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30.04.09.
Book page thief sentence halved
An Iranian scholar
who stole pages from priceless books at Oxford's Bodleian library
and the British Library has had his sentence halved ... more
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Rare Darwin
book sold for £35,000
A first edition,
first issue of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means
of Natural Selection has been sold at auction in Norfolk for £35,000
... more
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Probe into
Google Books
Google's grand
project to digitally archive the world's body of printed knowledge
may have just run into a serious roadblock.The New York Times reports,
the Justice Department's antitrust division is probing the deal
to see if it gives Google monopoly power over books that are still
protected by copyright but have fallen out of print ... more
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E-books:
is the writing on the wall for books?
E-books will
soon be a billion-dollar business: has this new industry finally
reached a tipping point ... more
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28.04.09.
Children's classics top book list
Classic tales
including Just William and The Railway Children dominate a list
of best books for young readers, as chosen by children's laureates
... more
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Jamie Oliver
books sent to shredder
Unsold Doctor
Who annuals and Jamie Oliver cookbooks are being turned into recycled
bales of paper in preparation for their new life as tissues and
other household goods at a new recycling centre in Earls Barton
... more
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Champion
of the Bluestockings
The largest privately
owned collection of books, manuscripts and pictures associated with
Samuel Johnson and the 18th-century “Bluestocking” circle of writers
is to be sold in New York next week. The nearly 500 lots are estimated
to fetch £1 million. But while the life and works of these writers,
from Fanny Burney to Jane Austen, are well known, less is known
about Paula Peyraud, the quiet librarian from Chappaqua, New York,
who obsessively assembled this collection for more than 30 years
... more
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27.04.09.
Rarely seen medieval drawings at the Met
Opening June
2 at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Pen and Parchment: Drawing
in the Middle Ages will be the first museum exhibition to examine
in depth the achievements of the medieval draftsman. Through some
50 examples created in settings as diverse as a ninth-century monastery
and the 14th-century French court, the presentation will consider
the aesthetics, uses, and techniques of medieval drawings, mastered
by artists working centuries before the dawn of the Renaissance
... more
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Recession
forces charity bookshop to shut down
Assistant manager
Steve Cooke, who has worked at the shop for more than two years,
has been angered by the decision. He said: "It appears that Rochdale
is too poor a town for Oxfam to consider viable for a continued
presence. "It is well documented that Rochdale is a town with high
levels of poverty and deprivation, but apparently Oxfam’s business
plan has no underpinning policy that would allow this factor into
the equation. I despair at an international charity that puts profit
before people. Of course money must be raised to finance its many
vital international projects, but at what cost?" ... more
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Henry VIII:
Man and Monarch
"This exhibition
draws on the British Library’s rich collections – including the
books that Henry himself chose, read and annotated – which outline
the revolutionary change in ideas that took place during the reign
of Henry VIII and take us, as nothing else can, into the King’s
own mind." Dr David Starkey ... more
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24.04.09.
Enduring trade
The 49th Annual
New York Antiquarian Book Fair, which ran from April 3 – April,
was described by Andy Rooney of CBS as one of the “few things that
provide hope that our civilization will endure” this strained economic
climate ... more
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Earliest-known
book jacket discovered
A librarian at
Oxford's Bodleian Library has unearthed the earliest-known book
dust jacket. Dating from 1830, the jacket wrapped a silk-covered
gift book, Friendship's Offering ... more
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Revolutionary
Espresso Book Machine launches in London
It's not elegant
and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the
Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for
the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more
than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible.
Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London,
the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while
customers wait ... more
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Ben Franklin
letters found in London
A professor from
the University of California, San Diego, who was researching Benjamin
Franklin at the British Library made a discovery on the last day
of his trip in 2007: copies of 47 letters by, to and about Franklin
that were written in the spring and summer of 1755 and not seen
since ... more
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22.04.09.
Anne Bromer's miniature books
For almost 40
years Anne Bromer has been buying, selling and researching rare
books at their shop and she has been fascinated with tiny books.
Bromer explained a large number of books in all genres have been
printed in special sizes, which are no more than three inches tall
... more
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Chanel's
war years: secrets and style
Having spent
the last six months immersed in dark corners of various historical
archives, researching a book on Coco Chanel, it has come as something
of a surprise to emerge, blinking, into the light, to read a flurry
of newspaper stories speculating that she was a Nazi ... more
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21.04.09.
How JG Ballard cast his shadow right across the arts
Ballard was a
poet of the occult fear, the subliminal horror. His work explored
the unexpressed, anarchic euphoria lurking in the interstices of
modern, rational civilisation, the longing to smash things up ...
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Judging books
by their cover
This summer,
the Bodleian Library will celebrate the art and craft of bookbinding
from both traditional and contemporary perspectives with two major
exhibitions ... more
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Think you've
read Madame Bovary? You've barely begun
Anyone who can
read French can now become a literary scholar without leaving home.
From this week, 4,500 pages of the classic 19th-century French novel,
Madame Bovary – not just the 500-odd pages of the published text
but thousands of passages which were censored by the publisher or
cut or revised by the author – are available online ... more
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17.04.09.
Biblio. com to provide e-commerce site for ABAA
Under the 4-year
joint operating agreement, the new ABAA e-commerce site for its
book dealers will feature Biblio.com's search engine and e-commerce
technology. Berkeley-based Bibliopolis will be responsible for crafting
the design and user interfaces for the site ... more
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Are e-books
the new newspapers?
With newspapers
in crisis, there are now suggestions that e-books might offer journalism
a new portable platform and subscription model ... more
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16.04.09.
Cheque for book overdue 32 years
An anonymous
borrower has sent a Portsmouth library a £20 donation after keeping
one of its book for 32 years ... more
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Grant for
Cranford author's home
The home of Cranford
author Elizabeth Gaskell has been awarded a £262,000 grant for urgent
repairs ... more
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The private
language of book inscriptions
Sometimes it's
what's written on books rather than in them that means most, if
only to their owners ... more
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15.04.09.
Gun drama as Shakespeare accused arrives at court
Dressed as Che
Guevara, the man accused of stealing a priceless first edition of
Shakespeare's work triggered a gun drama when he arrived at court
... more
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Missing Civil
War-Era Book Returned
Nearly 145 years
after it was stolen by a Union soldier during a Civil War raid,
a missing library book has been returned to the Washington and Lee
University library by an Illinois man who inherited it from the
soldier's descendants ... more
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Historic
newspapers to go online
Millions of old
newspaper reports and magazines articles from Wales, dating as far
back as the 18th Century, are to be made available online ... more
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14.04.09.
The vanity of the bonfires
In 1933, the
Nazis tried to extinguish an era of Jewish intellectualism by burning
the works of more than a hundred authors. But did this act of terror
actually succeed? The answer can be found in a new book ... more
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Amazon apologises
Amazon has admitted
that "an embarrassing and ham-fisted cataloguing error" led to the
removal of tens of thousands of adult and gay and lesbian titles
from its book charts. Authors and readers bombarded the Seattle-based
firm with complaints over the weekend after books – many dealing
with gay and lesbian themes, and including novels by EM Forster,
Jeanette Winterson and Gore Vidal – disappeared from its ranking
system in what appeared to be a botched attempt to make its bestseller
lists more family friendly ... more
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Comic book
dealer’s secret hideout
Surrounded by
hundreds of thousands of comic books, Brett Carreras shows the crown
jewel of his inventory. The restored copy of Batman No. 1, the first
appearance of the Joker, is protected by a hard plastic case (Batman
first appeared in Detective Comics #27). Carreras shares ownership
of this particular comic 50-50 with a business partner. First published
in 1940 and sold for 10 cents, Carreras is hoping that the rare
issue will fetch $10,000 when it sells on an online auction site
... more
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To Kill a
Mockingbird beats Bible in book poll
To Kill a Mockingbird
has been voted the most inspirational book of all time, beating
the Bible into second place ... more
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Race to save
German archives
A team of Essex
experts is going to Germany to help rescue precious documents under
threat after a building holding the city’s archives collapsed ...
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Cruel Sea
author’s archive formally given to Liverpool
It's been a long
voyage through time and across oceans worthy of the subject himself.
At long last, the Nicholas Monsarrat Archive, effectively embracing
The Cruel Sea author’s entire working, is safely tied up in his
home town ... more
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09.04.09.
Jane Austen in zombie rampage up the book charts
The public's
unanticipated desire for the unusual conflation of Regency romance
and the undead this morning sent Seth Grahame-Smith's zombie mash-up
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies soaring to the top of Amazon's UK
"movers and shakers" chart, which monitors the books which are experiencing
sudden demand from consumers ... more
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English 'losing
out' to literacy
Children no longer
have the freedom to read for pleasure or express themselves in writing,
says Mary Bousted of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers.
Children were reading extracts rather than whole books and this
meant the love of reading was being lost ... more
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New digital
library to display world on a website
It is not every
library that displays ancient Chinese manuscripts alongside postcards
of Sarah Bernhardt, crumbling Iraqi newspapers near maps of the
New World, and Rabelais originals next to the voice recording of
a 101-year-old former slave named Fountain Hughes. But then the
World Digital Library (WDL) is not every library. Hailed as an online
"intellectual cathedral", it is an unprecedented coming together
of some of the world's finest treasures ... more
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07.04.09.
'Exciting discovery'
Henry VIII, known
as the scourge of the Catholic church, has been revealed as having
been a firm believer in the religion he later tried to destroy,
thanks to a new discovery ... more
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The road
of book addicts
Amidst a bustling
and noisy Ho Chi Minh City, there is still a place like Tran Nhan
Ton, which is quiet, witnesses no bargaining – just books, books
and book lovers ... more
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06.04.09.
Schindler's List found in library
A list of Jews
saved by Oskar Schindler that inspired the novel and Oscar-winning
film Schindler's List has been found in a Sydney library, its co-curator
said on Monday ... more
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Welcome to
Wincanton, twinned with Discworld
Yesterday, Sir
Terry's fantasy land came closer to entering the world of ordinary
mortals after Wimpey Homes, the bastion of uniform housing developments,
took the step of naming two roads in the town's new "Kingwell Rise"
development after street names from Pratchett's Discworld ... more
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Cambridge
University Press jobs threat
College dons
have become embroiled in a bitter row over plans to axe more than
150 jobs at Cambridge University Press - the oldest continually
operating book publisher in the world ... more
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Newspapers
to go from libraries
A county council
is to stop providing national newspapers in some libraries in a
cost-saving measure ... more
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Cute signs
that books are becoming nostalgic curiosities
How else can
you explain the growing vogue for camp reproductions and pastiches
of 'period' titles? ... more
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03.04.09.
Library of Birmingham plans unveiled
Plans for Britain's
biggest ever public library were unveiled in Birmingham yesterday
in the clearest sign yet of a national renaissance in the construction
of grand civic libraries ... more
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Bible clue
to Elvis’s torment
A prayer book
belonging to Elvis Presley reveals his tormented mind during the
darkest year of his career. It is due to be sold by Shropshire auctioneers
Mullock's on April 23 ... more
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Winifred
Foley
Winifred Foley,
who has died aged 94, wrote a best-selling memoir of her girlhood
in rural Gloucestershire before beginning a career as a romantic
novelist in her ninth decade ... more
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Comic Books
now part of the literary establishment
The central misconception
around comics is the idea that they’re a genre, not a medium. The
roots of 20th-century popular comics may well be in genre fiction:
we’re all familiar with the zap-pow-whoppery of early superhero
comics, whose campy cadences were deftly caught in the old Adam
West television adaptations of Batman, and with the use of “comic-book”
as an adjective synonymous with primary-coloured morality and cartoon
violence. But although superhero stories are still as active a part
of the comics medium as its other ancestor, the “funny papers” strip
cartoon, many creators and artists have devoted years of energy
and talent to guiding the medium out of its generic constraints
... more
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'Oh no!'
- JD Salinger turns away journalist from his home
JD Salinger still
isn't talking. The famously reclusive author wasn't persuaded to
break his silence by a reporter from the Spectator, who made it
as far as Salinger's doorstep in Cornish, New Hampshire before being
turned away ... more
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Study claims
Agatha Christie had Alzheimer's
Textual analysis
detects signs of sharply declining faculties towards the end of
beloved mystery writer's life ... more
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02.04.09.
New Ukraine feud: who gets Gogol?
The 200th anniversary
of writer Nikolai Gogol's birth became the latest point of contention
between Russia and Ukraine on Wednesday. Both Ukrainian and Russian
leaders named Gogol their national hero, stretching their simmering
disputes to include literature ... more
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Andrew Marr
book publisher pays compensation
Macmillan agrees
to pay undisclosed damages to Erin Pizzey after History of Modern
Britain falsely links her to terror group ... more
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Our libraries
are at risk - just when we need them most
Lean times are
already bringing cuts in services, with little heed to the vital
role they play and how they shape futures ... more
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01.04.09.
Let them eat ... books
The International
Edible Book Festival is held annually around April 1st. To date,
the following countries have held this festival: Australia, Brazil,
Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Luxembourg, Mexico, Morocco, Netherlands, New Zealand, United States
of America, Russia ... more
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Maria Sibylla
Merian’s magnificent book on insects
It might be yours
for just € 25 000: the Bernard edition of Maria Sibylla Merian’s
two great books on the insects of Suriname and Europe. Published
in Amsterdam in 1730, the work, featuring 256 stunning copperplate
engravings, is to be sold at the Ketterer Kunst auctions in Hamburg
on 18 und 19 May 2009 ... more
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Robert Crumb
set to publish 'scandalous' Bible satire
The famously
subversive US cartoonist Robert Crumb has announced the completion
of his long-awaited take on the Book of Genesis. The acclaimed satirist
revealed on his personal website that he had finished the project,
which is out this autumn, and which his UK publisher is predicting
will "provoke the religious right". Four years in the making, Crumb
worked from the King James Bible and Robert Alter's translation
to reinterpret the Book of Genesis, from the Creation via Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden to Noah boarding his ark ... more
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Alfred Wainwright's
family object to statue
Plans to erect
an £80,000 statue in memory of fellwalker Alfred Wainwright have
met a clamour of protest from his family and friends ... more
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Larkin's
first interview
How Philip Larkin
rewrote the first, indiscreet article about him to appear in the
British press ... more
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