It's difficult to believe that it's been nearly four years since Jasper Fforde's last Thursday Next book, but the sixth installment in the series, One of Our Thursdays is Missing has arrived at last (from Hodder & Stoughton in the UK and Viking in the US).

The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books is a book of interest to we bibliophiles, published this month by Soft Skull Press. Co-editors C. Max Magee (of The Millions) and Jeff Martin, call it a collection of "inventive, thoughtful, and funny pieces in which Jonathan Lethem, Rivka Galchen, Benjamin Kunkel, Joe Meno, Deb Olin Unferth, and many others consider the landscape as the literary world faces a revolution, a sudden change in the way we buy, produce, and read books." They continue in their introduction, "With the advent of e-readers, near infinite data storage capability, and a shift to a more sustainable and digitized culture, a sea change is upon us. Will books survive? And in what form? Can you really say you're reading a book without holding one in your hands? These and other similar questions are guiding the current and sometimes heated conversations going on in bookstores, universities, libraries and living room book clubs." City Arts has a short review, and this one-minute book trailer is fun to watch.


 

In New Orleans, along the banks of the Mississippi River, the Southern Food & Beverage Museum (SoFAB) captures the essence of southern culture and cuisine. Make it your first stop on your next trip to New Orleans and get the inside scoop on those quirky southern appetites. Packed with several galleries and changing exhibits, you'll find stunning black & white  photographs chronicling generations of farmers and fisherman, rusted Bargs Rootbeer and Falstaff Beer signs perched inches from the ceiling, and America's Cocktail Museum showcasing a collection or rare spirits and books including Prohibition-era literature.

But more than a museum SoFAB is a research center stocked with a 9,000 book library offering a timeline in Southern culinary culture and traditions.

 

Earlier this week the University of Nevada, Reno proposed $26 million in budget cuts, reductions that would lead to closure of some programs and departments including the Special Collections Department of the University Libraries. The university's press release of March 7, announcing the proposed cuts in response to a budget shortfall projected to be as high as $59 million by July 2012, is available in a story from the Reno Gazette-Journal. 

Catalogue Review: Philadelphia Rare Book & Manuscripts Company

Well here it my second week of weekly catalogue reviews and already I'm struggling to decide what constitutes a catalogue versus a "list," and if it really matters in this forum. I'm leaning toward the idea that any grouping of titles presented to potential buyers that is outstanding--whether for its design or content--is fair game. What caught my eye this week was the six-page list circulated by David Szewczyk & Cynthia Davis Buffington, proprietors of PRB&M, titled Libraries -- Librarians -- Labors!

What a fantastic topic. The selection is encompassing and, dare I add, whimsical, making it all the more enjoyable. How about a report from 1826 written by the architect of the Capitol building Charles Bulfinch on fire-proofing the library room ($40). A limited edition of T. S. Eliot's 1952 address to the London Library wherein he expressed his belief that "The great private libraries have had their day, and are gone" ($60). A printed edition of a speech on Northwest history given by the man who would become the first librarian of the Newberry Library ($70). The presentation copy of the printed "Dedicatory Exercises" of the Washburn Memorial Library in Livermore, Maine from 1885 sounds like a gem ($150).

Another thing to like about this list is the prices. They range from $12.50 for the Society for the History of Belgian Protestantism that includes a duplicate handwritten letter from the Society's agent to the librarian of the NJ Historical Society, to $1,675 for librarian Charles Nice Davies' own first edition of John Jewel's A Defence of the Apologie of the Churche of Englande...(1567). The rest fall between the two, making these titles within the grasp of most collectors. It reminds me that PRB&M did an "under $500" case at last year's New York Antiquarian Book Fair, primarily to entice younger and new collectors. It's admirable, and lists like this make one optimistic for the future of book collecting.

Coming up this weekend, the 30th annual Florida Antiquarian Book Fair. In honor of that, the Florida Antiquarian Booksellers Association has posted an interview on the fair's beginnings with Michael Slicker, ABAA proprietor of Lighthouse Books in St. Petersburg, FL.

 

One hundred years ago, naturalist John Muir published his most famous work, My First Summer in the Sierra. (Here he is posing for B. Greene, just two years before that). It's one of those books that has become part of the nature/environmental canon, alongside Thoreau, Rachel Carson, Henry Beston, John Burroughs, Aldo Leopold, and Edward Abbey. That is to say, it's one worth reading, and if that's piqued your interest, there's a new illustrated edition out today, with photography by Scot Miller.  

The text, of course, can be had anywhere. What this edition offers is seventy-two gorgeous photographs, taken over the past twelve years. Flora, fauna, landscape -- the same panoramas that Muir himself viewed. What's more, several pages from Muir's "Sierra Journal" manuscript (the original of which is housed at the Holt-Atherton Special Collections, University of the Pacific Library) are reproduced herein; he had lovely handwriting, certainly neater than Thoreau's scrawl. Several of Muir's sketches are also seen here for the first time in print.

Miller, has been involved in three other photobooks of this nature (no pun intended): Walden: 150th Anniversary Illustrated Edition of the American Classic, Cape Cod: Illustrated Edition of the American Classic, and First Light: Five Photographers Explore Yosemite's Wilderness. He and his wife own and operate Sun to Moon Gallery, a fine arts gallery in Dallas, Texas. He will be doing several book-related presentations and signings, particularly in California and Texas, from now until the book's formal centennial in June.

Visit the book's website to read more, see some of the stunning photography (limited edition prints are also available for sale), and/or watch a book trailer. 

Comic books are collectible. There's no doubt about that. I wrote about the recent high-priced, and highly prized, comics of heroes like Superman and Batman for Fine Books & Collections Magazine recently.

What's more, in regards to comic books, an old Archie comic book sold for the price of a house a few days ago.

Now, a Spider-Man comic book, the first ever appearance of the web slinger, sold for over $1 million. Art Daily has more, here.

The article reads, in part, "It's not the highest price ever paid for a comic book, an honor that goes to "Action Comics" No. 1 with Superman on the cover, which went for $1.5 million. But Fishler says the price paid is the most for a book from the Silver Age, the mid-1950s to about 1970. "The fact that a 1962 comic has sold for $1.1 million is a bit of a record-shattering event," he said. "That something that recent can sell for that much and be that valuable is awe-inspiring."

Prompted by yesterday's blog from the American Antiquarian Society, I watched the Patriot Printer video on Vimeo (where a few other videos also look enticing, such as Vincent Golden's one on antebellum American newspapers). PP is a dramatic reenactment of how early printer and AAS founder, Isaiah Thomas, printed a 1775 edition of the Massachusetts Spy. Check it out, ye lovers of American history and printing!

The Patriot Printer from American Antiquarian Society on Vimeo.