell-off
Welsh Assembly Heritage Minister Alun Ffred Jones is planning to
write to Cardiff council to express his concerns about the sale
of a collection of rare historic books. Academic criticism of the
sale of the trove of 18,000 texts dating back to the 15th Century
has emerged 18 months after the council first announced it was planning
the sell off to fund library improvements in Cardiff ... more
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Slow start
in the shops for Caxton's latest competitor
If yesterday marked the beginning of the end for the printed book,
it looked like a slow death. An hour after the Sony Reader, the
latest generation of electronic reading devices to hit the UK, went
on sale, the country's biggest bookshop had shifted precisely two
... more
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Buddhist
manuscript paintings at Metropolitan Museum
Featuring some of the earliest surviving Indian manuscripts, dating
from the 10th to the 13th century, Early Buddhist Manuscript Painting:
The Palm-leaf Tradition will center on one remarkable Mahayanist
Buddhist text, the Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita Sutra ('Perfection
of Wisdom'), illustrated through the Museum's rare holdings of eastern
Indian and Nepalese illuminated palm-leaf manuscripts, book-covers,
initiation cards, thankas, and sculptures ... more
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04.09.08.
Fight to stop
rare books sell-off
An action group says it is "aghast" at plans to sell some of Wales'
oldest and rarest books. Cardiff Council could eventually sell up
to 18,000 items dating from the 15th Century at auction to raise
money for improvements in library services ... more
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Didgeridoo
book upsets Aborigines
An Australian publishing house was forced to apologise yesterday
for a book that encourages girls to play the didgeridoo, an instrument
that in Aboriginal culture is usually reserved for men. Aboriginal
academics accused HarperCollins of “extreme cultural insensitivity”
over its decision to include instructions on playing the didgeridoo
in an Australian edition of a British bestseller, The Daring Book
for Girls
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a comment
Muhammad
novel set for UK release
A controversial novel about the Prophet Muhammad and his child bride,
scrapped in the US, will be released in the UK
... more Add
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Author launches
libraries campaign
Children's writer Alan Gibbons is launching an authors' campaign
against library cuts and closures, with 300 writers and professionals
pledging their support. Central to the campaign is a planned regional
network of children's authors, teachers and librarians to raise
the public profile of local cutbacks and closures
... more Add
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Medieval
manuscript stays in UK
An 13th Century manuscript, thought to be the earliest surviving
English roll of arms, is to stay in the UK. The British Library
paid £194,184 for the Dering Roll, which depicts the coats of arms
of medieval knights from Kent and Sussex
... more Add
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02.09.08.
When Roald
Dahl was told to ‘buzz off’ – by Beatrix Potter
At 80-years-old she was one of Britain’s best-loved authors, while
he was a restless boy who dreamed of being a great writer. Beatrix
Potter was a hero in the eyes of a six-year-old Roald Dahl but,
according to a friend, when the pair met Potter was less than impressed
with the lad who would one day go on to create enduring children’s
characters to rival her own
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No end yet
to the surreal Franz Kafka papers tale
The tale opens on the author's deathbed, slips from Prague to Israel,
and dead-ends at the scarred wooden door of a Tel Aviv apartment,
where a cat lover named Esther Hoffe hoarded a cache of Kafka's
papers, sketches and personal belongings for almost 40 years, frustrating
archivists and scholars alike
... more Add
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Publisher
admits errors in 'damaging' age banding row
A leading publisher has admitted that the introduction of age banding
to children's books has been poorly handled. The initiative has
prompted a widespread rebellion amongst children's authors, with
a website attracting almost 800 signatures from authors including
Philip Pullman, JK Rowling, Jacqueline Wilson and Terry Pratchett
... more Add
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Bid to retrieve
ancient manuscripts
In a bid to acquire ancient manuscripts and old publications, India's
Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies has come up with
a plan to compensate those who hand them over for posterity
... more Add
a comment
01.09.08.
Web replaces
books as homework aid
Nine in 10 schoolchildren now turn to the web instead of textbooks
for help, according to the YouGov survey, which was commissioned
by the online search engine Ask.com
... more Add
a comment
Sharp words:
knives out in teenage prize shortlist
Knife crime, gang violence and a brutal murder are on the shortlist
for the 2008 Booktrust teenage prize, announced earlier today
... more Add
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Bach fan
thrills to discovery of lost 1724 pages
For 25 years, Teri Noel Towe has deeply treasured a slim volume
bound in red morocco that he acquired at an auction house, a volume
containing six handwritten pages of a musical manuscript
... more Add
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Love of books
keeps 102-year-old librarian working
In a time when nothing seems to last anymore, the world still has
Martha Smith. In 1926 she took a job at the tiny Coal Creek Library
in Vinland, Kansas. Eighty-two years later, she’s still there
... more Add
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