- Bookseller John Crichton of the Brick Row Book Shop is profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle. The shop marked its hundredth birthday in early December.
- Sotheby's sale of material from the Valmadonna Trust collection realized more than $14.9 million, setting a record for an auction of Judaica. The Bomberg Talmud alone fetched $9.3 million, and was sold to Stephan Loewentheil, reportedly on behalf of collector Leon Black.
- The Morgan Library & Museum announced that they acquired from the Pirie sale the large-paper copy of Orlando Furioso (1591).
- Peter Brantley writes for Publishers Weekly about how James Billington's retirement should be a "wake-up call" for librarians.
- No surprise to most readers of this blog, but Michael Rosenwald reports for the Washington Post on the "resurgence" of used bookstores.
- The BBC reports on the new details emerging about the early Koranic fragments identified at Birmingham University earlier this year.
- Over at The New Antiquarian, a poetic ode to the current Grolier Club exhibition by Terry Belanger.
- The Shakespeare exhibits are starting: the HRC's, "Shakespeare in Print and Performance," is up through 29 May. See a preview.
- Along the same lines, Heather Wolfe announces one of the Folger's many initiatives for 2016: Shakespeare Documented, "the largest and most authoritative resource for learning about primary sources that document the life and career of William Shakespeare."
- In the Guardian's "book to share" column, Robert Freeman highlights Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer.
- At Confessions of a Bookplate Junkie, Guillermo Moran shows the process of making a mezzotint bookplate.
Reviews
- Page Smith's (posthumous) Tragic Encounters and Michael McDonnell's Masters of Empire; review by David Treuer in the LATimes.
- David Wootton's The Invention of Science; review by Matthew Price in the Boston Globe.
