- Another shoe has dropped in the de Caro book theft case: Herbert Schauer, Executive Director of the Munich auction firm Zisska & Schauer, was arrested on 2 August in relation to the ongoing investigation. According to a press release from the auction house, "The Italian authorities had issued a European arrest warrant on the basis of self-exculpatory submissions made by a number of the accused in the Girolamini trials and had forwarded the warrant to the Bavarian authorities."
- Over at Bibliodeviant, Jonathan Kearns has a must-read piece on bookselling in today's world: "Fear and Loathing in Book-ville."
- The contenders for the 16th ILAB Breslauer Prize have been announced.
- Charles Simic posted on the NYRB blog about the loss of used bookstores and what that means for us all.
- Library Journal posted on the upcoming opening of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington at Mount Vernon.
- Via Shannon Supple at the Clog, a look at an extremely-heavily annotated "hybrid book" from the Clark's collections.
- Author Boris Kachka talked to The Awl about his new book Hothouse, a history of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
- The summer issue of Common-place is up. Good stuff, as usual.
- Chet Van Duzer talked to Lapham's Quarterly about his new book, Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps.
- In the NYTimes, Jennifer Schuessler reports on a Notes and Queries piece by Shakespeare scholar Douglas Bruster possibly furthering the case for Shakespeare's authorship of certain parts of The Spanish Tragedy.
- An anonymous donor has pledged £100,000 to the ongoing effort to keep Jane Austen's ring from passing into the ownership of Kelly Clarkson, who purchased it at auction last year.
- Making the rounds this week was a 1969 Paris Review interview with E.B. White, which is well worth a read.
- Over on the Guardian book blog, Stuart Kelly explores the attractions of Tobias Smollett's Humphry Clinker.
- A post at Notabilia this week highlights the shelf-mark of the library of the Earls of Shaftesbury.
- The Getty Museum launched its Open Content Program this week, making available as a first tranche some 4,600 images of artwork.
- A fire destroyed the Asgar Ali Book Centre in Port of Spain, Trinidad earlier this week.
- The Financial Times reported this week on the BL's plans to digitize its 25,000 medieval manuscripts.
- In other BL-related digitization news, CRL and the BL have agreed to cooperate in the digitization of newspapers from Africa, South Asia, and Latin America into the World Newspaper Archive.
- Historian Pauline Maier died this week. See her NYTimes Obit. I knew Pauline from my time at MHS, and always found her gracious, warm, and wonderfully interesting to talk to. I've enjoyed her books greatly, and she will be much missed. More from Michael Hattem at The Junto, J.L. Bell at Boston 1775, and at The Beehive.
Reviews
- Felix Palma's The Map of Time; review by Miriam Burstein at The Little Professor.
- Boris Kachka's Hothouse; reviews by Maureen Corrigan on NPR; Elisa Schappell on NPR.
- Samantha Shannon's The Bone Season; review by Jane Ciabattari on NPR.
- Brenda Wineapple's Ecstatic Nation; review by David Shribman in the Boston Globe.
... And now, back to the packing!
