A shorter selection of links this week, since I've got some longer posts I'm working on for later today.
- Bibliopolis has revamped their blog page, and it's lovely. A great selection of book blogs.
- Richard Cox comments on Bill Bryson's Shakespeare: The World as Stage. Cox writes "I was surprised how much of his brief biography concerned records and archives. ... Bryson provides various descriptions of surviving documents, accounts of interviews with archivists about the records, tales of discovering and losing documents, and the process of analyzing documents alleged to be by Shakespeare or to have connections with him."
- Travis notes a very strange federal grand jury indictment in New York: Daniel Spiegelman, the subject of Travis' The Book Thief, has been charged with making false statements on a passport application (including name, birth date, birth place and social security number) ... in 1999. Travis has been in touch with the U.S. Attorney on the case, who couldn't tell him much. More to follow as it becomes clear, but I agree with Travis that this seems really quite odd.
- Speaking of thieves, some of the map history listservs were alive this week with news that Gilbert Bland, the infamous map thief who is the subject of Miles Harvey's excellent book The Island of Lost Maps, may be back in business. I'll have more on this possibility when I can, but I want to try and hammer down some facts first.
- Lori at Brookline Blogsmith has a post up of Booksmith's top sellers for 2007.
- Central Connecticut State University has posted a list of America's Most Literate Cities for 2007 (Minneapolis is in the top slot; Boston sneaks in at number 10). (h/t Reading Copy)
- Norman Mailer's archive at the UT's Harry Ransom Center opened on Thursday, The Guardian reported. The collection includes "more than 1,000 boxes of manuscripts, letters, magazines, drawings, photographs and more." Mailer sold the materials for $2.5 million in 2005. (h/t Joyce)
