- Over at Book Patrol, Michael Lieberman has an interview with AbeBooks CEO Hannes Blum. Blum discusses some recent AbeBooks acquisitions, and gives a very favorable mention to LT: "At a very basic level, we are constantly learning from Tim Spalding at LibraryThing. Tim’s site leads the way in social networking for book people." Additional topics covered include Abe's pricing structure, the changing face of bookselling (online and otherwise) and the future of the book.
- Joyce points out (hilariously) Oliver Judson's NYTimes blog post on Darwinmania, the impending "rolling celebration" to mark the 150th anniversary of Darwin's announcement of his discovery of natural selection (1 July 2008), the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (12 February 2009) and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (24 November 2009).
- At bookn3rd, Laura offers up a fascinating post on Napoleonic savant Nicolas-Jacques Conté, a polymath known among other things for being the inventor of the first engraving machine.
- BibliOdyssey's newest image selection, from Jacob Hoefnagel's 1592 work Archetypa studiaque patris, might be one of my new favorites. Fascinating arrangements of natural history specimens, engravings based on the paintings of Hoefnagel's father Georg.
- Over at ephemera, an interview with Rebecca Mertz, who collects banana labels.
- Wellesley College has acquired a copy of the second edition of Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (1566). The book was purchased in February from a New York dealer for "more than $100,000."
Review
- Robert Knox reviews Eric Jay Dolin's Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, for the Boston Globe.
