As Halloween fast approaches, it's time to bundle up beside a fire and read a scary story late into the night. One of my favorite horror authors is H. P. Lovecraft, a writer who holds a special place in the heart of many bibliophiles for the wonderfully evocative (if entirely fictional) grimoires that populate his stories. I can't think of a fake collection I'd rather own than a complete run of the arcane tomes mentioned in Lovecraft's (and related authors') stories.

Lovecraft wrote in a letter once, "As for seriously-written books on dark, occult, and supernatural themes—in all truth they don't amount to much. That is why it's more fun to invent mythical works like the Necronomicon and Book of Eibon."

I couldn't agree more. 

Let's take a look at a few fake collection highlights:

The Book of Eibon (aka Liber Ivonis). " … that strangest and rarest of occult forgotten volumes … " Said to have been passed down through a series of archaic translations from a prehistoric original written in a lost language.

De Vermis Mysteriis (aka Mysteries of the Worm). The work of Ludwig Prinn, an alchemist and necromancer, who lived to an enormously advanced age before being burned at the stake in Brussels during the 16th century witch trials.

Cultes des Ghoules. A book of black magic written by Francois-Honore Balfour in 1702, published in France and denounced by Church authorities. Very few copies survived the subsequent suppression.

The King in Yellow. A banned and censored play, by an unknown author rumored to have committed suicide after publishing it in 1889. Anyone fortunate enough to obtain a copy, but foolish enough to read the play's infamous Second Act, goes mad or suffers some other terrible fate.

Pnakotic Manuscripts. Ancient manuscripts of occult lore passed down through the ages in the hands of secret cults. Long-protected by a mysterious organization known as the Pnakotic Brotherhood. Rumors exist of an English translation made in the 15h century that was subsequently lost.

And, of course, the Necronomicon itself--the fictional grimoire to end all fictional grimoires. Written in the 8th century by the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, the Necronomicon contains a history of the Old Ones and spells for summoning them. Its tortured history includes unnatural deaths, attempted suppression, and a variety of rumored translations (including one into English by the magician John Dee). 

This representative shelf from my fake book collection would be the envy of occult collectors the world over. 

What are some of your favorite fake books?

A fabulous new book is out this week, and I can't stop talking about it. It's innovative, fun, perfect for lovers of history, literature, and illustrated novels. Here's the gist: author Caroline Preston has put together a "scrapbook novel" with text set against full-color pages of historical ephemera, both of which combine to tell the story of Frankie Pratt, a smart young woman who graduates high school in 1920 and goes on to college, Paris, and the writing life. 

It's such a fresh idea, and each page is vivid and welcoming. You dive right into Frankie's story, told in typewritten snippets, and page through reading both the text and the images. The tone is smart and sassy. It's like reading an entire book of Anne Taintor.

Preston, who has written three previous novels, is also a former archivist at the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard's Houghton Library. She collected more than six hundred pieces of original 1920s ephemera to create this book, and she brings a real love of history to each page with reproductions of a Vassar yearbook, a third-class menu from the Mauretania, a 1924 Paris Blue Guide, a dust jacket for The Sun Also Rises, and so much more. Each page is a delight. 

On her website, Preston reveals her collecting tendencies. She writes, "My mother could be called a tidy pack rat--keeping many generations worth of diaries, letters, clippings, dresses and weird souvenirs in neatly labeled trunks and boxes." One of her favorite discoveries in the attic? A few pages of Ulysses corrected by Joyce himself, sent to Preston's grandmother by a friend who happened to be Sylvia Beach! 

The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt is an exciting novel in form and content, and that doesn't happen too often. Don't miss it.

This past Friday I traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest awards ceremony and reception at the Library of Congress. So with twenty-four hours on the clock, I visited two of the biggest and best libraries in the country—which happen to be right around the corner from each other. 

First stop: The Folger Shakespeare Library. I sauntered through Manifold Greatness, the amazing King James Bible exhibit, part of which traveled from Oxford. My favorites from the exhibit were William Blake's biblical illustrations, a "squirrel" binding, and Queen Elizabeth I's red velvet-bound Bishops' bible. I toured the reading room, which is so lovely because it retains an 'old-fashioned' library feel (all too often scrubbed out of our state-of-the-art libraries). Tapestries on the wall, stained-glass windows, heavy wooden tables, and a bust of the Bard scanning the room. My private tour included a trip to the special collections areas, where I marveled at a collection of porcelain collectibles, costumes, and yes—the 82 folios. I only wish I had had the forethought to book a ticket for Othello, playing in the cozy, Elizabethan-style Folger Shakespeare theatre.

From there I walked to the Madison Building of the Library of Congress, where the NCBCC awards ceremony was held. About fifty people attended—collectors, booksellers, donors—to watch the talented students accept their awards. Michael Dirda, longtime book critic and author most recently of On Conan Doyle: Or, The Whole Art of Storytelling gave a talk titled, "The Thrill of the Hunt: The Serendipitous Pleasures of Book Collecting." An enjoyable reception followed. More on this ceremony and the winning collectors will appear in our November e-letter next week. 

On Saturday I thought I might take in a good bookstore or two (Second Story was at the top of the list) … but John Y. Cole, director of the Center for the Book, invited attendees from the previous evening back to LOC for a special tour. I couldn't pass up that opportunity, and neither could FB&C freelancer Chris Lancette or David Culbert, chair of the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies. We met John Cole at 10:00, and for the next ninety minutes he and Barbara Tenenbaum wowed us with Jefferson's library and the current exhibit, Exploring the Early Americas, from the Jay I. Kislak Collection. 

Reykjavík was the most recent inductee into the UNESCO City of Literature network, joining Edinburgh, Melbourne, Dublin, and Iowa City.  Today, I thought we might take a look at Iceland from a rare books perspective.  And books don't come much rarer, or much more important, than Iceland's great contribution to world literature: its medieval epics, the Sagas of the Icelanders and the Poetic Edda.

The Sagas of the Icelanders are the histories of the Norse and Celtic settlers in Iceland in the 10th and 11th centuries.  They were written in the 13th and 14th centuries, likely transcribed from a long-standing oral tradition.  The Poetic Edda are a collection of Old Norse Poems, delving deeply into Norse mythology and Germanic legend.

Today, most of the original Saga manuscripts are held at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavík.  The Institute is named after Árni Magnússon (1663 - 1730), a librarian, scholar, and prodigious collector of manuscripts, who built an enormously important collection of early Icelandic texts.  Magnusson traveled through Iceland in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, purchasing every manuscript he could find and making copies of any he could not personally secure.  On his death, he left his collection, which included a number of the Sagas, to the Danish Royal Library, where it remained for two and half centuries.  (Denmark was, at the time, the sovereign ruler of Iceland).

A similar fate awaited the Poetic Edda.  The Edda are primarily found in one manuscript, the Codex Regius, or "Royal Book," likely written in the 1270s.  The book is missing from the historical record until 1643 when another important Iceland manuscript collector, Brynjólfur Sveinsson, discovered it and sent it to the King of Denmark as a gift.  The Codex was then held (along with the Sagas) in the Royal Library in Copenhagen until 1973 when Iceland demanded the return of a host of manuscripts deemed to be "Icelandic cultural property."  The Codex is now housed at the Magnusson Institute as well, which is, of course, a must-stop in Reykjavík for any visiting bibliophile.  

With the slew of literary activity surrounding the induction of Reykjavík into the UNESCO City of Literature network, now is a great time to visit Iceland and see the ancient manuscripts for yourself.  Other important manuscripts, including several of the Sagas, are held at the National and University Library of Iceland, also in Reykjavík.

It cannot escape notice that there's a bounteous crop of literary-inspired films coming to theaters this fall. Get out your popcorn—here's a preview.  

Anonymous is a film that proclaims that Shakespeare didn't write anything, and Edward deVere is the true author of what we've come to know as the Shakespearean canon. This idea is, of course, not without controversy. In the New York Times earlier this week, James Shapiro, author of Contested Will: Who Wrote Shakespeare?, wrote of the film: "The most troubling thing about "Anonymous" is not that it turns Shakespeare into an illiterate money-grubber. It's not even that England's virgin Queen Elizabeth is turned into a wantonly promiscuous woman who is revealed to be both the lover and mother of de Vere. Rather, it's that in making the case for de Vere, the film turns great plays into propaganda."

The Rum Diary, Hunter S. Thompson's semi-autobiographical novel, will come to screens later this month. (It premiered last week at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.) Johnny Depp plays American journalist Paul Kemp, who moves to Puerto Rico and drinks too much … rum. Depp also starred in the 1998 adaptation of Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. 

The new film version of The Three Musketeers has been called "a steampunk-influenced reinterpretation of the novel of the same title by Alexandre Dumas." This one has already released in other parts of the work, but is hitting U.S. theaters this week. 
The Raven is a literary thriller that re-casts Edgar Allan Poe as a detective who must figure out who is using his dark tales as a guide for brutal murders about town. The film's official trailer was just released, the buzz about John Cusack as Poe has been loud and clear, and people seem to be looking forward to this one. Alas, its release date is March 9, 2012. 

The Raven is a literary thriller that re-casts Edgar Allan Poe as a detective who must figure out who is using his dark tales as a guide for brutal murders about town. The film's official trailer was just released, the buzz about John Cusack as Poe has been loud and clear, and people seem to be looking forward to this one. Alas, its release date is March 9, 2012. 

An exhibition on the history of veterinary medicine is currently on display in the NLM (National Library of Medicine) reading room, featuring manuscripts and early printed books from the past five centuries. The exhibition focuses in particular on the history of the care and treatment of horses.

Michael North, Head of Rare Books, and curator of the exhibition, said he "was inspired to put on the show to help recognize World Veterinary Year, which commemorates the 250th anniversary of the opening of the first veterinary school in the world in Lyon, France in 1761 by Claude Bourgelat."

Bourgelat's school marked the first concentrated effort to study the horse from a scientific perspective. This new "veterinary science" would eventually replace the farrier system, in place since at least the medieval era. Farriers were blacksmiths who also trained in basic horse medicine and surgery. Soon after Bourgelat founded his school, veterinary science became a licensed profession requiring an academic degree.

North continued, "I also wanted to let researchers and the public know that NLM has a very important collection of rare books and early manuscript relating to veterinary medicine—possibly one of the best in the world—covering the period up to about 1850."

Exhibition highlights can be viewed in a Flickr stream here.

The exhibition is on display through January 23, 2012 in the NLM History of Medicine Reading Room, Building 38, on the NIH campus in Bethesda, Maryland. The Reading Room is open from 8:30 to 5:00, Monday through Friday.

Read more about the NLM's efforts to digitize early veterinary texts here.

The NLM also has a banner exhibition currently traveling around the country entitled "Life and Limb: The Toll of the Civil War. The exhibition focuses on the damage caused by mid 19th century weapons, amputation, artificial limbs, and post-war life for wounded veterans. The exhibition's upcoming schedule can be viewed here.

Today marks the beginning of a new series at the Fine Books blog profiling the next generation of antiquarian booksellers. We begin with Teri Osborn of William Reese Company in New Haven: 

 NP: What is your role within William Reese Co.?

TO: I think technically my title is Americana Cataloguer, but I always tell people that I'm here to do whatever Bill tells me to do. So far that's included—in addition to cataloguing—working book fairs, putting together lists of items for sale, packing up entire libraries, and trying to sell as many books as humanly possible.

NP: How did you get started in rare books?

TO: I was a rare book librarian in a former life. I went to library school because it was very practical and I would be employable. A friend said to me, "Hey, you should take this course on rare books with me," to which I replied, "That doesn't sound very practical." But I did take the course and have been smitten ever since. And I've been fortunate enough to work as a rare book professional since I graduated in 2005. I spent three years in libraries before serendipitously landing a job at the Reese Company and have never looked back.

NP: Most interesting book(s) you've handled?

TO: This is always a hard question for me. We have so many amazing items come through our shop. My first big project was a collection of Peruvian imprints (mainly 18th century, but a few earlier and a few later). That was a lot of fun. But the coolest thing I've handled wasn't really a book—I once catalogued a lock of Alexander Hamilton's hair, wrapped up in a letter from his wife to her minister. That was very cool.

NP: What do you love about rare books and/or the book trade?

TO: I love my job. I don't think I've ever had another job where I could say "I love my job" every day and mean it. One of the things I most enjoy is that I'm always learning something—you can't not learn while cataloguing for the Reese Company. I think my appreciation for types of books has shifted, as well. I started out dazzled by medieval manuscripts, but have grown to love early American books in original boards and crude calf bindings. Also, I love the people in the trade. Booksellers are an amazing bunch of folks with personalities so varied and interesting, who all share a common passion. I love being part of a community that speaks my language.

NP: What would you criticize about the book trade?

TO: Maybe the inability of some of its members to adapt? But even that, I think is changing, out of necessity if nothing else.

NP: What do you personally collect?

TO: Bookplates. I started off collecting Margaret Atwood's works, but have sort of evolved out of that. With the internet, collecting modern books is so simple, you just need money and some time to play online. Bookplates are a whole other story, though, because the traditional way to collect bookplates is to have your own made up and swap them with other collectors. That just strikes me as more interesting. I've also very recently started a collection of books on portable housing—inspired by Tiny Houses and the movement for simplified living. But that's still pretty small (only three books so far).

NP: Do you want to open your own shop some day?

TO: Nope.

NP: There's been a lot of talk recently about the uncertain future of the rare book trade. As a young bookseller, do you have any thoughts on this?

TO: I think the trade is evolving—and already has evolved significantly with the advent of the internet. But I'm not worried that people will stop collecting or reading books. Collecting interests have always shifted some with the trends and times, and new areas are always opening up. People collect zines and punk ephemera now—and ABAA dealers sell those things—so it's not just all glitzy modern firsts and incunables anymore. People have always collected and people will always collect. It's just a matter of adapting one's wares to suit the market, which is really nothing new.

There seems to be a lot of media coverage of book anniversaries this past week. Perhaps closest to my heart is the fiftieth anniversary of Catch-22 this week. This novel is easily in my top ten. When I worked in the book publishing business in the late nineties, I supervised a "classic edition" of it, which afforded me the great honor of corresponding with Heller a few times. The reprint itself is nothing special—a hardcover with deckled edges, and the dust jacket features a serial design—but my personal copy is warmly inscribed to me from Heller. Can't beat that. 

The Phantom Tollbooth is also celebrating its fiftieth anniversary, as anyone who has read our fall feature, "Fe Fi Fo Feiffer," will know. There's a new 50th anniversary edition out, as well as an Annotated Phantom Tollbooth by Leonard S. Marcus, who wrote our feature. In this week's New Yorker, Adam Gopnik spends some time with Jules Feiffer and Norton Juster to talk about their collaboration fifty years later.

Art Spiegelman's Maus is about to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary (it was originally published in two parts, one in 1986, the other in 1991*), and his new book, MetaMaus, is making headlines. It's an analysis of Maus, its format, and its history. Publishers Weekly has a great interview with Spiegelman about the intersection of books, art, and technology. In it Spiegelman says, "… while bookstores are all in a tizzy, one of the more lively and alive sections is the so-called "graphic novel" section, because those are harder to replace." Dead on.

*A previous version of this article misidentified the date of the first publication of Maus as 1992. That was the year it won the Pulitzer Prize. —Ed.