Sunday, August 24, 2008

Links & Reviews

Sorry for the sparse posting lately; between the Olympics, the dog days of August, and trying to finish up Priestley's library, I've been distracted. Since all three of those things are just about behind us, I should be back in a more regular swing of things soon. In the meantime:

- In the Globe, a Q&A with Matthew Kneale.

- Laura notes a neat new miniature book webxibit at the Lilly Library.

- From the NYPL blog, Robert Armitage muses on Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, still my favorite of Doyle's works (I think I've read it at least twenty times).

- The Londonist profiles the physical structure of the British Library.

- Gavin Menzies' works and their implications are discussed in The Telegraph (via Cliopatria).

- Richard Cox treats the archival elements of one of the books on my 'to-read-soon' list (sigh), Susan Scott Parrish's American Curiosity.

- The NYTimes reports on an apparent string of thefts from Israeli music collections.

- At BibliOdyssey, some wonderful images of early microscopes.

- From the AP, a list of the notable books coming out this fall.

- In Slate, Robert Pinsky writes on the 400th anniversary of Milton's birth.

- The Guardian reports that some thus-far-unpublished Walter Scott pieces are to be released in published form for the first time, to some criticism.

- Brian Cassidy at Book Patrol points out this excellent and sensible post from the Digitalist about why reading from a screen doesn't necessarily mean the death of biblio-culture as we know it.

- I pass this along without comment.

Reviews

- Brenda Wineapple's White Heat: The Friendship of Emily Dickinson and Thomas Wentworth Higginson is reviewed by William Pritchard in the Globe and by Miranda Seymour in the NYTimes.

- Christopher Buckley's new novel, Supreme Courtship, is reviewed by Lisa Zeidner in the Washington Post.

- Joan Acocella reviews Ingrid Rowland's Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic for the New Yorker.