I hope you've all had a delightful holiday season, and here comes 2018, ready or not.
- A bit more on the Philips Library from the Salem News, and the petition mentioned in my last post continues to garner signatures, with 2,988 as of this morning.
- From Past is Present, a post by Kathleen Major about her work on attempting to identify the authors of anonymous diaries in the AAS collections.
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art purchased a 14th-century illuminated Hebrew Bible prior to its scheduled sale at Sotheby's.
- The Library of Congress highlights some of the maps scanned and made available this year.
- The National Library of Scotland has announced the availability of the Peter Sharratt Collection.
- Caleb Crain's "Notes, 2017" is a fascinating commonplace book of the year.
- The Guardian is running a fun end-of-year short stories podcast series; the first features Penelope Lively introducing M.R. James' wonderfully creepy "Oh Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad," accompanied by Simon Callow's reading of the story.
- Police in Norwich are seeking information about the theft of several books from a delivery van.
- Amelia Hugill-Fontanel's "Mind Your Thorns & Eths," about a visit to bookshops and letterpress outfits in Iceland, has given me a few more things to add to my list of places to go when I'm there in March!
- At NPR, Victoria Schwab says "Just Trust Me: In Praise of Strange Books."
- Try your hand at the Guardian Christmas quiz and their big books quiz of the year.
- The Library of Congress has updated their policy on the Twitter archive. Dan Cohen has a post on "The Significance of the Twitter Archive at the Library of Congress."
- Hoaxter Clifford Irving of Autobiography of Howard Hughes fame died, aged 87. See the NYTimes obit.
- Katherine Skiba profiles Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden for the Chicago Tribune.
- In Signature, Lorraine Berry on "The Sensational Allure of Lost Books in Fiction and Nonfiction."
- Ian Cobain reports for the Guardian on the thousands of documents reported removed from public access at the National Archives (mostly by civil servants, it seems) and not returned.
- Mike Hanlon summarizes some of the end-of-year auction action at New Atlas.
- The Bodleian Library has announced that several previously unseen J.R.R. Tolkien "Father Christmas" letters to his children will be part of a major exhibition opening in May.
Reviews
- A.N. Wilson's Charles Darwin: Victorian Mythmaker; review by Jerry Coyne in the WaPo. Wowsers. This and several other Darwin-related books are reviewed by Claire Pettit in the TLS.
- Christopher de Hamel's Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts; review by Helen Castor in the NYTimes.
- Robert Irwin's Wonders Will Never Cease; review by Michael Dirda in the WaPo.
- Martin Salisbury's The Illustrated Dust Jacket, 1920–1970; reviews by Ernest Hilbert in the WaPo and Agatha French in the LATimes.
- Anders Rydell's The Book Thieves; review by Ashley Valanzola in the LARB.
Upcoming Auction
- Books and Ephemera at National Book Auctions on 6 January.
