Book News - TheBookGuide's selection of book related news stories from around the world. Book News Archive.

July 2004

30.07.04. The summer book title fight. Every summer book publishers battle it out for a lucrative slice of the holiday reading market. Here's how they make you pick their top titles...more

30.07.04. A new chapter. At 22, Melanie Chason has a degree in music and a resume that includes clerking at four national chain book stores. She turned a page this year by getting into the book selling business herself...more

30.07.04. Live auctions woo online surfers in wave of future. Further growth is likely as service providers help bring even more live auctions online. Live Auctioneers' client roster consists of more than 160 auction houses, including Sotheby's and Swann, which specializes in posters, maps, books and other printed matter...more

29.07.04. Four arrests after loss of valuable NZ books. Four people allegedly responsible for the systematic theft of $30,000 worth of books from the Christchurch Public Library were arrested after police swooped yesterday...more

29.07.04. Amazon halts tit-for-tat critics. After mounting concern about abuse of its open door policy regarding feedback, Amazon has begun a new system, Real Names, which requires reviewers to provide their credit card details before posting a comment...more

29.07.04. Calligrapher transcribes Psalms into illuminated manuscript. Donald Jackson had a special hand in producing the "Book of Psalms." It's an artistic hand which used a quill and flowing elliptic motions to produce an illuminated manuscript version of the biblical text...more

29.07.04. Bookseller's dream bestseller. With no author royalties and minimal costs, the 9/11 Commission Report is raking in profits for its publisher...more

28.07.04. Chanticleer Books reopens. Steve Blackmer and his customers might live by Christopher Morley's observation, "There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love"...more

28.07.04. Hunt on for book scam syndicate. Valuable and rare New Zealand books worth thousands of dollars have been stolen from Christchurch Public Library by an organised syndicate of thieves...more

28.07.04. Hello indolence, goodbye job? Hello Laziness, an anarchic anti-business bible which preaches a philosophy of active disengagement is causing controversy in France...more

27.07.04. Bestseller on honour killing 'is a fake'. In the book, author Norma Khouri details her life story and that of her friend Dalia, who was killed by her devout Muslim father in an honour killing because she fell in love with a Christian man. But at the weekend it was reported that the memoir and Khouri's life was a hoax...more

27.07.04. Lahore plans to designate a book street. Khalid Sultan is planning to set up a book street to promote literary activities and give street book vendors a place to set up stalls...more

26.07.04. Books that blab. A Salon story on the controversial practice of public libraries putting RFID chips in books to automate checkouts and free librarians from RSI-inducing drudgework contains some interesting reminders about just how complex and nuanced debates over privacy can get...more

26.07.04. Tolkien sale conjures £480. A rare Lord of the Rings book found at the bottom of a box in a charity shop raised nearly £500 for Cancer Research when it was auctioned...more

25.07.04. Between the covers. A century-old and still kicking, this scrappy Mumbai bookshop defies the pulls of modernity...more

25.07.04. A mastery of another kind. Gianfranco Pocobene has finished his work on the John Singer Sargent murals in the Boston Public Library. As head of the conservation project that occupied 15 months of his life and that of half a dozen others from Harvard's Straus Center for Conservation, Pocobene sees himself as "one small part of the history of this complicated room."...more

24.07.04. Utopians disunited. Germaine Greer specialises in "designed to be provocative books" wrote Kate Chisholm in the Daily Telegraph, and Whitefella Jump Up: the Shortest Way to Nationhood - in which Greer suggests renaming Australia the Aboriginal Republic of Australia - is no exception...more

24.07.04. The Bookseller. Nicholas Clee on the latest news from the publishing industry ...more

23.07.04. Bookbinder finds delight in beauty of his craft. The love he has for his craft shows in the gentle way he displays the tattered, hardbound book, smoothing the frayed spine...more

23.07.04. Goldfinger poster fetches £1,800. An auction house had a licence to make a lot of money when original publicity material from the Bond films went under the hammer...more

22.07.04. Raffles' letters on sale. The last major collection of letters written by Sir Stamford Raffles and his wife, Lady Sophia, has been put on sale bt Maggs Bros for £400,000...more

22.07.04. Lottery fund's rejection for literary archive. Attempts to secure a multi-million-pound literary archive for the Scottish nation have been thrown into question after the Heritage Lottery Fund balked at a request for a £22 million contribution towards the price of the John Murray Archive...more

22.07.04. 30 years of reading feminism. Although not strictly a lesbian store, the Feminist Bookshop has a history that reflects the past 30 years of gay and lesbian Sydney...more

21.07.04. Collector owns 10,000 comic books. "I started collecting comic books in the early '60s when I was a kid in Massachusetts," Koines said. "At that time, comic books cost 10 cents, and they stayed at that price for 30 years."...more

21.07.04. Robots get bookish in libraries. a group of robotics researchers at University Jaume I in Spain is working on a robot librarian which could deliver the promise of a helpful bot...more

20.07.04. Portland bookstores moving to Internet. Two Portland bookstores, bothered by what they say is the high cost of renting a storefront, plan to move their businesses to the Internet over the next several weeks...more

20.07.04. Man flees police after stealing library books. A 36-year-old man led police on a 10-minute car chase, driving on sidewalks and against traffic on a busy street, so he wouldn't get caught with stolen library books...more

20.07.04. MPs damn profits of scientific publishers. MPs have launched a stinging attack on the scientific publishing industry and called on the Government to press for change "as a matter of urgency"...more

20.07.04. Thoreau manuscript on view at Walden Pond. The manuscript, opened so that two pages are visible, will be on display in a glass-topped case through Sept. 13 in an exhibition called "Walden Comes Home: The Sesquicentennial of an American Classic."...more

19.07.04. Fighting to be free. Thoreau lover denied bid to give out free book at Walden...more

19.07.04. Bookseller became a legend. The legacy of Lou Morris includes but is not limited to the more than half a million books he left behind in the nine rooms of his bookstore, the shed out back and warehouse down the road...more

19.07.04. Museums fight over £1.5m medieval manuscript. The most important medieval illuminated manuscript found in Britain in living memory is at the centre of a battle between leading museums...more

18.07.04. Agatha Christie tops crime poll. Detective author Agatha Christie has come top of a poll to find Britain's favourite crime writer...more

17.07.04. Bookstore owner tries to contain his passion. The first impression when you walk through the front door of Kevin Patrick's Books is one of overwhelming disarray. There are no horizontal surfaces or walls not covered by books. They are everywhere...more

17.07.04. Readers in London bucking U.S. trend. If you believe the latest news, hardly anyone reads anymore. Well, except maybe you. I mean, you are reading this, aren't you...more

17.07.04. Market fluctuations. How high in price and prestige a book may inexplicably rise, how far and fast it may fall...more

17.07.04. How Many Books Are Too Many? Brace yourselves, novelists and would-be novelists. Figures released this spring show that a new book of fiction is published in the United States every 30 minutes...more

16.07.04. New letter by Lincoln uncovered. A Chicago manuscript dealer is selling a newly discovered letter in which Abraham Lincoln argued that the Republican Party should strengthen its antislavery stance...more

15.07.04. Scotland Yard catches up with book thief. Eight important 17th and 18th century books stolen from a German library have been recovered with the help of a British bookseller and Scotland Yard’s Art and Antiques Squad...more

15.07.04. Living by the books. Twice or three times a week the phone rings in Eliasaf Robinson's used-book store and someone offers to sell him a collection of books that are the rarest of the rare...more

15.07.04. 'Lost opera' found in clear-out. A handwritten copy of the original score for Jacques Offenbach's last opera has been discovered a century after it was thought lost in a fire...more

15.07.04. Big night for Cervantes. Almost four centuries after Miguel Cervantes's death, his play Pedro the Great Pretender is to receive its world premiere at the hands of the Royal Shakespeare Company...more

15.07.04. An author gets a read on bookstore culture. Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures From a Year in a Bookstore...more

14.07.04. Abebooks.com launches Australian and NZ site. Abebooks becomes the first international online bookseller to launch sites dedicated to the Australian and New Zealand markets...more

14.07.04. Old bookmobile rescued and restored. Everett -- Restoring "Pegasus" has been a labor of love -- for a history-minded librarian, a car-crazy architect, a city mechanic and all the others who've worked to restore the state's first bookmobile...more. Pegasus in its halcyon days of youth, circa 1924...more. Pictured in its restored condition...more. Thanks to Bradley A. Scott for the picture links. TBG

13.07.04. The secret lives of books. Open up a musty volume in a used bookstore, and you may be rewarded with more than its original contents...more

13.07.04. Iraq's National Library devastated by war. Employees of Iraq's National Library and Archives are struggling to overcome the destruction wrought during the first weeks of the U.S.-led war. Many irreplaceable documents, photographs, maps, and books -- some centuries old -- were either destroyed in the fighting or were stolen in the rampant looting that followed. A vital part of Iraq's culture seems to have disappeared forever...more

13.07.04. Arab bookworms look to the internet. Books topped on-line sales in the region with purchases of Arabic and English titles accounting for more than 33.8 percent of total on-line sales in the Arab world last year, according to a survey conducted by cashU.com...more

13.07.04. 'What the Book?’ Secondhand Bookstore. Chris Chiavetta, wanted to create a book store with a comfortable, homey atmosphere, qualities he felt other second-hand shops in Korea lacked and he literally built this place with his bare hands...more

13.07.04. State library books on sale at second-hand shops. Books which once belonged to the Penang Library are now on sale at several second-hand bookstores there...more

12.07.04. Church accused of book sale "vandalism". The Church in Wales has been accused of committing "historical vandalism" after deciding to break up and sell off part of one of the oldest collections of books in Wales...more

12.07.04. Online Battle of Low-Cost Books. Is Amazon.com becoming the Napster of the book business? The analogy may not be far off, say some observers of the used-book industry...more

11.07.04. Autograph collecting is serious business. A good autograph, in the collector's argot, is often a signed letter or document that has "content," meaning it reveals quirks, foibles, motivations, temperament or character, and that is an irresistible lure when the words spring from the hand of a hero...more

11.07.04. Collector's Corner: Political Memorabilia. It's election time in America again, time to put that cardboard sign in the yard, wear that pinback and put bumper stickers on your car. Then, on November third, you'll most likely toss it all away; but perhaps if you're smart, you'll keep your election keepsakes this year...more

10.07.04. The heady charm of the title role. My local secondhand bookstore, Books on Bronte, takes full advantage of its large front glass window. A rapid turnaround of titles makes for pleasant gazing on my dog walks. A recent example, there one morning, gone that evening, was "How to Succeed in Business Without a Penis"...more

09.07.04. Author Paula Danziger dead at 59. Paula Danziger, author of numerous popular books for children and young adults, has died of complications from a heart attack in New York City...more

09.07.04. Beautiful assets on the books. A rare natural history book called Birds of Australia, written by John Gould and illustrated by his wife Elizabeth, is to go on sale at an auction of rare horticultural and zoological books at Bonhams auctioneers...more

09.07.04. Auction the final chapter for bookstore. It was a bittersweet event - an auction at the Book Guild of Portsmouth, which is closing its doors on lower State Street after 18 years in the city...more

09.07.04. India bans railway bookshop that sounds a bit too English. A chain of booksellers that has been synonymous with Indian rail travel for 125 years is facing the axe because it sounds too English...more

09.07.04. Half of US shuns literature. A report released yesterday by the US national endowment for the arts says the number of adults who read no literature increased by more than 17 million between 1992 and 2002...more

09.07.04. Hugh B. Cave, Prolific Author, Dies at 93. Hugh Barnett Cave, an English-born American writer who started turning out pulp fiction at 18 and kept it up for 75 years, died on June 27 at a hospice in Vero Beach, Florida...more

08.07.04. Website exposes the prime of Muriel Spark. Tomorrow a new website will be launched that provides an unique insight into the life and work of Muriel Spark, the grand dame of Scottish literature...more

08.07.04. Readerware Line Updated. Readerware Corporation has released an updates for the entire line of Readerware products, bringing them to versions 2.90. The applications in the Readerware line are utilities designed for bibliophile book cataloging...more

08.07.04. Joyce letter smashes sale record. An erotic letter sent by author James Joyce to his wife has fetched a record £240,800 at auction in London...more

08.07.04. Pooh auction items fetch £9,300. A family photo album including a picture of Pooh author AA Milne's son Christopher Robin fetched £3,500 at auction on Thursday...more

07.07.04. Penguin packs off rare books... at half price! Penguin has quietly sold 100,000 books from its archives to a dealer in Dallas, to the astonishment of booksellers and collectors...more

07.07.04. Police save stolen Iraqi book worth £250,000. While scores of Iraqi archaeological sites continue to be looted on an industrial scale and thousands of objects remain missing from the national museum in Baghdad, a small book which has survived 1,000 years of turbulent history is now safely in store at Scotland Yard, and will be returned...more

TheBookGuide is away for a few days but he and the news will return on 09.07.04.

01.07.04. Novel technology boosts sales. Abebooks wanted to get more value out of its database of 55 million secondhand books...more

01.07.04. Hurrah for men in tights. When he created Jennings, Anthony Buckeridge captured the essence of English boarding school life...more

01.07.04. Hardy loved a good jilting. If you thought that road rage was a modern phenomenon, think again. Thomas Hardy copied newspaper reports of many such incidents into a notebook which gives us insights into the world he lived in - and the way he worked...more

01.07.04. Fate of rare documents remains unclear. With political authority in Iraq now formally turned over to a fledgling local government, the fate of a cache of rare and historic Jewish documents rescued by American soldiers from destruction in Baghdad remains up in the air...more

01.07.04. A free comic book; what more could you want? On Saturday, thousands of comic book shops around the world will be celebrating that unique art form, giving away millions of comic books ranging in subject matter from high-flying super-hero adventures to intense slice-of-life crime noir to kid-friendly humor...more