31.12.04
Artful books. Artists' books are an odd category of creation -- often
collaborative, small, and generally more intimate than paintings, photos or other
art forms. Sometimes published in editions of a few dozen or less, they are rare
by design, exclusive in concept, and pricey...more
Add a comment. 30.12.04
Jersey's back pages. Joseph Felcone owns the world's largest inventory
of out-of-print and rare books pertaining to New Jersey. Books printed in colonial
New Jersey; obscure 19th-century pamphlets; and 20th century local histories,
genealogies and reference books are his stock in trade. Felcone has nearly 10,000
New Jersey books, but quality, not quantity, is the measuring stick in the world
of rare books...more Add
a comment. 30.12.04
Ace oddities. Martin Parr's house, in a leafy London suburb, is a Georgian
pile with rooms to spare, but he is rapidly running out of space. It is not just
his various collections of ephemera that is taking up too much space - the array
of Saddam Hussein watches, the rows of Lenin figures, the ever-growing hoard of
tin trays, or the cupboards full of miners' strike memorabilia. No, the main problem
is the spread of his book collection, which now takes up whole rooms...more
Add a comment. 29.12.04
Susan Sontag dead at age 71. New York - As she lay ill last summer following
a bone marrow transplant, Susan Sontag would listen to music, keep up on current
events and indulge a passion seemingly too light for one of the world's leading
intellectuals: Hollywood musicals of the 1930s, '40s and '50s...more
Add a comment. 29.12.04
Arabic literature finds an audience in Europe. Arab authors were the
guests of honor at the world's biggest book fair, in Frankfurt this fall...more
Add a comment. 29.12.04
Rome discovers a new breed of tourist. The first "official Angels and
Demons tour", organised by a group of 30-something Romans specialising in the
"darker side of Rome", will tomorrow show visitors the Roman sites used by the
author of The Da Vinci Code...more
Add a comment. 29.12.04
Clinton Library regales 100,000th visitor. Little Rock - The Clinton
Foundation welcomed the 100,000th visitor to the Clinton Presidential Center on
Monday, just six weeks after the center opened...more
Add a comment. 23.12.04
Seasonal Greetings. However you choose to celebrate this weekend, enjoy
the holidays. Hoping to sell a few books before the end of play tomorrow afternoon
and then a whole four days off!
So that's it from TheBookGiude until 29.12.04. Add
a comment. 23.12.04
'Tome raider' jailed for four years. Softly spoken, with wisps of white
hair framing his bespectacled face, Peter Bellwood looked every inch the donnish
enthusiast as he requested rare and valuable maps from the library’s collection
of antiquities.
However, hidden up the sleeve of his
loose-fitting knitted jumped was a sharp craft knife. No sooner had he established
his credentials of respectability - often by handing in a £50 note which he claimed
to have found on the reading room floor - than he set to work gently razoring
priceless plates from their leather bindings...more
Add a comment. 23.12.04
Mutiny on the Bounty book set for auction. An early account of the mutiny
onboard HMS Bounty is expected to raise over £5,000 at an auction, it emerged
today. The book was written by Captain Bligh two years prior to his full account
of the voyage and comes from a private collector in Scotland...more
Add a comment. 23.12.04
Harry Potter back on top of bestseller chart. The sixth Harry Potter
book has topped the Amazon bestseller chart less than 24 hours after its release
date was announced. Fans of the series by JK Rowling have flooded the internet
bookseller with orders for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince since it was
announced at noon yesterday that it would be released on July 16...more
Add a comment. 22.12.04
UK writer of Sikh play faces death threats. The young British writer
of a play whose scenes of murder and sexual abuse in a Sikh temple provoked violent
protests is lying low after reportedly receiving death threats. Friends of Gurpreet
Kaur Bhatti, herself a Sikh, said the playwright was "in shock" and had been surprised
by the reaction sparked by her play Bezhti, which means dishonour...more
Add a comment. 22.12.04
Iraq's national library struggles to rise from the ashes. From the outside
it is an unpromising sight. The brickwork of the three-storey building is scarred
with black scorch marks from last year's looting, and the cold concrete wall and
floors are still bare where the furniture and fittings were stripped away. Only
the sign above the entrance was spared, a blue-tiled mosaic announcing to the
few who still visit: The House of Books and Documents...more
Add a comment. 21.12.04
Suicide book thief stole from Uppsala. The 48 year old man who blew himself
up in an apparent suicide attempt two weeks ago stole at least thirteen rare books
from Uppsala University's Carolina Rediviva library - adding to those he pilfered
from Stockholm's Royal Library ...more
Add a comment. 20.12.04
Google's digital books plan sparks anxiety at libraries. The Internet
company that famously promised to "do no evil" is on a new mission to digitize
the collections of some of the nation's leading research institutions and establish
a massive online reading room.
But Google Inc.'s ambitious
effort could herald the beginning of the commercialization of libraries, which
have long been trusted as an independent resource for books and knowledge without
the obvious trappings of marketing or goals of profit...more
Add a comment. 20.12.04
What you can expect from 'virtual library'. A few months from now, perhaps
by mid-2005, Google will be adding thousands of library books from university
collections to its searchable database. But what will the new feature, just announced
by the world's leading search engine, mean for the average Web surfer? ...more
Add a comment. 20.12.04 Poet
should get medal for snubbing a lost slave-trading empire. Benjamin Zephaniah
was pretty miffed to be offered an OBE, having previously made it as clear as
he could that he didn't care for one. "I'm a militant vegan," he said. "If I tell
you that I'm a vegan, don't give me a steak."
It was
the E word that bothered him. You don't need to be black to object to empires
and the residue of Britain's imperial history, but it helps...more
Add a comment. 19.12.04
Ex-worker admits to stealing rare books from Kenyon library. A former
Kenyon College library supervisor has admitted stealing more than $50,000 in rare
books from the school and selling them, including a 476-year-old astronomy text.
He got the highest take from a copy of Ptolemy's "Almagest," which he sold on
eBay for $4,750. It would cost $7,000 to replace the 16th-century book...more
Add a comment. 18.12.04
Kurt Cobain letter fetches nearly £10,000. The 1991 letter written by
troubled Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain to wife Courtney Love, describing his hallucinations
after taking LSD. Cobain wrote the letter, which fetched nearly £10,000, three
years before committing suicide at the age of 27...more
Add a comment. 18.12.04
Updike selling library. Updike, an honored writer who has won two Pulitzer
Prizes for entries in his "Rabbit" series, said: "I'm at an age (72) when you
think about lightening your load, rather than dumping it on your heirs," he told
the Boston Globe. So Updike said he was getting rid of the books that filled his
barn and cellar where "they were just collecting dust and mouse droppings"...more
Add a comment. 18.12.04
Rare books worth $100,000 stolen from Transylvania University. Lexington
police say the two men made an appointment to visit the special collections room
in the library. After they signed in investigators say the men restrained the
clerk and took three rare books, worth upwards of $100,000...more
Add a comment. 18.12.04
Book thief's family will still be jailed. A Copenhagen appeals court
on Friday upheld a three-year prison sentence for a Danish woman found guilty
of receiving and selling rare books stolen from Denmark's Royal Library, but released
one of her accomplices who claimed he did not know the books were stolen...more
Add a comment. 17.12.04
From the Dawn of Printing. Early in last month's sale at Kestenbaum &
Company, a New York auction house specializing in rare Hebrew books, when a single
leaf of Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch came on the block, fevered bidding
erupted. This first printed edition of the 11th-century French rabbi's pre-eminent
biblical commentary was produced in the small southern Italian town of Reggio
di Calabria in 1475, making it the earliest-dated Hebrew-printed book. The fragment
far surpassed its $10,000 to $15,000 estimate, ultimately selling to a telephone
bidder for $82,600...more
Add a comment. 17.12.04
Equator Books: New Store, Old and Rare Books. Since it’s been open, the
Santa Monica store has attracted a loyal group of customers, who show up not just
for the books and art, but for the parties. About once a month, they throw an
in-store party, which has created a feeling of community that envelops the store...more
Add a comment. 17.12.04
Dylan love letter sold for £7,200. A love letter written by Dylan Thomas
to his fiancée shortly before their wedding has been auctioned for £7,200...more
Add a comment. 17.12.04
$545,100: `Scarlet Letter' manuscript brings record auction price. New
York - The oldest known copy of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter" sold
at auction Thursday for $545,100, a world record price for an American 19th-century
literary work, Christie's said...more
Add a comment. 16.12.04
Comfort to accompany display of old books. Beijing - Luwan District Library
is planning to relocate more than 7,000 Chinese books, some dating back to the
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), from storage to a newly renovated Spanish-styled villa
on Shaanxi Road S. for public use...more
Add a comment. 16.12.04
Dire Shortage of Homeland Security Reading List Analysts. After winning
a tough legal battle for access to the library records of suspected terrorists,
the Department of Homeland Security has been unable to recruit a sufficient number
of agents qualified to analyze them.
"The people who
apply for jobs here are not generally familiar with the names of radical political
theorists let alone the significance of their various works," said outgoing Homeland
Security Secretary Tom Ridge. On a recent test, for example, 100% of applicants
picked Alan Greenspan as the author of Das Kapital...more
Add a comment. 16.12.04
Map of Dylan's Llareggub on show. Fifty years after the first broadcast
of Under Milk Wood, a map drawn by Dylan Thomas of the village in the play has
been put on display. Thought to be the only drawing of the fictional Llareggub,
it has been bought by the National Library of Wales...more
Add a comment. 15.12.04
A 1545 John Calvin Genevan Catechism. Calvin College's new purchase,
acquired from a rare book dealer in the Netherlands, is the only known copy of
the catechism in North America and one of only four worldwide. The other three
known copies of the catechism (copies may also exist in private collections) reside
in London, Geneva and Zurich. Interestingly no known copies of Calvin's original
1542 version of the same catechism exist...more
Add a comment. 15.12.04
Turning the page. Michael Good, 67, is shutting down the cluttered San
Anselmo Avenue bookshop he has operated for 24 years with his wife, Sandra, who
restores antique books. Instead, the Goods will run a more limited business from
their home in Woodacre, much of it online and by appointment only...more
Add a comment. 15.12.04
warning of gulf in reading levels . The head of the UK government's education
watchdog called yesterday for action to improve the standards of reading in England's
primary schools, warning that the gap between children who could read and those
who could not was widening...more
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