So? I am dragging my feet this week. I have been updating my CV and sifting through classifieds. I got let go from my day job at 10pm on Sunday night via blunt email and will be replaced by a couple of grad students who get paid off the books. The problem with being an cranky old bookseller, is that it’s basically all you are trained to be. Anyways . . . more time for blogging eh? at least until they cut the power to my home sweet hovel.

1888 – Mary Ann Nichols is murdered. She is the first of Jack the Ripper’s known victims.

birthday boy • 1908 – William Saroyan, American novelist and playwright (d. 1981)

more digi-books • The Jamia Millia Islamia university in New Delhi plans to digitize its collection of books and manuscripts, some of them dating to the 16th century. great and we will get google translator software to turn them into gibberish.

big bear sale • Friends of the Big Bear Valley Library host their annual Rare and Extraordinary Book Auction Saturday, Sept. 9th, at the Big Bear Valley library, Big Bear, CA. i just wanted to write ‘big bear sale’.

distopia alert • An investigation into how a copy of the long-awaited sequel to J M Barrie’s children’s classic Peter Pan was leaked to a newspaper in the US is under way. oh puhleese….this total utter paranoia is just sooo Orwellian. It’s a FRIGGING MERCHANDISING GIMMICK FOR A KIDS BOOK! can we worry about actual CRIMES?

obits of note

• Ralph Schoenstein at 73, a humorist , NPR commentator, author and ghostwriter whose works included Bill Cosby’s Fatherhood.

• Gerald Green at 84, author of The Last Angry Man.

cookies • Susanna Reich – José! Born to Dance: The Story of José Limon wins Tomás Rivera Mexican-American Children’s Book Award.

buried insults • A.N. Wilson biographer of British poet laureate John Betjeman, who died in 1984, was duped into including a hoax love letter in the book. The letter reputedly by Betjeman himself contains the phrase ‘A.N. Wilson is a shit.’

worth reading • Seattle columnist Sarah McCormic has a nifty essay called “Magazine for Women with Brains.” about Bitch magazine to which I just subscribed before all my money is gone.

Never lose your pencil again! Now its always to hand right where you need it – inside your note book. Just in case you prefer to use a pen, this note book has been designed to hold a Bic Crystal perfectly. £10 via suck.uk

Join the American Academy of Bookbinding in 2007 with two campuses in Ann Arbor, MichiganTelluride, Colorado for top level instruction without having to study abroad. We offer intensive courses for beginner to advance students in conservation, fine leather binding and related subjects. Degree programs are available.

• Beginning Bookbinding February 26 – ­ March 9
• Book Conservation: Restoration of Cloth & Leather Binding March 12 ­ – March 16
• Book Conservation: Forwarding & Covering of Textblocks March 19 – 30
• Alternative Decorative Techniques September 17 ­ – 21
• Intermediate French Technique Binding September 24 – ­ October 5
• Book Conservation: Treatment of Textblocks & Sewing October 8 – ­ 19

• Beginning Bookbinding April 16 ­ – 27
• Book Conservation: Treatment of Textblocks & Sewing April 30 ­ – May 10
• Book Conservation: Forwarding & Covering of Textblocks May 14 ­ – 25
• Alternative Decorative Techniques May 28 – ­ June 1
• Advanced French Technique Binding June 4 – 15

For more information visit the Ah Haa School for the Arts or contact AAB coordinator, Margaret Cruzzavala

1809 - Oliver Wendell Holmes (d. 1894) American physician, poet, essayist and humorist
1862 – Maurice Maeterlinck (d. 1949) Belgian Nobel Prize-winning poet, playwright and essayist (1911)
1898 – Preston Sturges, American screenwriter (d. 1959)

something new • the Sunday Guardian reviews Leonard Woolf: A Life by Victoria Glendinning

blog of note • Lux Mentis, Lux Orbis blog has a short lovely post about matching up a great book with some greatful buyers. I wish this sort of thing happened every day.

naughty naughty • A citizen of the Netherlands attempting to smuggle 16 rare books printed in the late 19th-early 20th centuries has been detained by customs officers at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport. The books were found in the passenger’s hand luggage, the Russian Federal Customs Service says in a statement. The Dutchman had permission from the Culture Ministry, but did not present it as he was attempting to take out 16 books instead of the permitted three, the statement says. A criminal case has been opened into the incident.

‘g’ books • The University of California has released a copy of its contract with Google Inc. to have the search engine giant digitize millions of books from the university’s libraries.

mitzvah • Determined Canadian teen to deliver 20,000 books to young victims of Hurricane Katrina.

something new • The Stinky Cheese Man author Lane Smith offers humorous look at history of the Constitution with John, Paul, George and Ben by Lane Smith

The above image is a shot of the Long Room Library, Trinity College of Dublin. Or is it? Actually it’s not, it’s an image of the Jedi Archives in the most recent episode of the Star Wars series, Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

The similarities are obvious, from the arched barrel vault running the length of the room to the double height book stacks. Even the busts and statuary of the Jedi Archive mirror the busts of figures from the academic world in the Long Room.

The similarity was first mentioned in March this year when an online cinema enthusiast site Cinescape.com produced an article on the then upcoming movie. They stated “As it turns out, the Jedi Archive/Library is an almost exact replica of one of the finest libraries in the world – The Old Library of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.”

The Library was designed by Thomas Burgh (1670-1730), the son of a Bishop, who joined the army like many from a landed background. He was appointed Surveyor General in 1700, and held the position until his death in 1730. His first recorded building is the enormous Royal Barracks now Collins Barracks begun in 1701. One of his other major commissions was the Custom House (1707) which was replaced by Gandon’s masterpiece in 1791. The old Custom House was a two storey building with a mansard roof and was used as a barracks for a time until it was demolished.

The old Library of Trinity College is Burgh’s masterpiece and was built between 1712-1732. A huge building, it originally towered over the university and city when it was completed. The building has undergone two major adaptations since it was constructed. Originally the Library was placed on an open ground floor arcade whose purpose was to insulate the books from damp. This was filled in during the 19th century for more shelf space. The timber barrel vaulted ceiling ie not original either, being added by celebrated architects Deane & Woodward in 1858-60. Originally the library had a high flat ceiling.

Is it too much of a coincidence that designers at Lucas Films would produce a library with not only a similar book arrangement to the Long Room, but a similar roof? A roof that was not original but added by later generations to solve a specific problem? The original flat ceiling was causing the external walls to buckle, and the insertion of the barrel vault was the preferred option to reintroduce structural integrity to the building. Additional supports were added which run from the floor to the ceiling along the edge of the bookstacks. Each library bay became structural and is vaulted at right angles to the main vault.

Trinity don’t think so. After an article in the University Record (the college newspaper), the college authorities have instructed their legal advisors to look into the case. According to a recent report in the Sunday Independent, spokespeople for George Lucas have stated that “It is totally untrue that there is any connection between the scene in Attack of the Clones and Trinity College.” We’ll wait and see. Lucas Films declined to comment.

from Irish Architecture.

birthdays •
1749 - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German writer and scientist (d. 1832)
1828 - Leo Tolstoy, Russian writer (d. 1910)
1908 - Roger Tory Peterson (d 1996) American ornithologist and conservationist
1913 - Robertson Davies, Canadian writer (d. 1995)
1916 - Jack Vance, American author
1917 – Jack Kirby, American comic book artist (d. 1994)
1924 - Janet Frame, New Zealand author (d. 2004)

incoming • Margaret Atwood’s Letter to America, from the Globe and Mail.

worth reading - from the Guardian, John Sutherland ponders the enigma of first lines.

inbreeding • In a deal between two of the Internet’s most prominent properties, Google Inc. will begin selling advertising on Web auction leader eBay and help buyers quickly ring an online merchant to do business.

obit of note • Betty Bennett at 71, an American University literature professor who was a leading authority on the life of Frankenstein author Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and her circle of friends.

web 2.0 • Google unveiled their ‘ Google Apps for Your Domain’, a collaborative set of Google tools for businesses and other organizations. Which lets you customize Google’s communication and collaboration tools for you organization with no hardware or software to install or maintain. Tools include Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, and Google Page Creator, and you choose the combo that fits for your business.

talking head • the Santa Cruz Sentinel interviews Jonathan Franzen about his early influences.

banktoaster • the New York Times has a feature on public domain titles on audio available for download from sites such as Librivox, Spokenalex.org, Literalsystems.org.

audio • last week’s This American Life – now available online, writer David Sedaris takes us on an unusual tour of Paris.

“No, I haven’t been to the Louvre, why come to Paris and go to the only place you aren’t allowed to smoke?”

more audio • this week’s Weekend America visited the World Science Fiction Convention and talks to folks about science fiction’s current relevance.

still more audio • this week’s Studio 360 covers the 50th anniversary of Shakespeare in the Park and talks to T.C. Boyle.

Steven Gilbar, is an author and book geek who also happens to be a mixed media artist.

from his website:
“I live in Santa Barbara, California. For some years I have been working in collage and mixed media as well as altered book art. I have produced a series of collage postcards featuring renowned authors which dovetails with my interest in literature and career as an anthologist of sixteen books.”

I just spent 7.50 plus shipping for 6 pencils. Yeah, I know, I know, ask me six months ago if I would have done that, I’d have laughed too. Recently, I have been exploring the internet cults for such things as Moleskine Notebooks of which I now have five, and Lamy fountain pens, of which I now have two – and I recently read a head to head comparison of six high quality wooden pencils and got an overwhelming urge to try the winner, The Palomino.

I don’t know whether ‘resurgence’ is the appropriate word to describe the all the webspace dedicated to sharing personal notebook and journal pages, or comparing inks and witing tools. For all I know people may have always been THIS passionate about documenting ever late night latté. Perhaps the internet has finally given them an outlet for sharing the results, or perhaps it’s a backlash fom the electronification of every aspect of our lives. I sense that the passion for notebooks, and journaling evidenced on the internet, indicates that paper and ink is in no danger of dying out.

Though I never understood owning a pen I’d be afraid to loose. I do get terrible finger cramps from extended penmanship, and my writing is illegible at the best of times, I figured trying a relatively inexpensive ( I did say ‘relatively’) fountain pen could alleviate the problem. And it did – so I HAD to buy a medium nib as well – and some ‘bulletproof’ Noodler’s Brand ink, of course. I suppose, I can no longer laugh at the ‘fountain-pen’ fetishists of the world.

Perhaps I am easily swayed or just have an addictive personality, but the way such ephemeral things are described on personal webpages makes me want try to I find the same joy in them that others have. And they really ARE great pencils.