“Deaccessioning”
“Worse than a travesty, it’s a tragedy”: Bryan Garner writes about the trend of “deaccessioning” books from university libraries.
Judging books by their covers
New York Review Books Classics.
Feminist Baby
Complaints on Amazon — for instance, that the book doesn’t help the title character “grow to a strong, open-minded individual who recognizes all the paths available to her” — seem to forget that this book is about the very young, who do indeed throw up, and throw their toys.
NYRB sale
New York Review Books is having a winter sale, fifty books at half price.
For complete works
An anthology is, almost always, a textbook. And it is much easier to fall in love with a (whole) work of literature or philosophy than to fall in love with a textbook.
Isaac Barrow on bookishness
“He that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter.”
All the books are green, almost
The Washington Post reports on “the odd assortment of books that make up the White House Christmas book tree.”
Library slip (1934–1992)
A long time.
The Card Catalog
An illustrated history of the card catalog, from cuneiform days onward.
DISCARD
On the back flyleaf, stamped in red: DISCARD.
The unmysterious Art of Discarding
Such a mysterious title: it suggested to me a meditation on object impermanence, a book that might be found in the gift shop of the Museum of Jurassic Technology, next to In Praise of Shadows.
FSRC: annual report
Our two-person adventure in reading, in its second year.
Book battles
From The Wall Street Journal : “When Couples Fight Over Books.”
Preventing discards
A tale of librarians seeking to prevent discards.
Nat Hentoff (1925–2017)
“I was addicted to books.”
Reaching for a book
“‘When I hear the word “Trump,”’ he said, ‘I reach for a book.’”
“Brr-r”
Nancy is right.
Bookstore-less Bronx
The Bronx is about to lose a Barnes & Noble, the borough’s lone general-interest bookstore.
One or more night stands
“What night stand? I don’t have a night stand. What’s with ‘night stand’? Why do you assume that that’s where everyone keeps their books?”
Gotham tumblr
A tumblr devoted to the inventory of Manhattan’s defunct Gotham Book Mart.
Not reading
Arthur Schopenhauer: “A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”
Books and records v. things
From Sister of the Bride.
One that got away
An Italian-American bookstore opened in Boston’s North End.
FSRC: annual report
Reading together: seventeen books so far.
Book tour
A Scholastic Book Services truck, sighted in the wild.
A bonus
A word in a 17th-century gradual.
Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary
Beverly Cleary celebrates her hundredth birthday today.
Leaving empty-handed
It’s sad when leaving a bookstore empty-handed becomes routine.
Libraries and the book
Alberto Manguel: “If we change the role of libraries and librarians without preserving the centrality of the book, we risk losing something irretrievable.”
Walter Benjamin on collectors
“How many cities have revealed themselves to me in the marches I undertook in pursuit of books!”