- Matthew Bruccoli, the noted bibliographer, literary biographer and leading scholar of F. Scott Fitzgerald, died on Wednesday. He was 76. Coverage from: NYTimes, The State, Fine Books Blog.
- Travis reports that Lester Weber will be entering a guilty plea. Add him to Renehan and Brubaker, Travis notes, and you've got the "book thief triple crown." Also from Travis, word that the case against Mrs. Brubaker have been dismissed, and that Mr. Brubaker will be in court on 23 June to formalize his guilty plea.
- From BibliOdyssey, a grand selection of engravings from Maria Sibylla Merian's Metamorphosibus Insectorum Surinamensium (1705). More images and background here.
- LISNews points out that librarians at the University of Michigan are engaged in "determining the copyright status of works typically presumed to be in copyright. For now, we're focusing on US monographic imprints (books, that is) published between 1923 and 1963, but plan to turn our attention to non-US publications in the future." This will be a very useful project in many respects, and I wish them all the best of luck with it.
- Book Dragon linked to the bizarre but hilarious blog Garfield Minus Garfield, which shows what that comic strip would look like ... without the cat.
- From the Times Higher Education Supplement, a fascinating article by Alistair McCleery on copyright law and literary estates.
- The New York Mercantile Library, founded in 1820, is looking to relocate from its current building at 17 East 47th Street, where it has been housed since 1932. The library will be renamed the Mercantile Library Center for Fiction, and administrators are seeking new digs in "SoHo, TriBeCa or near the New Museum, the contemporary art museum in the Bowery."
- Everybody's talking about the cover of the current New Yorker. It's a classic.
- Brigham Young University has received a copy of the second edition of the Bible printed in Iceland (1643-44). The book was donated by Thor Leifson, the honorary consul of Iceland emeritus.
- This fall, Houghton Mifflin will be re-releasing a selection of some of J.R.R. Tolkien's minor works as Tales from the Perilous Realm.
Reviews
- Michael Dirda reviews Renee Winegarten's Germaine de Staël and Benjamin Constant: A Dual Biography (just out from Yale) in the Washington Post.
- Benjamin Wallace's The Billionaire's Vinegar is reviewed by Bruce Schoenfeld, also in the Washington Post.
