|
30.07.09.
Is there a margin muse in your library book?
Marks in library
books are usually moronic scrawlings or tedious displays of ego,
but just occasionally you come across something fascinating ...
more
Add
a comment
29.07.09.
Judge rules will of Kerouac’s mother is fake
In a ruling that
could have implications for the literary estate of Jack Kerouac,
a Florida judge has ruled that the will of the author’s mother,
Gabrielle Kerouac, was a forgery ... more
Add
a comment
Library fan
nears 25,000th book
An avid reader
in south west Scotland is on the brink of borrowing her 25,000th
book from her local libraries ... more
Add
a comment
Amazing artworks
created from old books
Artist Su Blackwell
creates these spectacular paper models from old books and sells
them for up to £5,000 each ... more
Add
a comment
Medieval
alphabet book stays in Britain
A unique alphabet
book, offering a selection of spectacular and bizarre fonts to the
luxury medieval manuscript illuminator stuck for inspiration, has
been bought by the British Library after a £600,000 appeal ... more
Add
a comment
28.07.09.
Harry Potter and the £20k seat of earning
A secondhand
dining chair may not appear the wisest of investments unless, of
course, the previous owner was JK Rowling. The chair on which the
author sat while writing the first two Harry Potter novels has been
re-sold for £20,000 ... more
Add
a comment
The worst
children's books, ever
The blood is
up at The American Scene, as they single out the worst kids' writing.
Who have they missed ... more
Add
a comment
France's
'cookery bible' gets English edition
Je Sais Cuisiner,
which has sold more than 6m copies in France, has been translated
into English for the first time ... more
Add
a comment
Peter Blake
interview: Cut out and keep
It's fish the
day that I meet the artist Sir Peter Blake. He has spent the entire
day with a scalpel cutting pictures of tiny fish out of an ancient
encyclopaedia, with the amazing precision of a man half his age
– he's 77 – and the perverse concentration of an artist who has
been known to take almost two decades over a single painting ...
more
Add
a comment
27.07.09.
Moon rock book 'will be one of most expensive in history'
A book released
to mark the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing – complete with
a piece of Moon rock in the binding – is to go on sale for hundreds
of thousands of dollars ... more Add
a comment
24.07.09.
Bermondsey bookseller dies
Bermondsey bookseller
and author Peter Marcan has died unexpectedly at the age of 58 ...
more Add
a comment
Publishers
expect to see UK Kindle this autumn
Amazon has previously
said that it would launch the e-book reader internationally, but
has never divulged a timeline. Following reports last week that
Amazon.co.uk had secured a UK manufacturer for the device, one digital
director said: "I think we are looking at October for launch." Another
agreed: "Amazon is gathering a head of steam for launch" ... more
Add
a comment
A Wilde discovery
of letters
He may have excelled
at the unexpected, but even Oscar Wilde himself would have to bow
down to this delicious irony. Several of Wilde’s working drafts
and personal letters were thought, by scholars, to have been lost
for over half a century, until a gift to the Morgan Library and
Museum in New York revealed otherwise ... more
Add
a comment
LongBox aims
to be iTunes for comic books
If you've ever
wondered why comic books don't have a digital distribution and management
platform the way music, movies, or books do, you're not alone. The
good news is that one software company and one man--perhaps clad
in an identity-concealing spandex costume--are here to save the
day with LongBox ... more
Add
a comment
22.07.09.
Every book tells a story
Amazon's deletion
of novels from Kindle devices shows that buying an ebook isn't like
owning a real, secondhand tome ... more
Add
a comment
Keats's London
home reopens
Keats House,
where he wrote some of his best loved poems, has benefited from
£424,000 Lottery grant ... more
Add
a comment
How to find
a missing masterpiece
Discoveries of
unknown works by classical masters seem commonplace these days,
with manuscripts by the likes of Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart and Beethoven
popping up in library files and private collections with surprising
frequency. Often though, amid all the excitement and bankable headlines,
the artistic payoffs turn out to be minimal, or the claims greatly
exaggerated ... more
Add
a comment
Amazon deal
to reprint rare books
Online retailer
Amazon is teaming up with the University of Michigan to provide
reprints of 400,000 rare, out-of-print and out-of-copyright books
... more
Add
a comment
Bookshelf
etiquette
James Purnell
has been using his time to rearrange his bookshelves alphabetically.
Bad mistake. Here's why ... more
Add
a comment
20.07.09.
Biography of Muriel Spark will finally be published
Next month the
controversial biography she tried so hard to suppress will finally
be published. Written by the renowned academic Martin Stannard and
17 years in the making, Muriel Spark – The Biography is billed as
a "Cinderella story" of how an only child from a working class family
became a literary icon, but it will also tell the story of her tortuous
relationships with lovers who turned into enemies, and with her
son, Robin, whom she all but abandoned when he was a small boy ...
more
Add
a comment
Rugby legend's
memorabilia under hammer
Rugby memorabilia
belonging to Irish rugby legend Karl Mullen is to go under the hammer
at a County Kilkenny auction house ... more
Add
a comment
17.07.09.
Golden hare should be put on display
The golden hare
that Kit Williams buried in a park 30 years ago should be put on
public display, the author of the surprise publishing hit Masquerade
has said ... more
Add
a comment
Vatican embraces
Oscar Wilde
In a week in
which the Vatican made its peace with that dangerous consorter with
witches Harry Potter, the Holy See has also revealed an unexpected
soft spot for Oscar Wilde ... more
Add
a comment
16.07.09.
Austen in sea monster mash-up
Sea monsters
are the new zombies, at least according to Quirk Books, the publisher
of this year's surprise hit Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Quirk,
whose remix of Jane Austen pitted the Bennet sisters against hordes
of flesh-eating undead, has announced that the new title in its
series will be Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters ... more
Add
a comment
Rare 1502
hymnal given to UK university library
A church is donating
a rare 1502 hymnal to a Manchester University library, where church
members say it can receive better care. The Latin hymnal was published
in London by Wynken de Worde, who was among the first to popularize
printed works. ... more
Add
a comment
Hidden treasures
to be revealed
From the moment
you set foot in St John's Old Library, tucked away in the heart
of the college, it's clear the place is steeped in history. "I always
like opening the library to visitors" says outreach worker Katie
Birkwood, with a smile. "Whether they've come to see a specific
book or just to look at the building, nobody fails to be impressed
... more
Add
a comment
Books bound
in human skin
Leather-bound
books are always lovely. But when that leather is human skin --
that's creepy, right? But it's not unheard of -- in fact, the practice
of binding books in human skin was once common enough to get its
own name: Anthropodermic bibliopegy ... more
Add
a comment
14.07.09.
Charles quits heritage society over book snub
Prince Charles
has quit as patron of one of Britain’s leading heritage societies
in a row over his views on conservation, it emerged yesterday. The
heir to the throne refused to renew his patronage of the Society
for the Protection of Ancient Buildings after the charity, the world’s
oldest environmental campaigning group, took the unprecedented step
of refusing to publish a foreword he had written for a handbook
on the restoration of old houses ... more
Add
a comment
Cornish bay
that inspired Virginia Woolf's novel sold
The majestic
three-mile curve of sand and dunes that gave Virginia Woolf the
landcape and memories at the heart of her most famous novel, To
the Lighthouse, was bought at auction by a private buyer yesterday
for £80,000 ... more
Add
a comment
Publishers
flock to London art book fair
The London Art
Book Fair will take place at the newly expanded Whitechapel Gallery,
and will offer talks, events and classes and book signings by authors
and artists. Highlights include a debate on the role of the art
book and a bookbinding "crash course" from the Society of Bookbinders
... more
Add
a comment
Photography's
brightest and best at the Arles festival
From new Nan
Goldin to shocking vintage images, the greatest photography festival
in the world teems with work. Why isn't there anything like it in
Britain, wonders Sean O'Hagan ... more
Add
a comment
Rare manuscripts
remain locked for want of key
The Bihar State
Archives is still in search of a key of the locker of Maharaja Rameshwar
Singh Archives, Darbhanga, where rare manuscripts numbering about
50,000 of the erstwhile Darbhanga Maharaj are dumped ... more
Add
a comment
13.07.09.
Bestsellers from beyond the literary grave
In the middle
of the economic downturn, which has hit the American book trade
hard, sales have been boosted by a remarkable series of discoveries
of lost or unpublished works by some of the greatest names of modern
literature which may soon be coming to the UK. Authors whose newly
discovered or revised works are now being published in the US include
Mark Twain, Vladimir Nabokov, Graham Greene, JRR Tolkien, William
Styron, Mary Shelley and Ernest Hemingway ... more
Add
a comment
Part of CS
Lewis/JRR Tolkien manuscript found
A professor at
Texas State University–San Marcos believes he has discovered all
that exists of a book that JRR Tolkien and close friend CS Lewis
intended to write together ... more
Add
a comment
Who says
Asperger's sufferers are unemployable?
When customers
step into the Broughton Street Book Shop in Edinburgh, a high-ceilinged,
wood-panelled room enticingly crammed with shelves of second-hand
books, the rather gangly young man behind the counter hands them
a pamphlet, without making eye contact. The leaflet explains that
his name is Brian Rafferty, he is the shop's proprietor and he suffers
from both Asperger's syndrome – a form of autism – and cerebral
palsy ... more
Add
a comment
09.07.09.
Lost Greene novel to be serialised in crime magazine
The long lost
Graham Greene novel that was unearthed in a Texas archive late last
year is to be serialised in an American crime magazine from next
week ... more
Add
a comment
Market-busting
90%-95% sell-through at Bloomsbury
In its first
No Reserve Bibliophile Sale Bloomsbury-NY blew the roof off the
house with an astonishing 90%-95% lot sell-through rate. The rare
book auction market has not seen lot sell-through figures like that
in more than twenty years ... more
Add
a comment
Millet Manuscript
Library online
The old Millet
Manuscript Library in Istanbul's Fatih district is bringing its
rare resources to light. Thousands of manuscripts and other resources
at the library will be offered to the international community within
the scope of a project jointly carried out by the Istanbul-based
Suna and Inan Kiraç Foundation ... more
Add
a comment
07.07.09.
Forty-year wait for new thesaurus
The world's largest
thesaurus is due to be published this autumn, Oxford University
Press has said. The project began in 1965 and will include almost
the entire vocabulary of the English language ... more
Add
a comment
Erotica publisher
Black Lace withdraws from market
Erotic fiction
authors are in mourning after it emerged yesterday that Britain's
leading publisher of erotica for women, Black Lace, would not be
publishing any new titles next year ... more
Add
a comment
Bound for
success
13 pictures from
The Bound for Success exhibition at the Bodleian Library in Oxford
... more
Add
a comment
06.07.09.
World's oldest Bible published online
The world's oldest
surviving Bible, which has been scattered around the globe for more
than a century, has been published in full online ... more
Add
a comment
Bookbinding
on show
Arnold Schwarzenegger
may think it nonsensical that Californian schoolchildren still use
traditional hard-bound books when so much information is available
in electronic form, but this week two exhibitions opened to celebrate
the art of exactly that. An Artful Craft, at the Bodleian Library
in Oxford, features some exquisite examples of bindings from two
of the finest collections made during the last century: Albert Ehrman’s
Broxbourne Library and Sir Paul Getty’s Wormsley Library. Bound
for Success, also at the Bodleian, showcases not the craft’s past
but its equally fascinating future ... more
Add
a comment
Deflation
comes to the rare book market
The recession
is, in my view, not the cause of this downward pressure but rather
the most recent (and dramatic) catalyst for change to a business
that has been struggling with change for the last fifteen years
since the Internet's transparent, free-market blessing to the collector
became a curse for sellers ... more
Add
a comment
03.07.09.
Borders kick-starts UK's reluctant e-book revolution
Electronic books
have been predicted to change the way we read forever, and hasten
the death of the printing press. But the revolution is taking a
long time in coming. Until recently in the United Kingdom, people
wanting to buy an electronic book-reading device had little choice
of machines. This week, the bookseller Borders launches its own
e-book reader, which promises to ignite competition at last ...
more
Add
a comment
Salinger
wins Catcher in the Rye copyright case
A federal judge
in New York has indefinitely banned publication in the U.S. of a
novel based on J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye because of
its substantial similarities to the 1951 classic ... more
Add
a comment
Authors lobby
government for statutory school libraries
A high-profile
group of children's authors, publishers, teachers and librarians
is calling on the government to make school libraries statutory.
Signatories to a petition to Number 10 include Philip Pullman, Horrid
Henry creator Francesca Simon and former children's laureate Michael
Rosen, as well as the general secretary of the National Union of
Teachers Christine Blower, Dave Prentis, general secretary of Unison,
top children's publishers and the directors of a raft of youth library
associations ... more
Add
a comment
02.07.09.
Declaration of Independence found gathering dust in UK
An original first
print of the United States Declaration of Independence has been
discovered gathering dust in Britain after nearly 250 years. The
poster size proclamation, which is in perfect condition and is said
to be worth £5million, is one of only 26 surviving initial copies
of the document that changed the course of history ... more
Add
a comment
All the world's
books to go online
The Open Library,
a new information-sharing project, aims to create a single web page
for every book that has ever been written ... more
Add
a comment
How Richard
and Judy changed what we read
Richard and Judy
are quitting the daytime TV sofa after 21 years. But their exit
is not just television's loss - the book world will also mourn the
departure of a couple who changed Britons' reading habits ... more
Add
a comment
1889 Baseball
poster sells for $115,000
Have you ever
been at a garage sale, noticed an old, rolled up item, and decided
not to unroll and look at it? After reading this article, you'll
probably unroll the next one ... more
Add
a comment
Biggles flys
on
Jeremy Briggs
reviews both the very first and the very latest Biggles graphic
novels to be published in the UK. Cruise
of the Condor was a hot read when I was a kid in 1955, and Spitfire
Parade is hot off the press. Add a comment
| 
