- From BibliOdyssey, beautiful illustrations from the journals of Jörg Franz Müller, an Alsatian gunsmith who sailed to Batavia in the 1660s with the VOC (Dutch East India Company). Fascinating anthropological and natural history drawings. I particularly like the papaya.
- Jill Lepore writes in the New Yorker on the early history of American newspapers, at a time of peril for the medium.
- Raymond Scott is to be the subject of a book, according to a report in today's Sun (to be taken with the same grain of salt with which we take every report from the Sun). The book, which will be created by the publisher Tonto books, is to be called (naturally) Shakespeare and Love . Scott told the paper "As Oscar Wilde once said, 'There is only one thing worse than being talked about and that’s not being talked about', which is to say, to be in the public eye is merely a bore, but to be ignored is a tragedy. As to the title of the book, Shakespeare and Love, I suppose it is a love story because you can be in love not just with a person, but also with an inanimate object. I am in love with my fiancee, the Cuban girl Heidy Garcia Rios, and now I am also in love with Shakespeare. If it was made into a film, perhaps George Clooney could play me as I have a few grey hairs now!" [Ed: Shakes head, rolls eyes].
- More on the McLellin discovery in the Salt Lake Tribune.
- WBEZ news reports that the Newberry Library has acquired about 5,000 rare books from the collections of the McCormick Theological Seminary. [h/t RBN]
- The Special Collections Research Center at Southern Illinois University Carbondale will be closed from 26 January until at least 2 March, to allow for a move into the newly-renovated Morris Library.
- The Guardian ran a very interesting piece this week on the intersections between OCLC, library catalogs, search engines, and biblio-social-networking sites.
- The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum has mounted a digital edition of "The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln." Not a huge amount of useful background material to explain what you're seeing, but useful for some, I'm sure.
- The Washington Monthly has collected short pieces from various authors and political commentators offering reading suggestions for President Obama. [h/t James Fallows]
- In the Boston Globe today, a piece on Woburn's lovely public library building as authorities seek ways to expand without harming the aestethic value of the library.
- The Independent reports on a battle royale brewing between booksellers in the book town of Hay-on-Wye.
- Egyptian police have seized what they believe are stolen pages from an Indian illustrated Mughal-era manuscript held at Cairo's Islamic Arts Museum, and arrested an Australian woman who was trying to smuggle the pages out of Egypt.
Reviews
- David Waldstreicher reviews Ira Stoll's Samuel Adams for the Boston Globe.
- Richard Cox reviews David Hall's Ways of Writings at Reading Archives.
- Russell Shorto reviews Steven Johnson's The Invention of Air in the NYTimes. I'm reading this book at the moment, so I haven't read any reviews yet, but did want to pass the link along.
- Cullen Murphy reviews Kitty Burns Florey's Script and Scribble in the WSJ.
- John Carey reviews two new books on Darwin for the Sunday Times: Darwin's Island by Steve Jones and Darwin's Sacred Cause by Adrian Desmond and James Moore.
