- From Book Trout, Rachel recommends Sense and Nonsensibility: Lampoons of Learning and Literature, by Lawrence Douglas and Alexander George. Sounds amusing, I'll have to keep my eye out for this one.
- Joyce has some useful reference links, mostly for identifying first editions.
- Bookride offers up comments on a few of the famous billionaire book collectors, including James Goldsmith and Maundy Gregory.
- The Sunday Telegraph reports on why the Harry Potter release this summer probably won't be particularly good news for bookstores. [h/t GalleyCat]
- Another review of the new John Donne bio, this one by Thomas Mallon in the NYTimes. Might have to move this one up in the pile, or by the time I read it it'll have been reviewed to death.
- Richard J. Cox explores the new book Land of Lincoln: Adventures in Abe's America by Andrew Ferguson (forthcoming, Atlantic Monthly Press). Cox compares the book to Tony Horwitz's Confederates in the Attic, but notes that Ferguson's "humor is subtler and may be sensed primarily by how the individual reader views Lincoln."
- Paul Collins has been in touch with descendants of Arthur Ostrander, who was the assistant of George Poe (he of the amazing respirator machine). Collins says the Ostrander family still has Poe's respirator machine, and that a journal article is in the works. Also from Paul, electric spiders.
- Amazon has launched a podcast network, GalleyCat reports.
