30.04.07.
Rare investment books up for sale
If you're a collector of rare and exotic
investment books, you probably don't have a girlfriend, but may be happy to learn
that Christopher Dennistoun's collection of 750 books on investments and financial
speculation is up for sale at Bernard J. Shapero Rare Books in London ... more Add
a comment Vonnegut
leaves them laughing
Kurt Vonnegut could have scripted the centerpiece
event himself: a smart crowd in his hometown, listening to a speech he wrote.
He died before he was able to deliver it, so it was given posthumously by his
son ... more Add
a comment Free
comic book day
This year, almost 2,000 comic book stores across America
and around the planet plan to give away 2 MILLION comic books absolutely free!
With up to 44 titles to choose from, the selection of books on May 5 will include
comic books for all ages and tastes ... more Add
a comment 75
years later, 'Little House' still a big draw
Some readers have such fond
memories of the Little House novels about Laura Ingalls Wilder's frontier childhood
that they cry when they walk into her Missouri home and see the desk where she
wrote many of the books ... more Add
a comment
27.04.07.
New tech saves old books
Somewhere within the vast underbelly of Sterling
Memorial Library, a cart of decaying books is wheeled through a windowless corridor.
Depending on their states of deterioration, these volumes may be reconstructed,
scanned or washed in alkaline baths in an attempt to preserve the information
held within their pages ... more Add
a comment History's
forbidden books
Loyola, Chicargo's Catholic university, showcases works
by Copernicus, Galileo and others that once appeared on the Catholic Church's
now-defunct index of banned texts ... more Add
a comment Earliest
version of Tao Te Ching exhibited in Hong Kong
The "bamboo slip" Tao Te
Ching, which could be dated prior to 278 BC, started exhibition here on Thursday
together with over 300 different editions and versions of this Chinese philosophical
classic ... more Add
a comment
25.04.07.
Bookdealer returns
Almost a year after the UK's long running weekly book
trade magazine folded, Bookdealer
has returned -- again. An early attempt to revive it as Bookdealer
Fortnightly failed, and it has now been reborn as a monthly magazine. This
incarnation has the blessing of Barry Shaw, the original magazine's editor, who
joins many of the old contributors in this new venture -- which in tone and format
is identical to its predecessor. We wish them every success. Add a
comment Sanctuaries
for the soul
For the true bibliophile, there are bookshops and there are
bookshops. Christopher Bantick remembers three Melbourne greats that really were
sanctuaries for the soul ... more Add
a comment Book
Thing cashes in online
Russell Wattenberg, the creator of The Book Thing
of Baltimore, dreamed up a business model that people seem to love: Every weekend,
the quirky New York native collects thousands of donated books and then gives
them away to eager bibliophiles who descend upon his free nonprofit bookstore
to load up on Krantz, Clancy and Chaucer.
But hidden
in those donated books are some gems, and Wattenberg acknowledges that he digs
them out and sells about 2,000 a year, far more, apparently, than most donors
think ... more Add
a comment Sacred
texts that reveal a common heritage
For the first time, the oldest and
most precious surviving texts of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths have
gone on display side by side at the British Library ... more Add
a comment
24.04.07.
Ancient manuscripts are music to professor’s ears
Most musicians find
their music in stores; Dr. Olga Malyshko finds hers partly eaten by worms in ancient
European cathedrals. Driven by a life-long passion for medieval music and its
history, Malyshko, a professor in the school of music at Queen’s University, has
spent most of her career working with ancient manuscripts of medieval music ...
more Add
a comment The
net: not guilty of grievous harm to bookshops
Sometimes I can arrange
only a few minutes to indulge my vice. Sometimes I get up to an hour. The longer
I have the more enjoyable the release, but being a man I can still get satisfaction
out of a few snatched moments. I can’t say I’m proud, but at least my wife knows
all about it now. I can’t say she approves, but she knows that boys will be boys.
Which is why she’s prepared to tolerate me straying ... into second-hand bookshops
... more Add
a comment
Evidently
The Times edits the comments left and chooses to only post those broadly in line
with the article content : I tried in vain to get my comments displayed.
Michael
Gove stated in his article "No, the real revolution altering the balance for independent
bookshops is not the web but another bogey of our time — the supermarket."
Sadly,
Michael Gove (the author) cannot see the difference between oranges and apples,
because I do not know a supermarket which sells secondhand books !
The
internet might have been a blessing to the secondhand booktrade but with the predatory
on-line pricing of many new titles via Amazon and others it can hardly be seen
as helpful to the long-term prospects of any terrestial new bookseller, be they
chain or independent. - Clive Keeble. Museum
acquires 'Independence' manuscripts
Ireland's National Library has announced
its acquisition of a number of manuscripts following the recent Adams & Mealy's
'Independence' sale. They include a series of 14 letters from Moya Llewelyn Davies,
which feature personal reminiscences of Michael Collins and his contemporaries,
along with unflattering comments on Lady Lavery and Kitty Kiernan ... more Add
a comment Lesbian
sex book causes 'sleepless nights'
The father of two teenage boys wants
$20,000 (£10, 019) from his city for the damage sustained by his sons when they
found a book on lesbian sex on a public library bookshelf, KOCO-TV in Oklahoma
City reported ... more Add
a comment
23.04.07.
The web is dead; long live the web
Andrew Keen, a Silicon Valley-based
British entrepreneur and author has written The Cult of the Amateur: How Today’s
Internet Is Killing Our Culture (due out in June). In it he argues that the web
is an antienlightenment phenomenon, a destroyer of wisdom and culture and an infantile,
Rousseau-esque fantasy.
"It’s the cult of the child,"
he says. "The more you know, the less you know. It’s all about digital narcissism,
shameless self-promotion. I find it offensive" ... more Add
a comment Gathering
celebrates 'Town Like Alice' author
People from across the globe have
gathered in Alice Springs to celebrate the author who immortalised it in his 1950
novel A Town Like Alice. Forty people from North America, Europe and Australia
are attending the Nevil Shute Norway Foundation's conference in the town this
week ... more Add
a comment Koreans
shun books for makeup, cigarettes
While April 23 has been designated ‘World
Book Day’ by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), books and South Koreans have less and less to do with one another ...
more Add
a comment £5m
to keep a Scottish literary trove
Last year the seventh John Murray offered
the firm's entire collection of papers to the National Library of Scotland at
the knockdown price of £33m.
None of the money will
go directly to the family, but will instead go towards education projects and
making the archive available and accessible to the public. However, the last £5m
of the asking price still needs to be raised and this week crime writer Ian Rankin
will launch a fundraising campaign to keep the archive in the UK ... more Add
a comment
20.04.07.
Rare books, new worlds
You never know what secrets books may hold, which
is reason enough to attend the New York Antiquarian Book Fair. This year’s event,
with 200 international exhibitors, opens today at noon at the Seventh Regiment
Armory on Park Avenue at 67th Street and continues through Sunday ... more Add
a comment Are
these the best children’s books of the past 70 years?
A list of the best
children’s books of the past 70 years has divided the critics by snubbing some
of the best-known and most successful children’s writers of the era.
The
Top Ten, put together by an expert panel and published today, does not include
C. S. Lewis, Arthur Ransome or Walter De La Mare. Enid Blyton, J. K. Rowling and
Jacqueline Wilson are also notable by their absence ... more Add
a comment Dickens
World
On Wednesday the first members of the public were permitted inside
Dickens World, the £62m interactive indoor theme park featuring reproduction slums,
costumed prostitutes and a fake sewer boat ride attraction ... more Add
a comment The
kindness of Kurt Vonnegut
Vonnegut will rightly be remembered as a darkly
humorous social critic and the premier novelist of the counterculture. But the
personal impression I will always hold of him is of a rather daft and kind old
man whose vulnerability and honesty punctured through the pretensions of the world
around him ... more Add
a comment The
Regal Chowk book bazaar
Haroon Dada has been in the business for the past
53 years and recalls that the book bazaar at Regal Chowk dates back to the pre-partition
era. "The market used to be a vibrant place. It has shrunk over the years, however,
to 20 percent of its original size. No one bothers to read anymore. They don’t
have the time," he said. He laments that books have no future in Pakistan ...
more Add
a comment
19.04.07.
Tolkien tips Potter from Amazon top spot
JRR Tolkien has come back from
beyond the grave to seize the throne of Amazon's book charts from the hitherto
all-conquering boy sorceror ... more Add
a comment Clock
is ticking to save 15th century manuscript
Culture Minister, David Lammy,
has placed a temporary export bar on a beautiful 15th century illuminated manuscript
of the Hours of the Passion. Previously unavailable to scholars and mostly absent
in literature on manuscript illumination of the period, this will provide a last
chance to raise the money to keep the manuscript in the United Kingdom ... more Add
a comment Rare
text of Swathi Thirunal found
In a major archival discovery, a rare palmleaf
manuscript written by the 19th century Travancore Maharaja and music legend Swathi
Tirunal has been traced by researchers ... more Add
a comment Rare
Canadian books fetch top prices at auction
A treasure of rare books about
early Canada -- including some of the most important works from the age of New
France and British North America -- has sold at a U.S. auction for well over $1.5
million Canadian, with several works fetching prices twice as high as expected
... more Add
a comment
17.04.07.
New tales of Middle-Earth
Thirty years after JRR Tolkien's death, a posthumous
book by the Lord of the Rings writer is published for the first time today. The
Children of Hurin was "restored" from Tolkien's manuscripts by his youngest son
and literary executor, Christopher Tolkein, now 82 ... more Add
a comment Prize
to reward women in publishing
Thanks perhaps in part to the Orange prize,
the profile of women novelists in this country has never been higher. The Kim
Scott Walwyn prize, whose shortlist has been announced today, sets out to honour
some of those who have helped to get them there ... more Add
a comment Rare
Holmes manuscript to be sold
A rare manuscript of one of Sir Arthur Conan
Doyle's final Sherlock Holmes stories is expected to fetch £250,000 at auction.
The handwritten copy of The Adventure of the Three Gables goes under the hammer
at Sotheby's New York in June ... more Add
a comment Calder
Bookshop saved from closure
Poet and publisher Alessandro Gallenzi has
stepped in to ensure that the Calder Bookshop remains in The Cut and continues
to be a focus for literary talks and events ... more Add
a comment
16.04.07.
A tingle down the spine
Joseph Connolly was mocked when he set out to make
modern writers collectable. No one's laughing now. Here, he recalls the good times...
and great finds... from his 30-year adventure in the book trade ...
more Add
a comment Book
fair unites anarchists. In spirit, anyway
Anarchists have never hidden
their disagreements, and some of those competing ideas were proudly displayed
as the Anarchist Book Fair got under way on Saturday in Washington Square South
... more Add
a comment Internet
dealers have transformed market for used books
Local Goodwill Industries
officials in the USA were not surprised to hear that anti-social behavior by some
buyers had prompted new rules at this year's Friends of the Eugene Library Book
Sale ... more Add
a comment Photo
books 'better for toddlers than pictures'
Very young children learn faster
from picture books that contain colour photographs than from books with colour
drawings, according to research. The findings suggest that the beautifully illustrated
and iconic pictures in classic children's literature, beloved by parents and grandparents
alike, may appeal more to the parent than the 18-month-old child ... more Add
a comment
14.04.07.
Off his trolley?
Julian Montague's book The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern
North America: A Guide to Field Identification received its first award this week.
It has been named the oddest book title of the year by The Bookseller magazine
... more Add
a comment
Holkham manuscripts to help America celebrate its birthday
Historic documents
from Holkham Hall in Norfolk are to be loaned to the United States for the country's
400th anniversary celebrations. Four items of outstanding historic importance
will feature in a major exhibition being staged to mark the landing of America's
first English settlers in Jamestown, 1607 ... more Add
a comment Scientists
to smell library's books
Scientists are to sniff old books as part of a
new conservation project centred on one of the UK's most famous libraries. Chemists
will analyse gases which cause smells to gauge the state of decay of books in
Cambridge University's library ... more Add
a comment
12.04.07.
Kurt Vonnegut dies at 84
Kurt Vonnegut, the American novelist best known
for his science fiction classic, Slaughterhouse-Five, which begins with the bombing
of Dresden during the second world war and goes on to offer a blackly witty investigation
of fate and free will, died yesterday. According to his wife, the photographer
Jill Krementz, Vonnegut had sustained brain injuries from a fall at his home in
Manhattan some weeks earlier ... more Add
a comment Rare
Canadiana books to be sold at U.S. auction
A stunning collection of rare
books with some of the most important titles from early Canadian history is set
to be auctioned at a landmark sale in New York next week, highlighted by an 18th-century
atlas "masterpiece" -- expected to fetch up to $700,000 -- that was key to helping
Britain secure its Canadian possessions after the fall of New France ... more Add
a comment 'world's
smallest book'
Teeny Ted from Turnip Town measures 0.07 mm by 0.1 mm and
costs $20,000, but you'll need an electron microscope to read it ... more Add
a comment Dorset
town's slavery links 'revealed' by letter
Slavery in the 18th century Americas
and exploited child labour in 19th century Christchurch have been linked by local
history researchers following the discovery of a long-lost letter ... more Add
a comment
11.04.07.
Plea for books in the cells
Avid readers are being asked by Cambridgeshire
police to donate their old books for prisoners to read during their stay in the
cells ... more Add
a comment "Electronic
paper" edging toward reality
"Electronic paper" has long been hyped as
the future of newspapers and books, but products like e-books have been slow to
take off. That may soon change, say executives involved in the pioneering technology
... more Add
a comment And
that's renaissance magic ...
After lying almost untouched in the vaults
of an Italian university for 500 years, a book on the magic arts written by Leonardo
da Vinci's best friend and teacher has been translated into English for the first
time ... more Add
a comment
10.04.07.
Happy birthday Helvetica
Helvetica, 'official' typeface of the 20th century,
going strong at 50 ... more Add
a comment US
to abolish surface mail
The US Postal Service is taking the “ship” out
of shipping, and thousands of small online booksellers are bracing for trouble
... more Add
a comment Hemingway
and Dietrich's 30-year unrequited love
A set of 30 unpublished letters
and telegrams from the legendary American writer Ernest Hemingway to the German
singer-actress Marlene Dietrich, which have been made public for the first time,
reveal the depth of their passion for each other - although theirs was a relationship
in which they never went to bed together ... more Add
a comment Landscape
Gardening by an Eccentric Dandy
“Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei
...” by the brilliant landscape architect and garden designer Prince Hermann Pückler-Muskau
is to go under the hammer at the Ketterer Kunst auction of Rare Books to be held
in Hamburg, on May 21 & 22 ... more Add
a comment
06.04.07.
No News today ...
I can't aviod shop duties and the obligitory flea market
and fair visiting over the holiday weekend - but I am going to stay as far away
from the computer as possible. So no more news until I return to the keyboard
on Tuesday the 10th. Add a comment
05.04.07.
Chile to return Peru's stolen historical books
The Chilean government has
announced it will give back 'several thousand' books taken from Peru during the
War of the Pacific in 1879 ... more Add
a comment 'Crappest
town' seeks poetic champions
Luton, in its battle to fight back from the
ignominy of being named Britain's "crappest town" in 2004, has a new weapon in
its arsenal - poetry ... more Add
a comment Illustration
of 'The Little Prince' discovered
An original illustration for "The Little
Prince" drawn by French aviator-writer Antoine de Saint-Exupery was discovered
for the first time in Japan in a museum in Yamanashi Prefecture, officials said.
The precious drawing is only the sixth discovered of the estimated 47 illustrations
by Saint-Exupery (1900-1944) ... more Add
a comment A
home fit for the queen of crime
Earlier this week the National Trust gave
the public an unprecedented peak inside Agatha Christie's former home, Greenway
House. Amy Fleming provides a sneak preview ... more Add
a comment Rare
manuscript acquired by The Wordsworth Trust
The Wordsworth Trust has acquired
a rare manuscript by William Wordsworth showing how the celebrated Romantic poet
made continuous amendments to his work.
The
first edition copy of the poem The White Doe of Rylstone is covered in revisions
in the handwriting of the poet’s wife Mary Wordsworth ... more Add
a comment
03.04.07.
Bloomsbury pins hopes on Potter magic
Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury
is pinning its hopes on strong sales for the last instalment on the boy wizard's
story after 2006 profits slumped 74% ... more Add
a comment Sam
Fogg to exhibit Persian paintings and manuscripts
The exhibition themed,
"A Princely Pursuit: Persian Paintings and Illustrated Manuscripts, 1300-1650"
will soon be on display in London ... more Add
a comment Historic
library in ruins
The Mulajorh Bharat Chandra Library, a relic of the Raj
era, is lying in ruins and its treasure of rare old books is under the threat
of being subject to complete destruction ... more Add
a comment Murder
manor opens to public
A country home where some of the 20th century's most
baffling murders were planned opened its doors to the public yesterday. Only one
day's glimpse was allowed by the National Trust, which is spending two years restoring
Agatha Christie's grade two listed Greenway House, overlooking the river Dart
in Devon ... more Add
a comment
02.04.07.
Edible Book Festival
It's time to celebrate the art of edible books again,
with the week-long festival which began yesterday. I know, I know, it sounds like
an April Fools joke, but In fact it's a brilliant synthesis of our concerns about
literacy and obsessions with food ... more Add
a comment Librarian
Sentenced
A Palmerston North librarian has been sentenced to 11 months
in prison for the theft of six rare books from the Massey University library ...
more Add
a comment
A
fantasy search for Shakespeare's lost play
Scholars fantasise endlessly
about finding undiscovered works of literary giants. It's a perfect "what if"
premise for a thriller, and author Michael Gruber does a bang-up job incorporating
it into his breathlessly engaging novel, "The Book of Air and Shadows" ... more Add
a comment Bound
for beauty
Great literature and great art meet in one artist's books ...
more Add
a comment IOBA
Standard
The Spring issue of the Standard has just hit the virtual news-stands,
and as usual, is packed with interesting and informative articles ... more Add
a comment | 
