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30.11.09.
Phone
box has new life as library
A traditional
red phone box has been recycled into one of the country's smallest
lending libraries - stocking 100 books ... more
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Ottawa book
collector gets apology and cheque from PO
Canada Post has
delivered a forthright apology and a compensation cheque to an Ottawa
book collector one year after it lost his prized volume of 18th-century
poetry ... more
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Royal Society
manuscripts go online
Landmark moments
in the history of science have been celebrated online to mark the
350th birthday of the Royal Society. For the first time, original
manuscripts of papers published by the world's oldest scientific
institution have been made available to the public via the internet
... more
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27.11.09.
Mein
Kampf a hit on Dhaka streets
Booksellers touting
their wares amid the heavy traffic in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka,
have discovered an unusual best-seller ... more
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My response
to the book fetishists
My blog post
wishing good riddance to bookshops struck a nerve among pbook fetishists
and lovers of ritualised behaviour who describe their visits to
bookshops in terms of fevered adoration ... more
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26.11.09.
Friends
hit back at verbal attack on author John Fowles
Friends of the
late John Fowles have leapt to the defence of the Lyme Regis author
after he was branded an ‘arrogant old windbag’ ... more
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Historic
Paine deed falls out of 18th century novel
A torn sheet
of 18th century paper which tumbled out of a novel by Tobias Smollett
found in a cellar, has proved to be the legal document which not
only dissolved the marriage of Thomas Paine, but gave him cash in
hand to buy his ticket to America - where he would become one of
the most famous radical pamphleteers in the world, author of Common
Sense and a leading figure in the American revolution and the founding
of the United States ... more
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Why a good
cover makes a good book better
Call me shallow
(actually, please don't) but I think a good cover can be a significant
component of a good read ... more
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25.11.09.
The
oldest living rare bookseller in the world
Muriel Craddock,
at age 97 1/2 surely the oldest living rare bookseller in the world,
has announced the re-opening of Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookseller,
her family business in Melbourne, Australia ... more
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24.11.09.
Origin
of Species book anniversary
Today is the
150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species publication
... more
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Appeal launched
for Darwin's Galapagos notebook
The lost book
recorded discoveries of fossils and a new species of frog, an attack
by giant black bedbugs in Argentina, an escape from a snowstorm,
his accurate prediction that the Falkland fox would soon be extinct
– and his note that the ladies of Buenos Aires were thought to be
the most beautiful in the world. Even though the contents survive,
Randal Keynes, author and great great grandson of the scientist,
described the book itself as a unique treasure ... more
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Calls to
drop the idea of re-interring Camus
A friend and
biographer of Albert Camus has joined opposition to the idea of
moving the legendary French author's remains to Paris ... more
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20.11.09.
Waterstone's
rolls out secondhand bookstore
Waterstone's
has become the latest online bookseller to begin selling secondhand
books with the launch of Waterstone's Marketplace ... more
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Museum 'of
story and storytelling' planned for Oxford
From Lewis Carroll's
Wonderland to JRR Tolkien's Middle-earth, CS Lewis's Narnia and
the parallel universes of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Oxford
has played host to some of the UK's most enduring literary creations.
Now a £2.5m donation from an anonymous private benefactor means
the first steps have been taken towards the creation of a museum
dedicated to storytelling in the city ... more
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19.11.09.
Bad
Sex writers named and shamed
Singer turned
author Nick Cave, Booker winner John Banville and veteran novelist
Philip Roth are among the writers to have made the shortlist for
this year's Bad Sex in Fiction award ... more
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17.11.09.
Gardens
of rare books
Santa Barbara's
rare booksellers show and tell ... more
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Nabokov’s
'Laura' manuscript up for auction
Up for auction
from Christie's in New York is a collection of 138 index cards on
which Nabokov wrote, in pencil, the unfinished manuscript of The
Original of Laura (also called Dying is Fun). According to the the
auction catalogue, manuscripts by Nabokov are rarely available;
as such, the estimate is set at $400,000 to $600,000 ... more
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Bring back
the traditional bookshop
No more lounging
in Waterstone's or browsing in Borders – turn over an old leaf with
the starchy, strait-laced booksellers of old ... more
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Andy Warhol's
children's book illustrations go on sale
Artist's little-known
interpretation of the story of the little red hen joins huge auction
of classic children's literature ... more
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16.11.09.
Old
farming books have hidden value
Farmhouse attics
and cupboards are often stuffed with boxes and clutter no one ever
looks at - yet antiquarian bookseller John Mattley knows these are
often the hiding places of real gems when it comes to finding valuable
old books about farming ... more
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Google offers
concessions on books deal
Google Books
submission after US government objections promises greater flexibility
and more modest international scope ... more
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13.11.09.
New
TV drama reveals Enid Blyton as a barking-mad
On paper, the
world of Enid Blyton was one populated by happy, carefree children
whose idea of bliss at the end of an adventure-filled day was a
slice of plum cake washed down by lashings of ginger beer. But the
creator of Noddy, the Famous Five, the Secret Seven and Malory Towers
was in truth a cold-hearted mother and a vindictive adultress who
set out to destroy her former husband ... more
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100 books
that defined the noughties
Zadie, Nigella,
Steig and, of course, the boy wizard. The decade has seen publishing
phenomenons like no other, but which books, for better or worse,
have summed up the noughties? ... more
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Page turns
for Baghdad's ancient book center
Hasan al-Timimie
stands surrounded by piles of books strewn on the ground, arranged
in categories covering everything from encyclopedias to copies of
the Koran. This is al-Muttanabi street, a legendary center of the
book trade in Baghdad for hundreds of years ... more
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Gay sex
scenes censored from Here to Eternity
It is one of
the most celebrated images in cinema, an icon of heterosexual romance:
Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing as the waves crash over
them in the 1953 film From Here to Eternity. But behind the Hollywood
gloss is a tale of censorship and repression, with the author of
the award-winning novel on which the film was based forced to remove
scenes of gay sex from the manuscript before publication ... more
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12.11.09.
Favourite
children's books we should never have loved
It's an unsettling
experience to discover just how bad some of the books one adored
as a child actually were ... more
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11.11.09.
12
charged after library books worth $87K stolen
Authorities threw
the book at 12 people Tuesday, accusing them of checking out pricey
textbooks from a public library system outside Washington to sell
for quick cash. The Prince George's County Memorial Library System
in Maryland lost $87,000 worth of material from thefts between November
2008 and July 2009, county prosecutors said ... more
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Looted Ancient
Texts Heading Back to Vienna
A 1516 Hebrew
Bible and commentary that Nazis seized on Kristallnacht in 1938
will be returned to the Jewish Community of Vienna, Customs officials
said Monday -- 71 years to the day after the Nazis unleashed their
program of violence against European Jews ... more
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Smell of
old books can tell you about their condition
There is something
lovable about the faint yet familiar smell of old books, which could
also tell you about their condition, says a new study. Scientists
have developed a new test that can measure the degradation of old
books and precious historical documents on the basis of their aroma
... more
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10.11.09.
How
Waterstone's killed bookselling
When it started,
Waterstone's was a breath of fresh air. But as it got ever bigger,
many say it lost its soul. What effect has that had on publishing?
... more
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Sassoon archive
launched online for Armistice Day
Oxford University
is marking this year’s Armistice Day by launching the first online
collection of the manuscripts of Siegfried Sassoon, focusing on
his war poetry ... more
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'If I told
you, I'd have to shoot you'
Michael Ryan,
the director of the Chester Beatty Library, which houses the country’s
most valuable collection, tells Rosita Boland about its impressive
contents – just don’t ask him how much it’s worth ... more
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Bangalore’s
iconic book store
Select Book shop’s
K K S Murthy takes us through the origins and evolution of one of
Bangalore book connoisseurs’ well known destinations ... more
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09.11.09.
All
Black souvenir comes to light
A commemorative
napkin celebrating the first ever Welsh rugby victory over the All
Blacks in 1905 has been discovered by archivists packing to move
home. The souvenir features an illustration of the touring New Zealand
team and details their vital statistics ... more
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Andrew Motion
rubbishes plagiarism charge
Military historian
claiming that 'found' poem published in the Guardian makes unfair
use of his work has 'got the wrong end of the stick', says former
poet laureate ... more
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Comic books
are good for children's learning
Parents should
not "look down" on comics as they are just as good for children
as reading books, a new study claims ... more
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06.11.09.
Antiquarian
bookseller Marian L. Gore dies at 95
She specialized
in titles on food and wine, selling at fairs and by mail order,
but says what she really sold was nostalgia ... more
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Rare Austen
letters cause excitement
More than 100
items, including rare manuscripts and letters written by the British
author to her family, have gone on display at the Morgan Library
and Museum in Manhattan ... more
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'X-Men' comic
auctioned for record price
The X-Men #1
was sold for a world record price of $101,000 (£60,000) during an
American comic book auction ... more
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The music
of the spheres
Kepler founded
modern astronomy by looking for a harmony that we wouldn't recognise
as scientific at all ... more
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04.11.09.
Penguin
flogs it (and sells some books)
What's the most
depressing piece of Penguin merchandising? Notebooks featuring the
classic covers of much-loved titles that cost more than the novels
themselves ... more
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Siegfried
Sassoon archive likely to stay in UK
A threat that
a rich personal archive of Siegfried Sassoon's journals, poems and
letters would be broken up or sold to the US appears to have been
lifted, it will be announced today ... more
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03.11.09.
The
Hong Kong International Antiquarian Bookfair
Organized by
Mr. Mitsuo Nitta from Yushodo in Tokyo, Mr. Paul Feain from Cornstalk
Bookshop in Sydney and Mr. Chris Li from Hong Kong Book Centre in
Hong Kong, the Third International Antiquarian Bookfair will be
held at the Hong Kong Exhibition Centre from December 4-6, 2009
... more
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Amazon.com
extends Internet price war on books
Amazon.com was
offering hardcovers of John Grisham's "Ford County" and Barbara
Kingsolver's "The Lacuna" for just $9 on Tuesday, the official release
date for both books. Hardcovers generally have a list price of $24
or higher ... more
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$100 K for
a single comic book?
They may be called
"comics", but the money they're generating at auction is no laughing
matter ... more
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Klein's Rome
re-visited
Once in a while,
a photographer comes along and nudges photography in a new direction.
It may be a little simplistic to suggest that the history of photography
runs smoothly or is something a simple timeline could illustrate.
Though trends come and go, some stand the test of time. One photographer
who helped define a decade was William Klein ... more
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02.11.09.
Bram
Stoker’s little brown book
A long-lost book
has shown how Bram Stoker, who wrote Dracula, started out in a small
way. The Irish novelist began his Gothic masterpiece in 1890 but,
two years earlier, he was busy scribbling down the accounts of Sir
Henry Irving, arguably the Victorian age’s most famous actor ...
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Rare books
don’t always live in glass cases
Standing among
the 10,000 rare books in the stacks of the Linda Hall Library in
Kansas City, Bruce Bradley, the director of the history of science
special collections, pulls out a copy of “The Starry Messenger,”
the revelatory book in which Galileo detailed his astronomical observations
made with his own “spyglass” — the instrument that would later be
known as the telescope. “Treat it with care,” Mr. Bradley said as
he gently handed me the library’s first edition ... more
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Tolkien festival
planned for town
The influence
the Welsh language had on books by JRR Tolkien is to form part of
a major new festival in Powys to honour the author ... more
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Parents lynch
bookseller over abduction fear
A mob of angry
parents lynched a book salesman and badly injured four of his colleagues
after rumors spread that the men were part of a human smuggling
ring ... more
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Visionary
got it wrong on books
"THE book is
dead," said Peter Kindersley, founder and chairman of Dorling Kindersley
(DK). He was launching the world's first interactive CD ROM in London
in 1992 at a lunch for city types as the company prepared for an
initial public offering ... more
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