Sunday, August 07, 2011

Links & Reviews

- Kari Kraus has an important piece in the NYTimes today, "When Data Disappears."

- Another must-read from this week is Sarah Werner's post "the serendipity of the unexpected, or, a copy is not an edition."

- I've added a sidebar link to 8vo, Brook Palmieri's excellent biblio-blog. Add this one to your rotation. Her most recent post, on a really delightful provenance discovery, builds on Sarah's (just linked to above).

- In the Boston Globe, a look at the new 18th-century-style print shop recently opened in the North End.

- From the Guardian this week, a look at a new Dickens project, Dickens Journals Online. The aim is to produce an online, open-access edition of Household Worlds and All the Year Round, and they're looking for volunteers!

- The August Fine Books Notes is out: it includes a special report by Catherine Batac Walder on the Reibenbach Falls area, Nick Basbanes on the new fourth edition of Allen and Patricia Ahearns' Collected Books, and more.

- There's a new digital library of books published in Mexico before 1601, Primeros Libros.

- A fascinating long piece by Simon Kuper on the 1911 theft of the Mona Lisa from the Louvre.

- Somebody on Twitter (sorry, I've forgotten now just who) posted a link to audio of Jorge Luis Borges' 1967-1968 Norton Lectures at Harvard.

- Bloomsbury Auctions has been acquired by Fine Art Auction Group.

- In the NYTimes, Eve Kahn writes about the difficulties of scrapbook preservation.

- Rick Anderson has a fascinating post at the scholarly kitchen on the "good, the bad, and the sexy" of the Espresso Book Machine.

Reviews

- David Pearson's Books as History; review by Rebecca Rego Barry in Fine Books Notes.

- Michael Sims' The Story of Charlotte's Web; review by Lee Randall in the Scotsman.

- Melanie Benjamin's The Autobiography of Mrs. Tom Thumb; review by Diana White in the Boston Globe.

- Brook Wilensky-Landford's Paradise Lust; review by Andrea Wulf in the NYTimes.

- Other People's Books; review by Pradeep Sebastian in The Hindu.