Shelf:Life - what's new in the world of books and book collecting - links to the news stories that matter, and occassional comments by TheBookGuide. Archived Stories.

September 2004

30.09.04. City goes extra Mile in literary title push. From Stevenson and Scott to Rowling and Rankin, the Royal Mile and its environs are alive with literary history. Now the team promoting Edinburgh as the first UNESCO World City of Literature wants to capitalise on this rich heritage by making a comprehensive writers’ tour a centrepiece of their bid...more

30.09.04. NZ Police claim success against book thieves. Christchurch police say they have smashed a theft ring which stole rare books from libraries and collections around the country. Detective Senior Sergeant John Rae said today police raided 16 Christchurch properties yesterday and arrested seven people believed to be part of an extensive group of rare-book thieves...more

29.09.04. 'Lost' Hemingway manuscript not one-of-a-kind. The supposedly lost manuscript - a lighthearted account of a 1924 bullfight - has been known among scholars for years and two typed copies have been held at the Hemingway Collection at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum in Boston since 1982, according to The Kansas City Star, where the author once worked...more

29.09.04. Why do we still fall for Mr Darcy?  Women's favourite fictional icon is a dominant patriarchal male. No wonder modern men are confused...more

29.09.04. Auction is highlight of 40th Michigan Antiquarian Book Show. A relatively new addition to the show is a Saturday night auction that Ray Walsh says will be especially interesting, featuring 300 lots of books and ephemera...more

28.09.04. Library book '100 years overdue'. A borrowed book has been returned to an Inverness library nearly 100 years overdue incurring a £5,000 fine...more

28.09.04. Greenpeace steps up 'forest friendly' campaign. Greenpeace has enlisted bestselling author Isabel Allende in the latest phase of its drive to urge British publishers to use paper from sustainable sources...more

28.09.04. Besotted Bardot fan auctions star memorabilia. More than 200 people packed a Paris auction house on Tuesday for the sale of thousands of objects tracing the career of French screen siren Brigitte Bardot, whose 70th birthday coincided with the event...more

28.09.04. Rare Aesop book put up for sale. A 15th Century copy of fables by Aesop, the mythical pre-Christian story-teller, is to go under the hammer at a Wiltshire auction house...more

28.09.04. Lost Hemingway story under wraps. New York - A newly discovered handwritten letter and short story by Ernest Hemingway will be auctioned in December, but custodians of his estate have not granted permission for the works to be published...more

27.09.04. Profs gather on Petrarch's anniversary. Professors from universities around the world gathered at Yale this weekend to commemorate the 700th anniversary of the 14th century poet Petrarch's birth and discuss his work and legacy...more

27.09.04. Reformer’s Bible is a saleroom success. Five centuries ago, it was a book to die for. Translating books and manuscripts from one language to another these days is not considered a dangerous occupation. But back in the 16th century it was a job that could end up with the unfortunate translator paying with his life...more

26.09.04. Under cover in Booktown. Driving into Wigtown on a Saturday afternoon is like driving into a well tended ghost town. It’s mid afternoon, sunny, and there is nobody around. Well almost nobody. Under a tree in the ‘piazza’ is a television crew fronted by foreign correspondent Alan Little. It is the only sign that this town is hosting an international book festival and playing host to names ranging from Jeremy Bowen to Sheena McDonald and Monty Don to Libby Purves. Even Booker Prize nominee David Mitchell is in town. So where is everyone?...more

26.09.04.  Book dealer offers hot jazz, black culture. Durham USA -- An appreciative quiet drapes the patrons seated inside The Know Bookstore's restaurant as jazz pianist Yusef Salim completes a reflective, intensely personal solo...more

26.09.04. Pushcart bookseller does a trade in respect. Business is brisk most afternoons at Lloyd Hart's pushcart outside Macy's in Downtown Crossing. Young girls come by with their H&M and DSW shopping bags, while white-haired veteran customers stop in looking for selections for their book clubs...more

25.09.04. 'Bonjour Tristesse' author Sagan dead. Francoise Sagan, author of the best-selling novel "Bonjour Tristesse" about seduction and infidelity among the idle rich, died yesterday. She was 69...more

25.09.04 - 02.10.04  Banned Books Week. Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Co-sponsored by the American Library Association, American Booksellers Association, and several other publishing and book-related organizations, this annual event reminds Americans not to take the precious democratic freedom, freedom of speech, for granted...more  Add a comment.

25.09.04. Kids' author in the bad books. Not for the first time, Andy Griffiths, master of the bum-and-fart books beloved by Australian children, is in trouble with parents, teachers, librarians and even some booksellers who think his latest effort, The Bad Book, goes too far...more

24.09.04. Ian Rankin: The king of tartan noir. Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus novels have won him legions of fans and a place on the tourist trail. He tells Lesley Mcdowell why crime fiction matters...more

24.09.04. Woman Inherits Shakespeare Folio 'Worth Millions'. A housewife has inherited a rare Shakespeare book from a long-lost cousin which could fetch millions at auction. Mother-of-three Anne Humphries was bequeathed the rare collection of Shakespeare plays from a relative she did not know even existed...more

23.09.04. From Romans to rock stars: the biography of our nation. Twelve years and 55,000 entries later, the herculean task of updating the 'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography' has finally been completed...more

22.09.04. Loss grows in German library fire. About 50,000 books were irreparably damaged by the fire which swept through the top floor of the Duchess Anna Amalia library in Weimar earlier this month, twice as many as previously thought...more

TheBookGuide's mum has been taken ill in darkest Wales, so he's away looking after her. He and the news will hopefully be back latter this week.

19.09.04. Novel products in aisle nine. The literary world may not like it, but where the City is concerned selling books is no different to selling cornflakes. Publishing is subject to the same economic trends as any other industry, and like many great British brands the biggest publishing houses are now mostly in the hands of foreign conglomerates...more

18.09.04. Toni Morrison's 'Good' Ghosts. Toni Morrison's life -- like her writing -- is populated by ghosts -- some bad, some benign and others, pure inspiration. In an interview with NPR's Renee Montagne, she talks about the "good" ghosts and childhood memories that have inspired her writing...more

17.09.04. A pussycat with blood on her claws. Kitty Kelley has made some powerful enemies with her sensational, warts-and-all biographies of America's biggest celebrities. Now, she is lifting the lid on the Bush dynasty -- but has she gone too far this time, asks Michael Shelden...more

17.09.04. Wigtown Book Festival. The Wigtown Book Festival begins today and runs until September 26 with a cast of personalities and literary figures far too large to list here...more

17.09.04. A pussycat with blood on her claws. Kitty Kelley has made some powerful enemies with her sensational, warts-and-all biographies of America's biggest celebrities. Now, she is lifting the lid on the Bush dynasty -- but has she gone too far this time, asks Michael Shelden...more

17.09.04. Lebanon bans The Da Vinci Code. Lebanon has banned Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code after Catholic leaders said it was offensive to Christianity...more

17.09.04. Three arrested with rare manuscript in Delhi. Three men charged with attempt to sell a stolen antique Tibetan manuscript have been arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation in West Bengal, officials said in New Delhi on Thursday...more

17 .09.04 Why only links? Recently a number of people have asked why I don't copy and post whole news items, rather than just links. They say that they don't like the (occasional) need to sign up and / or, spyware, cookies - or are just lazy.
    There are basically two reasons why I don't do this. Firstly, this is copyright material and belongs to the author or publisher, and secondly, free content providers need the traffic to their sites.
    As a provider of free content myself, I expect users to respect my copyright, and I naturally extend this courtesy to others.
    As a site owner I'm also acutely aware of the importance of visitor numbers and the impact it can have on revenue. Simply visiting a site seems to me a very reasonable "price" to pay for free content, and without it, many of these sites can't survive. Sign ups, accepting cookies and the possibility of spyware downloads, are decisions that you, the visitor, should weigh against your desire to read the rest of the story.
     I try to give enough of an overview of the article's content to enable readers to make this decision, and hopefully some of you do.

16.09.04. Skyrocketing demand for used textbooks creates boom for online booksellers. Abebooks.com today announced that textbook sales for the month of August were nearly 400% higher than in August 2003...more

15.09.04. Fund aims to buy 14th-century psalter. Last month, the government placed a temporary ban on exporting the psalter in hopes of finding a British buyer, and the National Art Collections Fund has launched a fund-raising drive to help a Cambridge museum obtain it...more

15.09.04. British Library Puts Shakespeare Quartos Online. For hundreds of years, only scholars and museum curators have had access to the "Quartos," the earliest printed editions of Shakespeare's plays. But now the British Library has just put 93 Quartos on the Internet...more

15.09.04. UK Children shun books for TV . Children in the UK are not reading enough at home, favouring television and computer games instead, according to new research...more

15.09.04. Judy Blume to Receive National Book Award. Judy Blume, whose candid children's books have attracted millions of readers and a wave of censors, has been named this year's winner of an honorary National Book Award for contributions to American letters...more

14.09.04. John de Falbe reviews "The Bookshop at 10 Curzon Street". Heywood Hill started up his bookshop in Mayfair in 1936. Between 1943 (when he was called up) and 1945, it was run by Nancy Mitford...more

TheBookGuide is away for a few days but he and the news will return on 15.09.04

08.09.04. Dandy comic sold for record price. A rare edition of The Dandy comic book has been sold for a record £20,350 according to the auctioneers who handled the sale...more

08.09.04. Reasons abound for literature's decline. Although I am a professor emeritus of English, I must include myself among those who do not read "literature" very often at this time. I have started reading many imaginative works in recent years, but finished few of them...more

06.09.04. Walking in a modern Wonderland. Off with his head? A new version of Lewis Carroll's classic tale Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by first-time author Frank Beddor has already got several critics up in arms even before it has been published...more

06.09.04. The Bookseller of Jeddah. Walking down the crowded shopping center, the street is full of buyers, chain stores selling make-up, perfumes, clothes and food. An unfamiliar sight will meet your eye -- a small pickup truck parked near one of the stores, which is full of books displayed for all to see...more

06.09.04. Specialist sets sail for new territories. It's in the opulent surroundings of Mayfair that London's rare books trade has its heart, with a dozen leading dealers and most of the main auction houses within easy walking distance of one another. This is a small, intense, gossipy world, yet it generates business worth tens of millions of pounds every year...more

05.09.04. Half of UK children 'do not read books at home'. Almost half of Britain’s children do not read any books outside school hours, figures showed today. The survey of 1,000 seven to 14-year-olds also revealed their two least favourite activities were writing poems and writing stories...more

05.09.04. The power of old things. Letters written by George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, thousands of sci-fi volumes and the first jazz recording ever made -- such are the treasures that fill Bill Meneray's world. After all, he is director of the Special Collections Library at Tulane University...more

05.09.04. Old-time cookbooks big draw at New York store. Old cookbooks never die -- in fact, they are not often willingly surrendered. One woman even took her beloved Betty Crocker book to the grave. Cookbook connoisseur Bonnie Slotnick has heard many of these tales, whispered or recalled with laughter, about women so attached to their cookbooks that they end up practically being "dragged out of dying hands"...more

05.09.04. 'Book Exchange is top-shelf with fans. Durham USA -- The Book Exchange bills itself as "The South's Greatest Bookstore" but the old two-story building looks more like a warehouse than a repository for thousands of books and all kinds of information...more

04.09.04. 'Soul of Germany' is devastated by library blaze. Cultural experts were surveying the extent of the disaster last night after it emerged that some literary treasures had been rescued due largely to the bravery and quick-wittedness of library staff...more

04.09.04. Sneak look at new Harry Potter. JK Rowling has given fans of her Harry Potter books a brief, but tantalising taste of the next in the series chronicling the boy wizard's adventures...more

03.09.04. Bookseller still stokes a frenzy about alternative culture. In one corner of downtown Portland, sitting just in the shadow of Powell's Books, a quirky, independent bookshop survives. This month, Reading Frenzy celebrates its first full decade in business...more

03.09.04. Italo Calvino's Love Letters Trigger Court Battle. The passionate and previously secret love letters of Italian novelist Italo Calvino took center stage in a court battle Friday as his widow and heirs sued the nation's leading newspaper for publishing extracts...more

03.09.04. Indian children burn books in anti-terror law protest. Guwahati, India (Reuters) - School children have burnt textbooks and women set up roadblocks in the Indian state of Manipur at the start of a three-day strike against an unpopular anti-terror law...more

03.09.04. German fire destroys 30,000 rare books. Weimar, Germany (Reuters) - A fire in one of Germany's most historic libraries has destroyed up to 30,000 rare books. "The destruction of many thousands of books, particularly from the 16th to 18th centuries, is an irreplaceable loss to the city's UNESCO World Heritage legacy," the eastern city's mayor, Volkhardt Germer, said on Friday of the fire at the Anna Amalia library...more

02.09.04. Stolen library books sold on the Internet. A literary scam has been uncovered eagle-eyed librarians in Stockholm and Uppsala. According to Wednesday's Dagens Nyheter a man used the Internet to sell rare books - which he had stolen from at least three different libraries...more

02.09.04. Fact, fiction and poetry line up for new-writing award. Ten books of "maturity and accomplishment" - ranging in theme from the story of Noah's ark retold with one-line postmodern jokes, to the Russian Jewish enclaves of modern Toronto - vie with each other in the opening stage of the Guardian First Book award today...more

01.09.04. Obituary: Donald Justice. Anybody who reads the poetry of Donald Justice, who has died aged 78, feels an urge to recite him to those in earshot; at each turn, new vistas open up...more

01.09.04. Separating fact from fiction in Afghanistan. In Asne Seierstad's 'The Bookseller of Kabul', Shah M was portrayed as a domestic tyrant who abandoned his wife. Now he plans to set the record straight...more