Links & Reviews

- Last weekend's Boston Book Fair was declared a "great success" by the ABAA, and judging by the level of activity on the floor things certainly seemed to go quite well. I always enjoy seeing old friends and meeting new ones over the three days of the fair, and this year combining it with our LibraryThing meetup worked quite well (though after the fair and six bookstore visits in one day, I was pretty exhausted!).

- New blogs: Notabilia, from Princeton: "An in-progress registry of provenance, bindings, annotations, and other evidence for book history from the rare book collections at Princeton." And SCRC Behind the Scenes, from the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse. Links added to the sidebar.

- Don't miss Leah Price's NYTimes essay from last weekend, "The Subconscious Shelf."

- Very exciting news that the Universal Short-Title Catalogue plans to launch on 22 November! At launch the database will contain bibliographic information on some 355,000 editions published in Europe before 1601.

- From the Wesleyan Special Collections blog, a good example of traditional scholarship and modern technology coming together to resolve a bibliographic puzzle.

- At The Collation, Sarah Werner takes a closer look at the books on display in the beautiful header photo used on the blog.

- John Plotz writes in Slate about the "What Middletown Read" database.

- Fine Books Blog continues its Bright Young Things series, interviewing Matthew and Adrienne Raptis of Raptis Rare Books.

- Adam Gopnik's got a great piece in this week's New Yorker about turkeys, honor, and the American idea.

- The Faking Shakespeare series continues at Anchora with a look at the theory that Francis Bacon wrote not just the works of Shakespeare, but also those of Edmund Spenser.

- The Grolier Club has released a preliminary schedule for Bibliography Week 2012.

- Winners of this year's National Book Awards were announced.

Reviews

- Umberto Eco's The Prague Cemetery; review by Rebecca Newberger Goldstein in the NYTimes.

- Robert Massie's Catherine the Great; reviews by Kathryn Harrison in the NYTimes and Kathy Lally in the Washington Post.

- Hugh Nissenson's The Pilgrim; review by Maureen Corrigan on NPR.

- Anthony Horowitz's The House of Silk; review by Michael Dirda in the Washington Post.

- David Pearson's Books at History; review by Nigel Beale at Nota Bene Books.

- Colin Woodard's American Nations; review by Alec MacGillis in the Washington Post.