Sunday, December 06, 2009

Links & Reviews

- On last Saturday's "Weekend Edition," Scott Simon and Paul Collins visited the vault in theFolger Shakespeare Library. Paul adds a bit more at Weekend Stubble. A great segment.

- Mark Leslie Lefebvre writes on print-on-demand technology.

- The new website of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) is now live. Check it out! It includes a thoughtful essay by John Wronoski of Lame Duck Books, "Young Booksellers, Young Books: The Prospects of the American Rare Book Trade."

- The December Fine Books Notes is up.

- Jill Lepore's got an essay in the New Yorker on the history of health care reform in America.

- A new installment of "Dispatches from a Public Librarian" is up at McSweeney's.

- The Royal Society has mounted a website highlighting some of its most "trailblazing" publications. [h/t Ian]

- Archivists at the University of Delaware have located a Thomas Jefferson letter among the recently-acquired archives of the Rockwood Museum. The 1808 letter by Jefferson acknowledges the death of John Dickinson, saying of him "A more estimable man, or truer patriot, could not have left us." [h/t TJMonticello]

- A new exhibition at the Houghton Library, "London As It Is," an examination of the "creative process of Thomas Shotter Boys," British artist known for his lithographs of London street life. The exhibit will be in place through April 2010. [h/t Houghton Library Blog]

- Speaking of exhibits, a reminder of the Morgan Library's "William Blake's World: 'A New Heaven Is Begun'" which runs through 3 January 2010, and "A Woman's Wit: Jane Austen's Life and Legacy," which is up through 14 March 2010. The Morgan has also allowed the NYT to mount images of the entire manuscript of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, in a neat online presentation.

- News from the University of Chicago that forensic science has proven that the "Archaic Mark," a small 44-page Gospel of Mark, is a late 19th-century hoax rather than an authentic early text. A paper by the scientists involved will be published in an upcoming issue of Novum Testamentum.

- In the TLS, John Barnard asks "Who Killed John Keats?"

- The blog Largeheartedboy is tracking the "Best of" lists for 2009, aggregating them here. [h/t GalleyCat]. Some new lists today include the Boston Globe best fiction and nonfiction for 2009.

- In the NYTimes Magazine, Dr. Lisa Sanders diagnoses Sherlock Holmes, Jeff Bezos answers questions about the Kindle, and Ben Zimmer covers the creation of a new language for James Cameron's upcoming film Avatar.

Reviews

- I had not intended to provide any links to reviews of Sarah Palin's Going Rogue, but Sam Tanenhaus' review in the New Yorker is worth a read.

- Tim Rutten reviews Mark Lamster's Master of Shadows in the LATimes.

- Nicholson Baker reviews Ken Auletta's Googled in the NYTimes. Kinda funny to see Baker going after a writer for making unfair characterizations of his subjects ... but he coins a new term for the pre-Google days, "antegoogluvian" (which I quite like).

- Stuart Kelly reviews Umberto Eco's The Infinity of Lists in The Scotsman.

- In the Washington Post, Carolyn See reviews Jack Lynch's The Lexicographer's Dilemma.

- Michael Dirda reviews Jenny Uglow's A Gambling Man: Charles II's Restoration Game in the Washington Post.