BibliophileBullpen

more later . . . Ma’s in surgery right now . . .

events •
1756 - Giacomo Casanova, in prison on charges of being a magician, makes a spectacular escape & makes his way to Paris, where he introduces the lottery in 1757 & makes a name for himself among the aristocracy.
1892 - Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.
1905 -The producer & players of Bernard Shaw’s play, Mrs. Warren’s Profession are arrested, NY.
1913 - Historians Will and Ariel Durant 27 and 15 are married in New York’s City Hall.
1917 - Eugene O’Neill 1-act play In the Zone premiers, NY.
1921 - Beginning date of the Poundian calendar, designed by poet Ezra Pound
1921 - James Joyce writes the last words of his novel Ulysses.
1922 - Karl Capek play The World We Live In opens in NY.
1947 - Bertolt Brecht, having fled Nazi Germany years ago, now flees the US during the American witchhunts.
1958 -Writer Boris Pasternak is expelled from the Soviet Union.
Halloween

birthdays •
1724 – Christopher Anstey (d. 1805) English writer and poet.
1795 - John Keats, (d 1821) renowned British lyric poet, is born in a stable his father managed in Finsbury Pavement.
1920 - Dick Francis is born, Wales. Mystery novelist – Queen’s jockey

back again . . . . My Ma is up and talking, well no . . . technically she is actually sleeping now. But I have been up with her since about 7 am so my day is getting a really really slow start. I’m am curled up with my laptop, a nice Mexican horror movie and a nice bottle of port (from Australia no less, who knew?)

idiot video alert • Some Arkansans who apparently have their head up their ass, want to have Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 banned from their schools curriculum. I guess they read the words in the book, but just didn’t understand them.

banktoaster • the new issue of Artists Book News is available for downloading as a PDF.

suits off the rack • The French publishers union, Le Syndicat National de l’Edition (SNE), has joined book publisher Le Martiniere Groupe in its copyright suit against Google.

cookies • Japanese author Haruki Murakami was in Prague to receive the prestigious Franz Kafka Prize.

something new • Robert Fagles new translation of Virgil’s the Aeneid to hit shelves tomorrow.

diy • Arizona Republic’s Barbara Yost gives step by step instructions on how to produce a customer on-off gift cookbook using Kodak’s Kodakgallery.com

something else new • John Updike reviews Norton’s Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the New Yorker.

worth reading • Ira Joel Haber has posted a good post about books you buy on faith.

in honor of the occasion . . .

guard book.
A book containing compensation guards equal to the anticipated thickness of the additional matter to be added at a later time. The guards are sewn with the book and are intended to prevent gaping of the boards or damage to the spine when the book is filled with photographs, clippings, etc. Also called a stub book.

1. Clowes, William Beaufoy. A guide to printing. London. Heineman. 1963.
2. Vaughan, Alexander J. Modern bookbinding; a treatise covering both letterpress and stationery branches of the trade. . .New ed. London. Skilton. 1960.

skeleton guard book
A type of guard book consisting entirely of guards, and meant to contain photographs, clippings, etc.

1. Porte, Roy Trewin. Dictionary of printing terms. 4th ed. Salt Lake City. Porte. 1941.

birthdays •
1751 - Richard Sheridan, Irish playwright born
1821 - Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian writer born
1871 - Paul Valery, French poet born
1885 - Ezra Pound, American poet born
1937 – Rudolfo Anaya, American author born.

events •
1763 - The Marquis de Sade is imprisoned for excesses committed in a brothel. isn’t that the PLACE for excesses?
1811 – Sense & Sensibility, By a Lady (Jane Austen) published by Thomas Edgerton. Jane uses small pieces of paper that can easily be slipped under a blotter in the family drawing room if a visitor arrives, she takes special pains to hide the fact that her first novel is in print.
1938 - Orson Welles broadcasts his radio play of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, causing a nationwide panic.

banktoaster • The Mercury Theater did a LOT more broadcasts than War of the Worlds, and most of them are available for free downloading.

news you can use • WaPo has a useful article on web browser upgrades, including the IE 7 upgrade by force.

the baby or the bathwater • the Bodmer Foundation in Geneva plans to sell two ancient manuscripts to raise money to guarantee the long-term future of its museum. Scholars around the world fear the sale of the papyri, which date back to the 2nd century, could precipitate the break-up of a unique collection of around 50 texts.

banktoaster • Google is offering free downloads of Halloween appropriate works by, Hawthorn, Poe, Shelley, Stoker and all the other usual suspects.

viking hordes • Jeff at Using Books Weblog has a cozy horror story of rape and pillage at a friends of the library sale.

talking head • from NPR an interview with Bill Bryson about his new memoir the Thunderbolt Kid. which i highly recommend on audio – i recommend all his books on audio. they sound so much cooler than they read.

banktoaster • don’t forget Liam’s Images from Old Books sites have some yummy old spooky engravings and such, that can be used for Halloween purposes.

something dead • NPR has a nice piece on Charles Addams, the father of the Addams Family.

banktoaster • from the New Yorker, a Lorrie Moore short story Paper Losses.

something to read • Bookseller chick blog has a sort of memento mori book post

My luck is running true to form: Just when I am up and well and back to earning my keep, my digital camera went and ate 5 sets of batteries, so I guess it is time for it to join electronics mausoleum in my bottom drawer. I had brought in a big basket of leaves for the kittens to play with and wanted to shoot them diving into it like a swimming pool. Which they did, so guess I know what I will be cleaning up tomorrow.

birthdays •
1740 - James Boswell, Scottish biographer of Samuel Johnson (d. 1795)
1882 – Jean Giraudoux, French writer born (d. 1944)
1906 – Fredric Brown, novelist is born (d. 1972)
1921 - Bill Mauldin, American cartoonist (d. 2003)
1925 – Dominick Dunne, American author born
1923 - Desmond Bagley British thriller writer, is born (d. 1983)

1887 - Start of the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Red-Headed League.
1958 – Boris Pasternak, under intense pressure from the Soviet government & press, wires the Swedish Royal Academy his “voluntary refusal” of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

BOOK BUGS WANTED

My daughter has asked me several times for silverfish or book mites for her course work. Like a cop, they ain’t there when you need them. She needs them by the end of November. If anyone is inclined to help, you would catch a few (that’s the hard part), put them in a small stoppered vial with a little alcohol or something, package well, ship them off, and get reimbursed. I promised her I would try. – Shawn from balopticon.com

Sorry folks. I had a touch of food poisoning which laid me out for 2 days, and that kicked off a super migraine which kept me horizontal with a jackhammer in my head for another day.

birthdays •
1818 - Ivan Turgenev, Russian writer born
1903 - Evelyn Waugh, English writer born
1938 - Anne Perry, English-born novelist born

events •
LA – Louisiana Book Festival – Baton Rouge
LA - New Orleans Bookfair – New Orleans
NJ - Princeton Antiquarian Book Fair – Lawrenceville
TX - 2006 Texas Book Festival – Austin

great blue hope • U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, promoting his latest book at the Texas Book Festival, got a rock star’s reception Saturday at a venue that’s usually much less welcoming of Democrats: the Texas Capitol. Personally, I like him for one reason – he’s articulate, that puts him way ahead of most politicians, celebrities, journos and bloggers.

naughty naughty • South African Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer was assaulted at home in Johannesburg by three men who locked her in a store room and robbed her of cash and jewellery – she was unharmed.

audio •
from NPR John McChesney discusses how Ginsberg’s ‘Howl’ still resonates after 50 years.

from NPR Susan Stamberg Gathering Poems from Carl Sandburg’s ‘Great Period’

obit of note • Theodore Taylor at 85, author of the Cay.

talking head • from the Miami Herald a piece about young adult fantasist Tamora Pierce.

cookies • Welsh novelist Rachel Trezise is first winner of £60,000 Dylan Thomas award the UK’s highest-paying and restricted to work by writers under 30