- More (in fact, much more) on forger Mark Landis from the Financial Times, which again points out that the guy probably can't be prosecuted since it seems no actual crime has been committed. And the author, John Gapper, actually went and visited with Landis, who had some very interesting things to say about what he's been doing and why.
- Not surprisingly, the New Jersey Historical Society has been criticized for selling items from its collections to fill budget holes. The Abel Buell map was the big one, but a total of 25 items have been sold at Christie's since last September, with at least one more item set to go on the block in February. Some more from Rebecca at FB&C Blog.
- The NYTimes Travel section focuses on Norwich, England, today, calling it "a getaway for book lovers."
- Dr. Edward Kinzer's large collection of Walter Scott books have been donated to the University of South Carolina Aiken.
- The January Common-place is now live; it includes essays on New England cemetery preservation, trompe l'oeil art in the early republic, Anne Hutchinson's "monstrous birth," and more.
- Toronto Reference Library's large Arthur Conan Doyle collection is profiled (with lots of images) at blogTO.
- Galleycat highlighted some of the many gift books presented to President Obama during his time in office.
- The 2010 finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award have been announced.
- At Sapping Attention, Benjamin Schmidt outlines some very interesting things he's found with the Google Ngrams viewer.
- Ian Kahn was on the Discovery Channel's "Oddities" this week to investigate a book purportedly bound in human skin. Clip here.
- The Harry Ransom Center has received a $137,015 CLIR grant to catalog more than 14,000 "comedias sueltas," plays printed as pamphlets in Spain from the late 17th through the 19th centuries. The project will be completed by February 2014.
- In a NYTBR essay, James Ryerson asks "Can a novelist write philosophically?"
Reviews
- Nigel Smith's Andrew Marvell: The Chameleon; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.
- O: A Presidential Novel; review by Michiko Kakutani in the NYTimes.
- Nora Titone's My Thoughts be Bloody; review by Edward Colimore in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
- Robert Darnton's Poetry and the Police; review by Emily Parker in TNR.
- Noah Charney's Stealing the Mystic Lamb; review by Mark Lamster in the LATimes.
- Wim Klooster's Revolutions in the Atlantic World; review by Thomas Truxes in Common-place.
