BibliophileBullpen

* see? I’m making up my own days again

birthdays •
68 BCE - Roman poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Venusia.
1889 – Hervey Allen (d 1949) novelist Anthony Adverse
1894 – James Thurber, American writer (d. 1961) Columbus OH.
1906 - Richard Llewellyn, Welsh novelist (d. 1983)
1949 – Mary Gordon, NYC novelist Final Payments, the Company of Women

calendar •
1896 - Start of Sherlock Holmes – Adventure of Missing 3 Quarter.
1949 - Anita Loos’ Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
opens at Ziegfeld Theater New York City for 740 performances
1951 - Betty Smith’s Tree Grows in Brooklyn closes at Alvin Theater New York City after 267 performances

POD people • Cool Tools blog gives the print on demand site LULU the old college try and shares the results.

mitzvah • A collection of rare books owned by ‘the best read man in England’ Julian Blackwell of Blackwell’s bookshops, has been given by his family to Oxford’s Bodleian Library.

blog of note • Bruce has been at it again . . . banging away at the keyboard over at Oddball Observations.

more in a minute

*SEE? i told you I was gonna start making up my own holidays.

calendar •
1841 – 1st date in James Clavell’s novel Tai-Pan

1862 – On meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, President Abraham Lincoln remarked “So, this is the little lady who made the big war.” yeah, like it was all HER fault.

1864 - Lewis Carroll sends the handwritten manuscript of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Alice Liddell as an early Christmas Present.

1865 - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll published in US

1928 - Philip Barry’s Holiday, premieres in New York City

site worth seeing • Complete text of Alice in Wonderland complete with Arthur Rackham illustrations. (via Artpassion who also sells such as posters)

lost n’found • Yale’s long missing Lewis Carroll letter found on eBay and recovered. The seller claims the chain of custody wound through our unsuspecting friends at Whitlock Farm Booksellers.

mitzvah • Retired journalist Roger Mudd has donated his 1,500 volume collection of 20th-century Southern writers to Washington and Lee University,

worth hearing • from NPR Talk of the Nation spends an hour mulling over the question “What is a classic?”, in honor of the Everyman’s Library 100th anniversary

cookies • The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America announced yesterday that James Gunn will be honored as the next Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master. (via Sci Fi Bookworm)

banktoaster • another timewaster - Scribble, a flash game where you draw lines to keep the blots from falling to their death.

event • the Salon International de la Bibliophile, will be held for the first time in Brussels from Dec 7-10. Via Rare Book Review blog.

today’s excuse • My stress has been manifesting as physical aliments, nausea, vomiting, back ache, migraines. Dealing with my mother gives me stress. Ergo my mother makes me ill. As well as the stream of agency reps, that have been arriving to assess my mother’s mental health. I say it’s spinach and I say the hell with it.

events •
30th Boston International Antiquarian Book Fair (ABAA) November 17-19, Boston MA
The Boston Book, Print and Ephemera Show, at the Radisson Hotel November 18, Boston MA

calendar •
1835 – Charles Darwin’s voyage published in Cambridge Philosophical Society
1849 - Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death as a socialist agitator; the sentence will be commuted to four years’ hard labor in Siberia.

birthdays •
1889 - George S. Kaufman, American playwright (d. 1961)
1922 - José Saramago, Portuguese writer is born, Nobel laureate
1930 - Chinua Achebe is born in Ogidi, Nigeria

audio • from NPR – A group of writers has collected more than 800 fading landscape terms in a new book – Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape. Their hope is to keep words such as “kiss tank” and “lover’s leap” from going extinct.

mitzvah • In recognition of all our disabled military veterans, Baen Books will provide its books to fans who are blind, paralyzed, or dyslexic, or are amputees, in electronic form free of charge, effective immediately. Many Baen authors are veterans themselves, using a military setting as the setting of their tales. Right now convalescing vets might welcome an exciting, fast-action tale to pass the time.

burn baby burn • Libraries find graphic novels under assault

cookies • The Echo Maker by Richard Powers won the National Book Award for fiction and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl by Timothy Egan won for nonfiction.

blog of note • Jeremy Dibbell of Philobiblos has been very productive lately, posting lots of yummy things, that I wish I had gotten to first.

* DAMN . . . I missed Clean out Your Fridge day.

1950 - The comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz is first published in seven US newspapers.

1967 - Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.

birthdays
1879 - Wallace Stevens, American poet (d. 1955)
1904 - Graham Greene, British novelist (d. 1991)
1911 - Jack Finney, American author (d. 1995)

embedding - Northern Irish author Jason Johnson is set to sell the right to appear as a literary character in his third book to the highest online bidder. just one little question . . . . who cares?

mitzvah • Robert Anton Wilson is still broke and dying at home,
donations can be made to Bob directly to the Paypal account olgaceline@gmail.com. You can also send a check payable to Robert Anton Wilson to Dennis Berry c/o Futique Trust, P.O. Box 3561, Santa Cruz, CA 95063

idiot alert • Melbourne University has removed two books – Defence of the Muslim Lands and Join the Caravan – from its library shelves after they were refused classification by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. Vice-chancellor Glyn Davis has complained that this will limit the legitimate research of staff and students. whatever happened to KNOW they enemy?. . seems to me ignorance is what got us in this mess in the first place.

cookies • Katharina Hacker won Germany’s top award for contemporary novels, the 25,000-euro ($32,000) German Book Prize, for her novel, “Die Habenichtse” (The Have-Nothings).

1503 - Michelangelo begins work on his David.

birthday boys •
1876 - Sherwood Anderson, American writer (d. 1941)
1894 -J.B. Priestley, English playwright and novelist (d. 1984)
1916 – Roald Dahl, Welsh writer (d. 1990)

future shock • The New York Times has developed a stand-alone digital reader that’s specifically modeled on … the printed newspaper. via Y. that’s gonna make subway reading a whole lot more interesting.

mitzvah • Japanese Lafcadio Hearn collector gives rare US newspapers to the University of Cincinnati. via Y.

talking head • from the Times Online an interview with Eamonn de Burca, the founder of Eamonn de Burca Rare Books via Y.

lost n’found • A handwritten manuscript by the Irish dramatist Sean O’Casey has been rediscovered more than 80 years after it disappeared. via Y.

first for thai • An international children’s library will open its doors next year - the first of it’s kind in Thailand. via Y.

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

birthdays • 1902 - Ogden Nash, American poet (d. 1971)
The Dog

The truth I do not stretch or shove
When I state that the dog is full of love.
I’ve also found, by actual test,
A wet dog is the lovingest.

Ogden Nash

event • Western author Elmer Kelton of San Angelo is among Texas writers who will be participating in the sixth annual West Texas Book and Music Festival Sept. 19-23 in Abilene.

mitzvah • rare books dealer William Reese donating $100K to restore Yale’s map collection.

something new • from NPR a piece on the Magician and the Cardsharp. Author Karl Johnson documents Vernon’s quest to find the one man who was able to perform the holy grail of card tricks — the so-called “center deal,” dealing a specific card from anywhere in the deck, undetected.

audio • From NPR’s Fresh Air – Biographer Michael Juergs talks about the admission of Nobel prize-winner novelist Gunter Grass that he served in the Waffen SS during World War II.

naughty • former chairman of the board of J. Paul Getty Trust, David Gardner has returned nearly $100,000 of the money he was paid to write a coffee-table book on the history of the arts institution after he left the board in 2004 but never produced.

incredibly naughty • Thieves steal books from a library display of stolen and damaged books.

slow news • from the Guardian – a document uncovered by Spanish historians claims Christopher Columbus, was a greedy and vindictive tyrant who saved some of his most violent punishments for his own followers.

OH • 19th Annual Cincinnati Book Fair
UK • Scot Edinburgh International Book Festival
UK • Discworld Convention 2006
FN • Finncon 2006

birthdays •
1930 – Ted Hughes, English poet (d. 1998)
1932 - V. S. Naipaul, West Indian-born writer, Nobel Prize laureate

ya think? • John Mortimer of Rumpold fame claims Britain is in danger of “selling out to fascism” in the way it is dealing with the threat of terrorism. why should the US be the only one’s doing it?

mitzvah • Alabama’s Cullman County Coterie Club project delivers hundreds of books to soldiers serving in Iraq.

feeling safer? • Vermont St. Michael’s College professor Nick Clary had 12 years worth of scholarly research on “Hamlet” impounded by British airport officials.

cool stuff • Amazing Spider-Man comic book reprints are being offered as inserts in some US newspapers. The first insert, which reprints 1962’s inaugural “Spider-Man” comic book, is slated to appear this Sunday. Other installments of the webslinger’s adventures will be available weekly through December.

* Portunes was a god of keys and doors and livestock

distopia alert • from the Globe and Mail – Martin Levin’s “No Books, the Terrorists have Won.”

audio • Nora Ephron guests on NPR’s On Point to talk about her new book on aging : I Feel Bad About My Neck.

cookies • Alice Munro became the 47th recipient of the MacDowell Medal, which recognizes a lifetime contribution to the arts.

talking head • Courier-Journal interviews Kim Edwards about her debut novel, The Memory Keeper’s Daughter, a suprise best-seller.

obit of note • John Raymond Godley at 85, the author of a number of books including a biography of the notorious Dutch art forger Han van Meegeren.

mitzvah • The Georgia Center for the Book in DeKalb receives major programming grant.

popularity contest • John Sutherland chairman of last year’s Man Booker committee weighs in on this years longlist.

something old • John Allemang in his Globe and Mail Book a Day column takes on the Iliad.

<--- BTW: This is one of my all time favorite book covers.

*made you look.

I don’t know whether to label this just a bright idea or a mitzvah (worthy deed) it is only slightly self serving but can give one a sense of satisfaction.

Go to your local library and walk up and down these fiction section . . . or a non-fiction section, doesn’t matter. Unless your library is brand spanking new, the shelf copies of the BEST books are the ones in the WORST condition. To a bookseller this is an anathema but to a librarian this is a ‘good’ thing. Local librarians aren’t booksellers or archivists their job is to CIRCULATE the material INSIDE the book. Road wear is to be expected. A book’s popularity is judge by it’s mileage.

Over the years when I am feeling financially flush, (which hasn’t been as often as I’d like) I have donated new copies of classic books to my library’s collection. Three Musketeers, Portrait of a Lady and most recently the Chosen. Don’t confuse donating a book for the collection, with the books that are donated to be SOLD to BUY books for the collection. If you are donating a book FOR the collection don’t expect a lot of thanks at first, most people just give money to buy books with or copies of books they have written. The library may just think you are a nutter.

Stroll the library shelves and make a few notes about which titles that are in the worst shape that you would like to donate. Then as you go about your routine buying and selling books when you come across the titles inexpensively and they are in acceptable shape you can pick them up for the donation. (this is a tax deductible activity kids) It should be VG- to VG+ trade edition hardcover, preferably with a dust jacket – a book club edition only if no hardcover is produced – remember it’s gotta suffer those slings and arrows outrageous fortune. Most libraries aren’t hung up on NEWness, the classic titles we are talking about aren’t ALWAYS available in hardcover new. I say MOST because I remember a time when librarians told me to my face they could only accept NEW books into the collection. I doubt with all the budget cuts one would say that now.

Then you have to track down the librarian in charge of that section and practically HAND the book to them. You can hand them their own copy at the same time to make your point. In my experience they have been profusely greatful and I get a ‘donated by’ bookplate in the front of the book for my troubles. (this is actually a sneaky way of advertising if you get them to put your bookstore name on it.)

What have we learned? the library gets a book, the patrons get to continue reading classic literature without having pages fall out, I get a tax deduction and a smug sense of self satisfaction. And a good day was had by all.

Here endeth the lesson.
j