Sunday, February 26, 2012

Links & Reviews

- New from the Folger, Shakespeare's Sisters: Voices of English and European Woman Writers, 1500-1700. The exhibit was reviewed in the NYTimes this week by Edward Rothstein.

- Tom Scheinfeldt's "Nobody cares about the library" is a must-read post of the week.

- From the really delightful Public Domain Review, Claire Preston examines Thomas Browne's Musaeum Clausum in "Lost Libraries."

- Paul Collins was on NPR to discuss the reissue of William Wallace Cook's 1928 book Plotto.

- Brian Cassidy's new catalogue (his sixth) is now online [PDF].

- Another fantastic post by Sarah Werner at The Collation, "Learning from Mistakes" (on what we can glean about the production process from errors that appear in early modern printed books).

- In this week's New Yorker, Lizzie Widdicome profiles Quentin Rowan, who found himself in hot water last year over plagiarism in his novel Assassin of Secrets.

- From the John Rylands Library, First Impressions, a site designed to display the spread of print across Europe.

- An official with the German cultural ministry was found to have thousands of books stolen from libraries in his home.

- At 8vo, Brooke Palmieri calls for a revitalized Federal Writers Project (or something like it). And Brooke is also featured in the Fine Books "Bright Young Things" series this week!

- For "Weekend Edition Saturday", Jacki Lydon visited the Providence Athenaeum, one of the most fascinating and historic libraries around.

- News this morning that Maine bookstore chain Mr. Paperback will be closing all ten of its stores by April.

- Flooding from a burst pipe at the Auckland Central Library was threatening the rare book and map collections this weekend.

- Jerry Morris treats us to some images and stories about books from his extensive collection of Johnsoniana.

- Over at the AAS blog, Ashley Cataldo uses a great J. Francis Ruggles book label to highlight collections relating to printing and bookselling history.

- From Biblioguerilla, one of my very favorite printers' devices.

- Booktryst notes the (re)surfacing of an early, apparently unpublished Tennessee Williams poem, currently offered for sale by Goldwasser Rare Books.

Reviews

- Irvin Yalom's The Spinoza Problem; review by Ron Charles in the Washington Post.

- Matthew Pearl's The Technologists; review by Janet Maslin in the NYTimes.