- Stuart Kelly blogged for the Guardian about reading by candlelight.
- Over on the SHARP blog, Leslie Howsam asks for the "most innovative monographs in the field of book history published in the past 20 years"? It's prompted some good discussion (don't forget to read the comments).
- Lisa Jardine comments on the history of information overload in "Why didn't Harry Potter just use Google?"
- A new Biblio-tumblr from Brooke Palmieri, BIBLIOGUERILLA. I've also added a link on the sidebar.
- In a followup blog post to her recent piece on Matt Kirschenbaum's project on the history of word processing, Jennifer Schuessler reports that authors have been coming out of the woodwork to stake their claims.
- Paul Collins points out the 1850s Philadelphia magazine "Bizarre" (sample contents here).
- The BBC reports on the annual cleaning of the chained library at Hereford Cathedral.
- From The Collation, a wonderful idea of allowing readers who've taken reference images of Folger materials to pool them in a Flickr group. Other institutions where reference photography is allowed: this is a step worth exploring at the very least!
- Over at Echoes from the Vault, some very nice inky fingerprints in a 1473 book.
- Some nifty resources on the English book trade, tweeted by @mercpol recently: The English Provincial Book Trade Before 1850 and The London Booktrades: A Biographical and Documentary Resource.
- In the Washington Post, Raymond M. Lane looks at the connections between Poe and Dickens.
- A fascinating discussion sprang up on ExLibris this week, about whether ebook collections should be allowed as entries into book collecting contests. Nate Pedersen summarized the issues in a Fine Books Blog post.
- Seven wonderful booksellers have collaborated on a collective catalog of items available at the upcoming San Francisco and Pasadena fairs.
- Over at Notes for Bibliophiles, Jordan Goffin highlights some recent work on whaleship reading.
- In the Telegraph, Robert Douglas-Fairhurst writes about the new BBC adaptation of The Mystery of Edwin Drood (airing in the US in April). And, for more on Dickens, Christopher Hitchens' posthumous Vanity Fair piece, "Charles Dickens's Inner Child," is a must-read.
Reviews
- Elizabeth Dowling Taylor's A Slave in the White House; review by Jonathan Yardley in theWashington Post.
- Cullen Murphy's God's Jury; review by Edward Peters in the Washington Post.
- P.D. James' Death Comes to Pemberley; review by Kenneth Turan in the LATimes.
