Links & Reviews

- The e-book price wars went nuclear this weekend as a feud between mega-publisher Macmillan and Amazon resulted in Amazon temporarily pulling all Macmillan titles. More at GalleyCat, and some excellent analysis of this from Caleb Crain.

- CNET takes a look at the iBooks program Apple debuted this week as part of the forthcoming iPad. I have to say I'm pretty pleased with what I've seen of this so far, and particularly keen on the fact that it uses the EPUB standard (which should allow, for example, scanned books from the Internet Archive and other digitization projects to be accessed easily). And via LISNews, NYT Tech-blog posts suggesting why the iPad will or won't kill the Kindle.

- Everyone and their brother's already mentioned this week that the "world's largest book" is going on display at the British Library, so I simply pass it along.

- Some acquisitions: the Macroom Library in Cork, Ireland has been given a signed first edition of Ulysses; the Huntington Library has purchased 35 Dickens letters from the collection of New York dealer Charles Apfelbaum and his wife. And the Yale Daily News profiles the university's acquisitions librarians.

- LibraryThing unveiled "Library Anywhere" this week - a mobile library catalog, complete with published prices.

- Paul Collins points out an article exploring the "Perpetual Loose-Leaf Encylopedia."

Book Reviews

- Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America: reviews by Tom Shippey in the TLS; by John Preston in the Telegraph.

- Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves: review by Judith Flanders in the Telegraph.

- Woody Holton's Abigail Adams: review by John J. Monaghan, Jr., in the Providence Journal.

- Seeing Further, edited by Bill Bryson: review by Lisa Jardine in the Independent.

- Adrian John's Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates: review by Caleb Crain in The National.

- Michael Kranish's Flight from Monticello: review by Robert K. Landers in the WSJ.