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28.09.09.
No news today ...
Distant mother hospitalised again so out of office until the end
of the week. Add a comment
25.09.09.
What
does your bookcase say about you?
It has held books
upright in millions of rooms around the world for 30 years. As Ikea's
Billy bookcase enters its fourth decade, why do we display our reading
material rather than just store it away? ... more
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Indies predict
'golden age' for bookselling
Two new London
independent bookshops opening this autumn are predicting a "golden
age" for indies. According to the Booksellers Association (BA),
the new shops join more than 60 new indies to open in the past 15
months. BA chief executive Tim Godfray, just back from the Independent
Booksellers Forum, said he had been "struck by the positivity" of
the 100 indies at the meeting ... more
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Google Books
deal postponed after avalanche of criticism
The judge overseeing
Google's controversial agreement with American publishers to digitise
millions of books has delayed a hearing into the $125m deal - effectively
shutting down the settlement and sending it back to the drawing
board ... more
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National
Archives budget cuts condemned
Public access
to historical records is being put at risk by cuts at the National
Archives, a prominent historian said today. The broadcaster Saul
David, who fronts shows such as the BBC's Timewatch, said he feared
a reduction in opening from six to five days a week, which was announced
by the records centre in south-west London, would be the start of
a series of cuts to the public service it provided ... more
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24.09.09.
Banned
Books Week adopts poem as manifesto
US author Ellen
Hopkins, whose young adult fiction tackles controversial topics,
writes poem addressing censorship to coincide with Banned Books
Week ... more
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Picasso horse
doodle expected to fetch £20,000
A doodle of a horse
in felt-tip pen that must have taken no more than seconds to produce
is expected to sell for more than £20,000 at auction. The sketch by
Pablo Picasso appears on a ripped-out page of a book of photographs
of the great Spanish artist. ... more
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Ebay sellers
fear postal strike will hit their reputations
Customers of
eBay Ebay sellers are worried they may suffer negative feedback
from customers as buyers with goods caught up in the postal strike
launch pre-emptive "dispute" claims in a bid to avoid being out
of pocket. Many users of the online auction house have been left
empty-handed as the Royal Mail union snarl-up over job cuts and
pay causes huge disruption at sorting offices across the country
... more
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Frida Kahlo
'fakes' investigated
A probe has been
launched into claims that artworks featured in books about Mexican
artist Frida Kahlo are fakes. Mexican prosecutors are responding to
a complaint by the artist's trust that 1,000 items in two books are
forgeries ... more
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Bed bugs
hitch ride on books
The Denver Public
Library had to quarantine and fumigate four areas at the main branch
in just the past three weeks because of bed bugs. The tiny insect
is being spread by a customer trying to preserve rare books, but
ironically it's because of his actions that the books now have to
be destroyed ... more
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22.09.09.
Artist's
heirs seek the rights to Marvel characters
Some of the most
cherished names in comic book history, from Spider-Man and the Incredible
Hulk to the X-Men and Fantastic Four, have found themselves locked
in a new battle over who owns their copyright ... more
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Burns song
'sold' for £10,000
A retired professor
has become a "patron" for the original manuscript of Auld Lang Syne
after paying £10,000. However, the buyer will not be able to take
home the work, written by Robert Burns in 1788. Instead, Professor
David Purdie will be a patron for his lifetime of the manuscript,
which will be kept in the new Robert Burns Birthplace Museum in
Ayrshire under the auspices of the National Trust for Scotland ...
more
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Used bookshop
now a pawn shop
The city of Oakland
has implemented a new tax on sellers of used goods that, in effect,
now places the used bookshop in the same realm as the pawn shop
... more
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18.09.09.
Google
signs deal to print 2m Espresso books
Two million out-of-copyright
books that have been scanned by Google could come back into limited
printed form after the search giant signed a deal with On Demand
Books, the company that makes the Espresso Book Machine - a custom
book printer able to produce a bound one-off 300-page paperback,
with a full-colour cover, in about five minutes ... more
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100 prized
Bibles up for auction
The sale of more
than 100 Bibles in Meadows's collection is "a very big deal," says
Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections
division at the Library of Congress ... more
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Rare book
storage scheme under way
Work is about
to start on building a £15m storage facility for a priceless collection
of 8,000,000 Bodleian Library books in Swindon ... more
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17.09.09.
JRR
Tolkien trained as British spy
The novelist
JRR Tolkien secretly trained as a Government spy in the run up to
the Second World War, new documents have disclosed ... more
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Preziosi
sketch book fetches almost £380,000
A sketch book
by Maltese artist Count Amadeo Preziosi yesterday fetched almost
£380,000 at an auction in central London smashing a previous estimate
by £60,000 ... more
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A gallery
of uber-modern bookcases
A parade of modern
bookcases in this photogallery looks fantastic. They gleam, they
interlock, they're clean inspired and even sometimes silly. But
I'm not entirely sure they'll be all that good at holding books
... more
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16.09.09.
Day
of the Dead
Calaveras (Spanish
for skulls) are produced in Mexico every year for the Day of the
Dead (November 1 and 2). Works made by celebrated Mexican printmakers
Manuel Manilla (1830-1895) and JG Posada (1852-1913) have been collected
into a book published by Redstone Press to coincide with the opening
of two major exhibitions of Mexican art at the British Museum ...
more
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15.09.09.
The
book that influenced all others
Samuel Johnson,
born 300 years ago this week, wrote one of the most important books
in the English language. So what made his dictionary so special?
... more
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Not even
a civil war could stop the old bookbinder
They call him
"Sheikh Tijlid" – Sheikh Binder – because he is the oldest and the
most honoured bookbinder in Beirut. There are only five left in
Lebanon, repairing old newspapers, handwritten 17th-century Korans,
ministry archives, cutting and pasting and then modelling fine leather
covers and impressing on that wonderful soft leather the title of
each volume in gold leaf ... more
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The Man Who
Loved Books Too Much
Antiquarian Ken
Sanders is a "bibliodick" on the trail of rare book thief John Gilkey
in the riveting nonfiction book, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much:
The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary
Obsession by Allison Hoover Bartlett ... more
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10.09.09.
Rare
medieval Hebrew prayer book to go on display
A rare Hebrew
manuscript written in 14th century Germany is going on display for
the first time, just before the Jewish New Year, Israel Museum officials
said Wednesday ... more
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Ebooks? I’d
prefer a leather tome
Devices like
the Sony Reader are the future, but I'd still rather turn proper
pages ... more
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Papermania
Plus fills XL Center
Collectors of
ephemera — or papermaniacs as they are fondly known — are especially
energized by shows such as Papermania Plus, which is possibly the
best-known ephemera and collectibles event on the East Coast. Conceived
by the late Paul Gipstein and managed by his wife, Arlene Shea,
and son, Gary, the show began in 1977 as a yearly marketplace and
quickly evolved into its twice-a-year format. Shea reported that
the most recent event, conducted August 22 and 23 at the XL Center,
saw several new dealers, bringing the total to 135 exhibitors ...
more
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Wigtown –
a town saved by books
Martha Allison
previews one of Scotland’s top literary events of the year ... more
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09.09.09.
The
Google digital library row explained
As a New York
judge prepares to rule on its legitimacy, Philip Jones explains
why the search engine's digitisation of millions of books has huge
implications for the books world ... more
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Treasure
Trove
Jack Lunzer’s
Valmadonna Trust Library is among the greatest collections of Hebraica
ever assembled. How is it that it can’t find a permanent home? ...
more
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08.09.09.
Yale
criticized for nixing Muslim cartoons in book
Yale University
has removed cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad from an upcoming book
about how they caused outrage across the Muslim world, drawing criticism
from prominent alumni and a national group of university professors.
Yale cited fears of violence ... more
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Handmade
book contains life's greatest secrets
In keeping with
the DIY ethos of my new book, which is about trying to save the
world etc by making my own clothes, I have been hand-stitching and
hand-binding copies for sale to anyone who wants one ... more
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Roald Dahl's
garden revealed
Roald Dahl's
garden, open on Sunday September 13, is as wildly original as the
man himself ... more
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The most
expensive piece of Beatles memorabilia ever
To coincide with
the worldwide release of the digitally re-mastered back catalogue
of every Beatles album on 09/09/09, the Saint Giles Street Gallery
in association with the British Beatles Fan Club proudly presents
the Eleven Million Dollar Picture Show, a collection of rarely seen
original and vintage printed ephemera and photography reflecting
the worlds most successful, iconic and popular band of all time
... more
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07.09.09.
Book
woman of Madison Avenue
Bibi Mohammed,
of Imperial Fine Books, on how she got into the world of rare books
and fine bindings ... more
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Philip Pullman
book denies Jesus was son of God
Philip Pullman,
the children's author, is set to cause controversy with a new book
- called The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ - denying that
Jesus was the son of God ... more
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Mary's last
letter – six hours before death
The last letter
written by Mary Queen of Scots is to go on display for the first
time in 30 years. The 422-year-old manuscript – written six hours
before her execution – will be unveiled at the National Library
of Scotland later this month ... more
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In a Bloomsbury
Square: TS Eliot the Publisher
TS Eliot. A new
exhibition at the British Library uses original manuscripts, correspondence,
art works and sound recordings drawn from the library's own collections,
as well as previously unseen material from the Faber archive and
the Eliot estate, to explore the ways in which Eliot nurtured and
developed some of the most significant writers of the 20th century
... more
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03.09.09.
Pictured:
Hitler playing chess with Lenin
A picture of
a young Adolf Hitler apparently playing chess against Vladimir Lenin
100 years ago has come to light ... more
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Katie Price's
books 'are most often dumped'
Katie Price,
the model also known as Jordan, has topped one of this year’s less
sought after reading lists with her works being most frequently
left behind in hotel rooms, according to research ... more
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Researcher
uncovers secrets of Kells 'angels'
The Book of Kells
and similarly illustrated manuscripts of seventh- and eighth-century
England and Ireland are known for their entrancingly intricate artwork
-- geometric designs so precise that in some places they contain
lines less than half a millimeter apart and nearly perfectly reproduced
in repeating patterns -- leading a later scholar to call them "works
not of men, but of angels" ... more
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Keeping Google
out of libraries
The proposed
settlement between Google and US publishers must be resisted, argues
Bill Thompson ... more
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WWII prisoners'
publishing feat
They were behind
barbed wire in cramped wooden huts hundreds of miles from home during
World War II. But some Welsh prisoners of war overcame adversity
with a remarkable series of morale-boosting magazines about their
homeland called Cymro (Welshman) ... more
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01.09.09.
Edinburgh
book festival defies economic gloom
The Edinburgh
international book festival has revealed further evidence about
the strength of the arts during the recession after enjoying record
ticket sales this year. The event, the world's largest literature
festival, sold nearly 80% of all its tickets for more than 750 events
this year, mirroring a record level of 1.85m ticket sales announced
by the Edinburgh festival fringe yesterday ... more
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Holy investment
opportunity, Batman
The comic book
market is thriving as investors search for alternate ways to turn
a profit. Nice returns are coming in on rare finds that are certified,
graded and encapsulated ... more
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Outside of
a Dog
Rare-book dealer
and academic Rick Gekoski's "bibliomemoir" is named after the Groucho
Marx assertion that, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, its too dark to read." It's a suitably screwball
title for a book that makes a heady mix of great literary invention
and populist product ... more
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Eighty exhibitors
for art book fair
From September
25 to 27 The London Art Book Fair will be launched at the newly
expanded Whitechapel Art Gallery in Whitechapel High Street London
E1 ... more
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Thieves dump
Koran manuscripts
Thieves who stole
"priceless" religious manuscripts from the home of an academic in
Nuneaton dumped them in a bin around the corner and made off with
a mobile phone ... more
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Rude Britannia:
Erotic secrets of the British Museum
The British Museum
and British Library have some of the biggest collections of smut
in the world including S&M magazines ... more
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