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22.02.11.
Reading
is overrated
Too many people
will have you believe that our very humanity resides in books –
and that's reading a little too much into it ... more Add
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'Lost' Enid
Blyton book unearthed
An unpublished
and previously unknown Enid Blyton novel is believed to have turned
up in an archive of the late children's author's work ... more Add
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Burial ground
earns protected status
Bunhill Fields
cemetery founded in the 1660s as a burial ground for nonconformists,
radicals and dissenters, holds the remains of John Bunyan, author
of The Pilgrim's Progress, Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe,
and the poet and artist William Blake, among thousands of others
... more Add
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New guide
maps Scotland's literary locations
The guide, which
highlights 60 literary locations across Scotland, explains where
to find Beatrix Potter's woods and also the castle which inspired
part of the gothic horror Dracula ... more Add
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Do you write
in your Books?
The rise of e-books
means the decline of marginalia – readers’ written commentary in
the margins of their books – much to the dismay of many book lovers,
librarians and historians. Do you write in your books? Do you enjoy
reading what others have written in the margins of old books? ...
more Add
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21.02.11.
Lost
Daphne du Maurier stories discovered
A bookseller's
dedicated attempts to root out the early work of Daphne du Maurier
have resulted in the recovery of five lost tales by the enduringly
popular author of Rebecca and Jamaica Inn. Most startling among
them is "The Doll", published in 1928 when Du Maurier was barely
into her 20s – a macabre short story about a man who discovers that
the girl he's smitten with is besotted with a mechanical sex doll
... more Add
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Rare anti-communist
comics at Heritage Auctions
A superb collection
of high-grade anti-communist comic books from the 1950s, from The
Collection of Todd Warren, will make for an esoteric and interesting
corner of Heritage Auctions’ Feb. 24-25 Signature® Vintage Comics
& Comic Art Auction. All are being sold without reserves ... more Add
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18.02.11.
Would
the bard have survived the web?
Archaeologists
finished a remarkable dig last summer in East London. Among their
finds were seven earthenware knobs, physical evidence of a near
perfect 16th-century experiment into the link between commerce and
culture ... more Add
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Diagram prize
for Oddest Book Title
The next time
your dentist tortures your mouth, take a look at his bookshelf.
Perhaps he has studied “Managing a Dental Practice: The Genghis
Khan Way,” one of six finalists for this year’s Diagram Prize for
Oddest Book Title ... more Add
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15.02.11.
The
Oak Knoll repricing saga
The Internet
has had a dramatic effect on the prices and availability of antiquarian
books. This is great news for the consumer but has required some
serious thinking by all of us “old-timers” in the business (I started
selling books about books in 1976) ... more Add
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Library protests
cause some councils to rethink cuts
Following nationwide
demonstrations earlier this month, a number of local authorities
are reconsidering closure plans ... more Add
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11.02.11.
World
Book Night branded 'misguided and misjudged'
Three weeks ahead
of the inaugural World Book Night book-giving event on 5 March,
a row has broken out over whether the event will damage independent
booksellers and harm authors ... more Add
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Is the real-life
Da Vinci Code about to be decoded?
The bizarre sequence
of symbols, charts and figures have baffled the world of science
for the last 100 years. But now thanks to carbon dating, researchers
have finally begun to pick apart the secrets of the Voynich manuscript,
the most alien artifact of its kind in the world ... more Add
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Why children
are drawn to war-torn tales
A new exhibition
at The Impreial War Museum celebrates classic books that offer children
the chance to make sense of war ... more Add
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"Only brain
injury could make me write for children"
Remarks about
children's books made by Martin Amis on the BBC's new book programme
Faulks on Fiction, broadcast this week, have caused anger and offence
among children's writers ... more Add
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Clues about
pollution hidden in pages of old books
Some of the most
revealing clues into the state of pollution since the the Industrial
Revolution aren't only found within the words and sentences contained
in centuries worth of scientific publications -- they're hiding
in the very pages themselves, too. According to one chemist studying
the history of pollution, testing the paper of aging volumes can
paint a more accurate picture of the world's CO2 levels over the
past few centuries than current methods, like ice and tree core
samples ... more Add
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09.02.11.
Bard’s
burgled book to be conserved
Conservators
at Durham University are preparing to undo damage sustained by a
rare folio of William Shakespeare’s plays that was stolen from the
university’s library in 1998. The folio was recovered in 2008 and
returned in July 2010 at the end of the trial of the former antiques
dealer Raymond Scott ... more Add
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A
symbol for the new Egypt
Looking like
a massive computer chip or the disc of the sun rising up from the
Mediterranean coast, the hypermodern successor to the ancient library
of Alexandria stands out as a beacon of hope, efficiency and enlightenment
among the crumbling buildings of Egypt's second-largest city ...
more Add
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The Westerman
Seminar
Percy F. Westerman
wrote a staggering 174 adventure books spanning a 50 year career.
During the 1930's he was named the most popular children's writer
with his books selling more than 1.5 million worldwide. Percy began
his writing career in Portsmouth and is widely believed to be the
originator of the genre 'Ripping Yarns'. The first Westerman Seminar
is being held in Portsmouth on Saturday February 19th, and you can
find more details here. Add
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07.02.11.
Magritte
on Magritte
Unpublished letters
that cast fresh light on one of the most accomplished, least eccentric
and – it turns out – most entrepreneurial of all the surrealist
artists, René Magritte, are to be sold at auction ... more Add
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Poetry bestseller
boasts saucy secret
Dr Claudine van
Hensbergen, a researcher at Oxford University, thinks she may have
stumbled on the reason for the success of an apparently serious
volume called The Works of the Earls of Rochester and Roscommon,
which ran to more than 20 editions and was reprinted throughout
the 18th century. Bound in at the back of the 1714 edition, van
Hensbergen found, was a section called the Cabinet of Love. It contained
three poems, "the organising principle of which," van Hensbergen
says, "appears to be the dildo" ... more Add
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France signs
treaty to return books
The remaining
296 volumes of Korea’s ancient royal protocols being held at the
National Library of France will all be returned to Korea by the
end of May, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade
yesterday ... more Add
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Tome is where
the heart is
Girl meets tall,
handsome stranger and moves into quaint bookshop by the sea. The
stuff of Hollywood happy endings, surely? LA film producer Jessica
Fox travelled 5,000 miles to follow her dream ... more Add
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British Library
returns 1000-year-old religious manuscript
A thousand-year-old
religious manuscript which was looted in Italy during the Second
World War has been returned by the British Library to its rightful
owners in the southern Italian town of Benevento after a decade-long
legal battle ... more Add
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05.02.11.
South
Cerney auction for "seminal work"
The battered
and dusty first edition of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population
from 1798 was discovered in a pile of books at Dominic Winter's
rare book auction this week in South Cerney. Auctioneer Chris Albury
brought the hammer down after a frenzy of bidding saw a final bid
of £61,100 from antiquarian book firm Bernard Quaritch in London
... more Add
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Waterstone
mulls bid for bookshops
The entrepreneur
turned novelist Tim Waterstone was today considering making a sixth
bid in 12 years for the eponymous bookshop he founded in 1982 ...
more Add
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Yell casts
JR Hartley ad into digital era
Almost 30 years
after lovable gent JR Hartley and his hunt for a book about fly
fishing captured the hearts of the nation, the Yellow Pages publisher
is to give the famous TV ad a digital-era remake featuring a retired
DJ hunting for an old dance record ... more Add
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Dashiell
Hammett's lost works found in Texas
A cache of unpublished
works by famed writer Dashiell Hammett, often seen as the father
of hardboiled detective fiction, has been found and is set to be
unveiled in America ... more Add
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Fake Churchill
signatures: man held
A 65-year-old
man has been arrested on suspicion of faking the signature of Winston
Churchill in books and memorabilia he had put up for sale on eBay,
according to police ... more Add
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One man's
trash is another man's online treasure
Our word of the
day: ephemera. It's printed material intended to be thrown away.
But lucky for those interested in California's history, a million
pieces of it - including tickets, theater programs, menus, catalogues,
Valentines, campaign brochures and more - has been kept ... more Add
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01.02.11.
Cairo
book fair abandoned amid unrest
The fair – the
largest and oldest in the Arab world, usually attracting two million
visitors and a host of authors – was due to be opened on Saturday
28 January by President Hosni Mubarak, who has hitherto raised the
curtain each year. But with protesters demonstrating on the streets
against his rule, and curfews imposed across the city, the event
was summarily abandoned. The guest of honour, China, withdrew its
delegation on the eve of the scheduled opening ... more Add
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Alexandria
youth 'protecting library from looters'
The director
of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina has announced that his building,
built in commemoration of the famous ancient library destroyed in
antiquity, is being kept safe by Egypt's young people during the
current unrest sweeping the country ... more Add
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Anti-smoking
charity targets book lovers
The campaign
by Iris launches today (1 February) and features doctored inserts
that have placed into a number of books in second-hand bookshops,
Quit UK's charity shops, coffee shops, community centres, book-vending
machines and book clubs ... more Add
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Qualities
needed by booksellers
As a jobbing
bookseller I am sometimes asked what it takes to succeed in this
trade. Success in book selling is elusive, these days merely to
survive is to succeed. However I have jotted down some qualities
that may be needed by a used book seller/ dealer. To have all of
them would lead to canonisation but it is crucial to have a few
... more Add
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