BibliophileBullpen

Some days i am not so fond of my country.  Personally I think we have wound up our police and border guards too tightly looking for enemies that they can’t see straight and make some pretty terrible mistakes.

From Boing Boing
Dr Peter Watts, Canadian science fiction writer, beaten and arrested at US border

Hugo-award-nominated science fiction author Dr. Peter Watts is in serious legal trouble after he was beaten, pepper-sprayed and imprisoned by American border guards at a Canada U.S. border crossing December 8. This is a call to friends, fans and colleagues to help.
Peter, a Canadian citizen, was on his way back to Canada after helping a friend move house to Nebraska over the weekend. He was stopped at the border crossing at Port Huron, Michigan by U.S. border police for a search of his rental vehicle. When Peter got out of the car and questioned the nature of the search, the gang of border guards subjected him to a beating, restrained him and pepper sprayed him. At the end of it, local police laid a felony charge of assault against a federal officer against Peter. On Wednesday, he posted bond and walked across the border to Canada in shirtsleeves (he was released by Port Huron officials with his car and possessions locked in impound, into a winter storm that evening). He’s home safe. For now. But he has to go back to Michigan to face the charge brought against him.

(continue reading)

Catablogs…nope nothing feline about them… i had visited a couple and added an RSS feed to my list but i hadn’t given them much thought until now. The special collections librarian one city over has started blogging their catalog…cata-blog get it? Queen City Massachusetts – which i find awesome…every object has a story and with catablogs, the object, pamphlet or image gets its fifteen minutes of fame too. Here’s a nice little blog post from Geneaology Insider with a sweet list of other Catablogs.

Like there aren’t enough news items that make me crazy, now people are sending them into me, assumedly to watch my head explode into a hundred million pieces.

stupid human tricks - A small town near Milwaukee has been rending and wailing about teenagers having access to books about homosexuality, you know – the naughty kind, the kind that say “it’s okay to be gay and your parents will still love you”. Apparently this nonsense issue brouhaha has blown up into a good old fashioned book burning. How come groups labeled Christian Civil Liberties Unions, are never civil nor Christian and against anything that smacks of liberty.

worth hearing – Lizzie Skurnick guest’s on NPR’s Talk of the Nation regarding about her new book: Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading. – .between V.C. Andrews and Are you There God it’s Me Margaret that little town in Michigan’s gonna pull out the pitch forks and torches, lynch the librarian and burn down the entire library.

Dear Colleagues,

Six months ago the following three books were stolen from us in transit. Should anyone be offered these books, we would greatly appreciate your getting in touch with us.

I. PISSINUS, Sebastiani Lucensis. De cordis palpitatione cognoscenda, & curanda libri duo. Frankfurt: Claudium Marnium & heredes Ioannis Aubrii, 1609. 8vo. 193, [23] pp., including index. Woodcut printer’s device to title, chapter initials, head- and tailpieces. Contemporary limp vellum with remnants of ties, title in manuscript on spine; small wormhole at inner margin of a few leaves (text not affected). Contemporary ownership inscription of the Collegii Paris Societ[atis] Jesu to title.

II. SKODA, Joseph. Abhandlung uber Perkussion und Auskultation. Vienna: Mosle’s Witwe & Braumuller, 1839. 8vo. xviii, [ii], 271, [1] pp. Contemporary quarter-calf over marbled boards, extremities somewhat worn. From the library of Dr. Ferdinand Vielguth of Vienna on first flyleaf.

III. BURNET, Thomas. Archæologiæ philosophicæ: or, the ancient doctrine concerning the originalsof things; Dr. Burnet’s theory of the visible world; by way of commentary onhis own theory of the Earth. being the second part of his Archæologiæ Philosophicæ, Written in Latin by Thomas Burnet, LL.D. master of the Charter-House. Faithfully translated into English, with
remarks thereon, by Mr. Foxton (with) [JONCHERE, Étienne Lécuyer de la]. The immobility of the Earth demonstrated by reasons drawn from the established rules of physics,mechanics, and geometry. Proving the Earth to be in the center of theUniverse; and that all the Celestial Bodies perform their diurnial motions round it, and not the sun. In opposition to the solar system. [translated by J[ohn] M[organ]. London: Printed for E. Curll, 1729. Three books in one (first title in two parts). 8vo. [viii], xxxii, [viii], viii, 90, 6, 40; 96, 41-104, 32 pp. (pages 41-104 mis-bound). Separate title to each book. Contemporary Cambridge binding (small piece torn away at hinges), spine decorated in gilt; fly leaves stained, sporadic browning on text and a few minor worm holes. From the library of Abner Jackson, Trinity College, with his bookplate and withdrawn stamp.

Thank you in advance,

Cassandra Joffre
B & L Rootenberg Rare Books & Manuscripts, ABAA, ILAB, ABA
(818) 788-7765
Fax: (818) 788-8839
PO Box 5049
Sherman Oaks, Ca. 91403
blroot@rootenbergbooks.com

Author’s nude drawings too hot for US publisher
By Tony Paterson in Berlin

One of Germany’s best-selling children’s authors is embroiled in an extraordinary transatlantic row about nudity after a US publisher refused to accept one of her books because it contained naive sketches of an art gallery with works depicting naked bodies.

Rotraut Susanne Berner’s illustrated “Wimmel” books about the everyday lives of adults and children have won international acclaim and are best-sellers in 13 countries from Japan to the Faroe Islands.

But the 59-year-old author said her American publisher had refused to accept her latest book for US distribution because it contained elements deemed potentially offensive, including drawings of people naked or smoking. Berner said her US publisher, Boyds Mills Press, had objected in particular to one of her illustrations which showed adults and children in an art gallery where the portrait of a naked woman was on show together with a seven millimetre high sculpture of a naked man exhibiting a barely discernible penis. . . .continue . . .

Stolen from Bookseller: Motte & Bailey, Booksellers, Ann Arbor, MI

The Ghost-Hunter and His Family. Banim, John [and Michael]. London: Simms and M’Intyre ., 1852. First edition thus, original was in 1833. Good sextodecimo (16mo) hardcover with leather spine and brown boards without dust jacket. Wear and rubbing, heavy at times, along the edges of the boards with bumping to the head and heel of the spine and on the corners of the panels. Corners have small holes in the binding. Also some light bumping to the upper edges of the panels. Panels have some light scuffing and scratching. Bookplate of the previous owner on the front pastedown endpaper. Name in pencil on the front free endpaper. Pages are a little browned but not brittle. Page edges are foxed. 284 pages. The binding is still tight and this copy is in nice shape for its age.
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“Atlas description: Philadelphia: H.S. Tanner, 1823. Folio (22 5/8 x 15 3/4 inches). Letterpress half-title, 1p. index and 18pp. text. Engraved title with vignette of the “First Landing of Columbus in the New World”, 22 fine hand-coloured double-page engraved maps. Contemporary red half morocco, the flat spine divided into six compartments by double fillets, lettered in the second, the other compartments with repeat decoration of a single centrally-placed square arabesque tool, modern cloth box with morocco lettering-piece on its spine.

The atlas was stolen between April 20 and April 22, 2007. Unfortunately, our institution had yet to agree on what to do with the atlas (keep or deaccession/sell at an auction), so it does not have any markings on it. It does have a library catalog sticker with a number (we did not have a chance to record this number) on its binding a quarter of the way from the top. There are specific condition notes to this atlas: a majority of the pages have some sort of water-like stains both large and small throughout, which are mostly contained along the edges of the 18 pages of text. All of the maps are in good condition with a few water stains, with the exception of the large map on the last pages. This fold-out map has binding tape holding it together, when folded open the pages are crisp along the creases. The exterior has general wear throughout both red leather coverings. The binding has some damage and a library catalog sticker. As expected with a piece this old, there are the usual fading and yellowing marks throughout.

We are working with the Clarkstown Police Department of Rockland County, NY. Their general line is (845) 639.5800. This incident has been reported to the FBI, who will report it to Interpol among other international forces they work with. We highly suspect it is still in the downstate NY region and if sold, among the same region.”
[in from philobiblos]

naughty naughty • New Zealand – a librarian has been sentenced to 11 months in prison for the theft of six rare books from the Massey University library . . . though she has leave to apply for home detention. What do you want to bet she gets it? Damn it has anyone EVER gotten jail time for stealing books?

cookies • The first ever PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, a $40,000 prize named for the late Nobel laureate goes to Philip Roth.

worth reading • from the NYT – 44 signatories of a manifesto published in Le Monde assert that it is time for the French to stop looking down on francophone authors. Where’s the fun in that?

cookies • South African author Nadine Gordimer awarded French Legion of Honor for her work about the inhumanity of apartheid

workaround • The author of the euthanasia manual The Peaceful Pill Handbook has struck a deal with Google Books to make the book which has been banned in Australia, available a downloadable document for US$30 ($A37).

essay • Lisa McLendon has a column in the Wichita Eagle - If a book is bad or boring do you finish it?

blog of note • Jeremy @ Philobiblos has a few interesting links as always including one to “Paul Collins’ new piece in the April issue of The Believer on alloynomic literature – that in which a famous author’s name is appropriated (usually but not always after their death). “

and here’s Jeremy write up of the Boston Fair - it’s so nice to watch bouncing baby booksellers – they get so excited about everything they see, every book and manuscript is all new. ah . . . to be young and unjaded.