To start today, two petitions which may be of interest:
- First, Paul Lewis and others have written a letter and online petition to encourage Historic Boston, Inc. to explore the feasibility of turning the Old Corner Bookstore (currently housing a Chipotle) into a museum of Boston's literary history.
- Second, by way of followup to a story noted last week, there is an online petition calling on the Peabody Essex Museum to return the Phillips Library collections to Salem (with nearly 2,200 signatures as of this morning).
- Another excellent idea: in Smithsonian, Colin Dickey offers "A Plea to Resurrect the Christmas Tradition of Telling Ghost Stories." I highly recommend reading some M.R. James this holiday season!
- A neat acquisition by the Princeton Graphic Arts collection, the foundry book for the 21 April 1945 issue of the New Yorker, showing copy edits and proofs for the magazine.
- The Junto celebrates its fifth birthday. Many congratulations to all who have made this excellent blog what it is, and here's to many more years.
- The BBC has a short report on the sale of Richard Adams' library last week.
- There's an update on the Shakespeare's World transcription efforts and how they in turn feed back into the overall EMMO project.
- More than 27,000 images from the Gabriel García Márquez archive are now available via the HRC.
- Katherine Ruffin reviews another APHA panel, on "Printerly Identity, Subversion, and Nation-Building."
- Michael Dirda offers his holiday book recommendations (including a couple from our friends at Oak Knoll Press).
- Erin McCarthy writes for Mental Floss about Audubon's Birds of America (with a particular focus on the furniture built to house copies of the volumes).
- In Smithsonian, Jo Marchant reports on an ongoing study of palimpsest texts at St. Catherine's Monastery. The work so far has "revealed more than 284 erased texts in ten languages, including classical, Christian and Jewish texts dating from the fifth century until the 12th century."
Reviews
- James Delburgo's Collecting the World; review by Suzanna Fischer in the LARB.
- Ursula Le Guin's No Time to Spare; reviews by Michelle Dean in the LATimes and Jason Heller for NPR.
Upcoming Auctions
- The Sherlock Holmes Collection of Daniel Posnansky at Profiles in History on 19 December.
- Important Judaica at Sotheby's New York on 20 December.
