Back from Maine; a good week of relaxing porch-sitting and ocean-watching. And I even got through almost all of the books I took up with me; I'll have reviews of those over the course of the next few days. I even managed to get a very weak wireless signal from the deck yesterday and was able to sift through the 775 items in my Google Reader (I had another 54 when I got home this morning). Of course those included some goodies:
- On the Durham First Folio recovery, see Paul Collins' Slate piece "Why Shakespeare is the World's Worst Stolen Treasure", which outlines some of the distinctive characteristics of the Durham copy I mentioned here. Also see Paul's Weekend Stubble post about the column, Thursday's Washington Post profile of accused thief Raymond Scott, and a trio of Travis posts about the case (here, here and here). In the first, he rightly takes issue with Collins' categorical statement that a stolen First Folio isn't saleable - it is, of course, just not on the open market; in the second he points out what seems to be an interesting book-thievery coincidence. [Update: Can't miss this one: the Sunday Mail profiles Raymond Scott's Cuban fiancee, and reports that Scott's "Cuban contact," the one who supposedly gave him the Folio (that would be Danny Leon Perez) says he only gave Scott "an old, battered copy of Shakespeare's play The Tempest."]
- Travis also notes that Jay Miller is set for release from prison on 13 November.
- All the attention being paid to the First Folio prompted this Buffalo News story about the Buffalo & Erie County Public Library's copy of the book, which came to the library under some fascinating circumstances.
- Cokie Roberts discusses her new book, Ladies of Liberty, on NPR.
- The Guardian's book blog profiled the Legacy Libraries. Tim has some comments on their post here.
- Book Patrol (among others) points us to Power Moby-Dick, an online annotated text of the novel. Pretty impressive.
Reviews
- In The Telegraph, Helen Castor reviews A Daughter's Love: Thomas and Margaret More by John Guy, Allan Massie reviews Richard Holmes' Marlborough: England's Fragile Genius, and Marcus Nevitt reviews Burghley: William Cecil at the Court of Elizabeth I by Stephen Alford.
- Elizabeth Kolbert reviews and comments on Andrew Jackson Downing's 1841 Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening in The New Yorker.
- Over in the Washington Post, Daniel Stashower reviews Edward Dolnick's The Forger's Spell.
