- Art Garfunkel has posted a list showing every book he's read from 1976 through the present . Fairly impressive, actually! (fade theory; The Book Depository)
- Richard Minsky, the author of American Decorated Publishers' Bindings 1872-1929, decided to sell the collection which he accumulated in writing the book ... on eBay. But Scott at Fine Books Blog reports that a university purchased the collection before the auction was completed. Smart move. (Lux Mentis, Lux Orbis; Fine Books Blog)
- Dante's gotten a nose job. Based on a 1921 model of the poet's skull (taken without permission), "Reconstruction artists Francesco and Gabriele Mallegni from Pisa University used computer technology and forensic techniques to simulate muscle with plaster, plastic and other material." They discovered "that Dante probably did have a hooked nose but it was pudgy rather than pointy and crooked rather than straight, almost as if he had been punched." (The Bibliothecary, where Ed comments "Dante comes out looking like some irrascible, old guy who'd kick your ass for looking at him the wrong way. 'You talkin' to me, guelph.'")
- Paul Collins comments on Beatrix Potter-mania (jumping off this interesting National Post piece) and points out his new article in New Scientist, about Edgar Allen Poe's revivifying cousin George, who went about suffocating rabbits and dogs and then bringing them "back to life" with a respirator pump. There's also an NPR segment.
- Tom Congalton of Between the Covers Rare Books reports that "about a dozen" books from his stock were stolen from the New Jersey Book Fair over the weekend. He writes: "among the stolen books were several Hemingway's [sic] including the limited and signed Farewell to Arms, a trade editon of the same title in jacket, Men without Women in jacket, an unjacketed by inscribed reprint of In Our Time, a Raymond Chandler Farewell, My Lovely, and some
others." Will provide updates as necessary to this case.
- Over at Library History Buff, Larry has created a web-list of biograpies relating to American "library people," and is working on an international page as well. He's also created a list of other library history buffs.
- Kit Bakke reviews Susan Cheever's American Bloomsbury in the Washington Post. Her take on it is fairly similar to mine.
- In the Louisville Courier-Journal, some books inscribed by Martin Luther King Jr. are profiled today; he signed the books to activist Anne Braden and her family, and they now reside at the University of Louisville.
- The New York Sun notes that five new bookstores have recently opened in the Big Apple: an outlet for German art publisher Taschen, and one for photography publisher powerHouse Books; a new "authoritative" jazz bookshop (Jazz at Lincoln Center) and two independent shops (Park Ave. Corner Shop in the Upper East Side and Adam's Books in Park Slope). All are profiled.
