31.08.07.
The ethics of handling -- and manhandling -- a book
A book is
a physical thing. But it's also a collection of ideas, descriptions, characters,
flights of fancy, turns of phrase, plots and subplots. It opens us to another
world and another mind. That's why we treat books with a special reverence --
most of the time ... more Add
a comment Lost
Constable sketch found in judge’s collection
A 'lost' early sketch by
John Constable has been unearthed in a collection of valuable works owned by a
Warrington judge. The rare finds include work and autographs by prominent 18th
and 19th century artists ... more Add
a comment Taking
the romantic view of Dante
Paradise, purgatory, and hell (frozen over)
make a dramatic appearance in a major new exhibition, ‘Dante Rediscovered: From
Blake To Rodin’, at the Wordsworth Museum in Grasmere. Remarkable works of art,
including many of William Blake’s illustrations to Dante’s The Divine Comedy,
which describes the poet’s journey through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven, are on
show alongside manuscripts and rare books ... more Add
a comment The
most sought after books
BookFinder. com just released the 2007 edition
of the BookFinder.com Report, which lists the most sought after out of print titles
in America ... more Add
a comment
30.08.07.
Campbell's diaries is book most often left in hotel rooms
Alastair
Campbell's book on his time in government is selling well but his first literary
accolade is an unwelcome one. The Blair Years has topped a list of the books most
often left behind in hotel rooms ... more Add
a comment Holy
plastic slab! Untouchable comic books
Remember when comic books were considered
too juvenile to be read? Now, it appears they have become too valuable to be touched
... more Add
a comment
Interesingly,
Comic
Book Postal Auctions offered slabbed and unslabbed copies of the same comic
in similar condition, at their June auction. Surprisingly, the 'au natural' copy
of X-Men #94 made £550, and the slabbed copy £450. - TBG. First
Muslim image database launched
The new website offers stunning images
from celebrated photographers like Werner Forman and manuscripts from Turkey's
Soleymaniye Library. Many of the images mark critical moments in history, such
as the first surgeries carried out in the Middle East, centuries before similar
treatments were available in Europe ... more Add
a comment Psst.
Want a copy of Alms for Jihad? That’ll be $538
By suing publisher Cambridge
University Press into submission, Khalid bin Mafouz has turned an obscure scholarly
book on the financial workings of terrorism into a prized, rare book. So US libraries
are now moving to protect it ... more Add
a comment
29.08.07.
Brattle Book Shop
His customers sniff for books like tapirs out
for ants. You could fire a mortar 3 feet away from a guy and he'd remain glued
to the same frontispiece. You see them in the stacks, solitary figures far from
Planet Earth, or grazing through the book carts Gloss puts out all year round
in the adjacent parking lot ... more Add
a comment Rare
maps at Chicago Botanic Garden
An exhibition featuring maps revealing
the global travels of plant explorers will be on display in the Lenhardt Library
located in the Regenstein Center at the Chicago Botanic Garden from Friday, November
2 through Sunday, February 10, 2008. The Chicago Botanic Garden is one of 25 Chicago
area cultural institutions participating in the first citywide Festival of Maps
... more Add
a comment The
17th century baldness cure: Chicken dung
The bizarre remedy, published
in The Path-Way to Health in 1654, the closest equivalent to today's Men's Health
magazine, advises washing the head in chicken dung mixed with a strong alkaline
solution ... more Add
a comment Book
on male penguins tops 'challenged' library list
An award-winning children's
based on a true story about two male penguins who raised a baby penguin topped
the list of works attracting complaints from parents, library patrons and others,
the American Library Association said Tuesday ... more Add
a comment
28.08.07.
Madeleine B. Stern, bookseller and sleuth, dies at 95
Madeleine
B. Stern, a prominent rare-book dealer, biographer and literary sleuth who helped
bring to print Louisa May Alcott’s long-lost Gothic tales of murder, sexual subjugation,
opium dens and other things simply too dreadful to mention, died on Saturday at
her home in Manhattan ... more Add
a comment Possessed
books for the haunted house
If you ever fancied living in a haunted house
or at least making visitors a bit uneasy here’s a good place to start, possessed
books ... more Add
a comment Booktowns
Kevin Dougherty takes a look at booktowns, starting with Bredevoort, a quintessential
Dutch village ... more Add
a comment New
book on the study of medieval manuscripts
Timothy Graham, the director
of the Institute for Medieval Studies at UNM, and his collaborator Raymond Clemens,
associate professor of History at Illinois State University, have literally written
the book on medieval manuscript studies. Their volume, "Introduction to Manuscript
Studies," will be released during the fall by Cornell University Press ... more Add
a comment
24.08.07.
Obituary: Siobhan Dowd
Human suffering frightens many people.
Others, it ennobles and drives to action. The writer and human rights campaigner,
Siobhan Dowd, who has died of cancer aged 47, was firmly in the latter category.
A free spirit, with a zest for life, she was passionately committed to countering
oppression and discrimination. She confronted the brutalities of the human condition
head-on, with a rare blend of practical engagement and literary flair ... more Add
a comment Obituary:
Grace Paley
Grace Paley, the American short-story writer and a prominent
activist during the Vietnam period, has died of breast cancer aged 84. Her "combative
pacifism", as she called it, took her to Hanoi in 1969, to Chile during the precarious
rule of Salvador Allende, and to Nicaragua in 1985. ... more Add
a comment Electronic
books with musty book smell launched
In an attempt to persuade college
students to try e-textbooks, web site CafeScribe.com on Wednesday said it was
launching "the world's first smelly e-book." CafeScribe Chief Executive Bryce
Johnson said that from September the company will send every e-textbook purchaser
a scratch and sniff sticker with a musty "old book" smell ... more Add
a comment
22.08.07.
One in four in USA read no books last year
Here it sits on your
night stand, that book you've meant to read for who knows how long but haven't
yet cracked open. Tonight, as you feel its stare from beneath that teetering pile
of magazines, know one thing - you are not alone ... more Add
a comment Magnum
uncorks champagne moments
After six decades, the legendary photojournalism
co-operative Magnum has reinvented itself. As magazine markets decline and fine
art photography booms, its members now aim as much for art gallery walls as the
printed page ... more Add
a comment Rowling's
'crime novel' is a red herring
Speculation that the Edinburgh book festival
may have resolved one of the burning questions of modern publishing - what JK
Rowling will write next - have been dashed this afternoon, when the Scottish crime
writer Ian Rankin diagnosed a case of festival fever ... more Add
a comment
21.08.07.
James Bond author Gardner dead
John Gardner, the British author
who wrote more novels about James Bond than Ian Fleming did, has died at the age
of 80 ... more Add
a comment History
revealed: quest for libraries' hidden treasures
An anthology of poetry
more than 1,000 years old, a Georgian roll call of abandoned babies, and the tragic
fate of a cow in wartime Dorset are among the gems short-listed in a competition
organised by the British Library to reveal treasures hidden away in Britain's
regional public libraries ... more Add
a comment Why
Kerouac matters
Above all, “On the Road” matters for its music: its plaintive,
restless hum. In it, Kerouac perfected a melancholy optimism and a yearning for
solace a thousand times richer and subtler than the mournful sap that drips down
from so many contemporary American films and novels ... more Add
a comment A
mega-lister exposed
If you look for books online with any regularity you
know who they are. Their names show up on almost every search you do. Their prices,
for the most part, are completely out of whack with the other listings for the
book. Their descriptions are more often suited for the selling of commodities
than books. Oh, and they don't own the books they are selling ... more Add
a comment
20.08.07.
Made in China: JK targets Potter fake
It is the book the world
never thought it would see: an eighth Harry Potter novel, charting the latest
adventures of the boy wizard and his friends. But sadly for fans of the series,
the book has absolutely nothing to do with JK Rowling and everything to do with
a gang of enterprising Chinese conmen ... more Add
a comment Supreme
Leader donates 900 historic manuscripts
Tehran -- A total of 900 rare
historic manuscripts have been donated by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed
Ali Khamenei to the Astan-e Qods Razavi Library in the holy city of Mashhad, library
director Ali-Mohammad Baradarn Rafiei said on Wednesday ... more Add
a comment The
dead don't take their books
After families dispose of their dead, they
usually look for scrap dealers. Among the material remains of the deceased, sometimes,
go a wealth of knowledge concealed between covers. Like unfortunate orphans, the
books of the late end up on the streets ... more Add
a comment Extreme
coffee-table tomes hit shelves
Just when it seemed art books couldn't
get any bigger or more expensive, coffee-table books priced at $1,000 and up are
on the rise ... more Add
a comment
17.08.07.
17th-century 'Cosmo' shows women agonised on sex and diet like now
Want to rid yourself of unsightly fatty lumps and bumps? Why not slap on some
goose grease and turpentine? Worried about large or droopy breasts? Just bind
them up in bandages for a few nights before washing them in white wine and rose
water. These are some of the "helpful" suggestions in a 300-year-old book which
appears to be the 17th-century version of Cosmopolitan magazine ... more Add
a comment What's
a trip without a postcard?
Germany was the leader in postcard production
a century ago. Today, collectors and dealers are as busy as ever ... more Add
a comment Mozart
work brings dischord to Germany and Poland
When Mozart wrote his 27th
piano concerto in his usual neat hand months before he died, he could never have
imagined the manuscript's future journey. The document survived bombs and escaped
looters before eventually finding itself at the heart of a 21st century diplomatic
dispute ... more Add
a comment Cards
from a man of letters: a new view of D.H. Lawrence
Two notebooks filled
with unpublished early drafts of poetry by D. H. Lawrence, along with previously
unseen postcards that he sent to his favourite nephew, are part of a collection
that has been brought into the public domain ... more Add
a comment Rare
comics found at garage sale
When a McKinney couple picked up a coloring
book for their daughter at a garage sale, they were surprised to see what looked
like drawings for a comic book tucked inside. But that was just the start of the
surprises ... more Add
a comment
16.08.07.
Lawsuit against sultan rejected
A breach of contract case over
a $10 million deal to sell a tiny, rare 400-year-old manuscript copy of the Koran
to the Sultan of Brunei could threaten the sultan's appearance at the Asia-Pacific
Economic Co-operation forum ... more Add
a comment Patron
saint of housewives preserved in Nottingham
A unique medieval manuscript
detailing the life of the patron saint of housewives, maids and waiters is to
be preserved and shared with the British public ... more Add
a comment Stephen
King mistaken for vandal
One of the world's most famous authors, Stephen
King, was mistaken for a vandal in an Alice Springs bookstore on Tuesday ... more Add
a comment
15.08.07.
Buck birthplace fights for manuscript
Book lovers marveled in
June when a Philadelphia auction house stumbled upon the long-lost manuscript
of the 1931 Pearl S. Buck classic "The Good Earth." But in the weeks since, joy
over the discovery has been tempered by rival claims for the Pulitzer Prize-winning
copy. No fewer than three parties — Bucks' heirs and two foundations with links
to her — have asserted rights to it, making a court fight likely ... more Add
a comment HarperCollins
offers digital book content for iPhone
Publisher HarperCollins said on
Wednesday it would make samples from 14 new book titles available for Apple Inc's
Web-browsing iPhone in a new effort to extend publishing into digital formats
... more Add
a comment Listening
to books is not cheating
I hesitate to admit this, but if I didn't listen
to books, I wouldn't read at all ... more Add
a comment Sylvia
Plath's unseen art, discovered in the attic
Paintings and drawings by
Sylvia Plath, many of which have never been seen before, are to be published in
October to mark the 75th anniversary of the birth of the American poet and novelist
... more Add
a comment
14.08.07.
Timbuktu hopes ancient texts spark a revival
Ismaël Diadié Haïdara
held a treasure in his slender fingers that has somehow endured through 11 generations
— a square of battered leather enclosing a history of the two branches of his
family, one side reaching back to the Visigoths in Spain and the other to the
ancient origins of the Songhai emperors who ruled this city at its zenith. “This
is our family’s story,” he said, carefully leafing through the unbound pages.
“It was written in 1519” ... more Add
a comment Unauthorised
French translator of Potter book will not be charged
The French teen who
was arrested last week over the unauthorized translation of J. K. Rowling's final
Harry Potter book and placing it online, will not be prosecuted. The 16-year-old
boy, whose name was not released because of his age, could have faced charges
of violation of intellectual property rights ... more Add
a comment Woman
indicted in theft of rare $60,000 atlas
A New Jersey woman, who stole
a rare $60,000 atlas from the Rockland County Historical Society, pled guilty
to second-degree grand larceny on Monday ... more Add
a comment Our
reverence for books is ludicrous
Do you ever start talking to an incredibly
boring person at a party and say to yourself, after five minutes: "Well, he's
incredibly boring, but I'll talk to him for another 30 hours. He's bound to get
better." Or, when you've finished with a newspaper you've enjoyed, do you ever
put it on a shelf on prominent display so that you can admire it from a distance
and never read it again? No? Well, why do so many people do the same with books?
... more Add
a comment
13.08.07.
Abebooks deceptive bookseller rating system goes live
Leave it
to Abebooks to come up with yet another way to alienate the core group of booksellers
that their company was built on ... more Add
a comment The
end of a legend
A U.S. millionaire breaks up the famed Vancouver Collection
of pristine 1940s comic books ... more Add
a comment Author
Taslima faces charges of offending Islam
The controversial Bangladeshi
author Taslima Nasreen will face criminal charges for her "anti-Islamic" views,
which have provoked attacks against her by Muslim activists, police said on Monday.
Under the Indian penal code, promoting "disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred
or ill-will" between groups on the basis of religion is punishable by up to three
years in jail ... more Add
a comment Jungle
Book set for 'live' remake
A new $50m (£24.8m) film version of Rudyard
Kipling's The Jungle Book is set to be made using wildlife footage. The project,
a joint venture between BBC Films and Pathe, will mix action shot in India with
film of trained animals to make them appear to talk ... more Add
a comment
04.08.07.
No news today ...
After weeks of little but Potter mania in the
press there is now little or nothing of interest to report, as everyone disappears
in search of some sun. I'm joining the exodus for a week with my extended family,
so nothing more from me until August 13th.
02.08.07.
Classical big names for auction
A cellist's collection of autographs
of some of the greatest names in 20th Century classical music has gone for auction.
Ambrose Gauntlett persuaded the likes of Elgar, Prokofiev, Stravinksy and Toscanini
to sign his book ... more Add
a comment Bookshop
exposed
A recovering cancer victim who launched a "tasteful nude" calendar
has blasted a Newbury book shop for failing to hand over charity cash. Thirty-seven
year-old Luci Osmond said that for around six months she has repeatedly begged
Borders at Newbury Retail Park to pay up or hand back the calendars ... more Add
a comment Rare
Faulkner manuscript added to collection
The Center for Faulkner Studies
at Southeast Missouri State University has acquired a rare gift — an original
handwritten William Faulkner manuscript ... more Add
a comment Rare
Frame manuscript sells for $13000
A rare Janet Frame manuscript is being
auctioned in Wellington NZ, despite pleas from her family for it to be kept as
a research document ... more Add
a comment
01.08.07.
JT LeRoy author ordered to pay triple-sized costs
Author Laura
Albert must pay nearly $350,000 (£173,097) in legal fees for duping a film company
with a novel supposedly based on the life of a male prostitute ... more Add
a comment Price
for acquiring Gandhi manuscript: £18,500
The Indian government paid 18,500
pounds to acquire a draft of the article written by Mahatma Gandhi days before
his assassination, Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) president Karan
Singh said here Tuesday while handing over the letter to Navajivan Trust ... more Add
a comment Medieval
East Anglian manuscripts saved for the nation
A pair of unique 15th century
East Anglian illuminated manuscripts have been saved for the nation, revealing
details of medieval hunting and hawking techniques.
The
Kerdeston Hawking Book, along with leaves from the Kerdeston Hunting Book, were
declared national treasures and received in place of inheritance tax by the British
Library through the government’s Acceptance in Lieu scheme ... more Add
a comment JK
books flogged on eBay
Harry Potter competition winners are selling their
signed first editions of the new book on eBay for up to £3,000 ... more Add
a comment | 
