The FBI raided David Copperfield's warehouse in Las Vegas looking for evidence in connection with a rape investigation underway in Seattle.What's in that warehouse? Beside Copperfield's Lingerie collection how about one of the largest and most important collections of rare books and related material on conjuring and the allied arts! The warehouse is actually named the International Museum & Library of the Conjuring Arts.The Museum was featured in Mark Singer's great profile on Ricky Jay that appeared in the New Yorker Magazine in 1993. Jay, an avid book collector, had curated the collection in the 1980's and was present when...
Three Reasons Why We Don’t Read Poetry
John Lundberg has a piece over at Huffington Post today titled Why You Should Read Poetry...Yes, Poetry. He begins by talking about a reading Anna Akhmatova gave in Moscow after World War II. The place was packed and the audience went wild, "When she finally closed her books, she received such thunderous applause that Joseph Stalin asked who'd organized the ovation. The man knew power when he saw it. "The power of poets cannot be underestimated. Unfortunately these days in America poetry "is best known for the simple, sentimental verses found in Hallmark cards and the lyrics of pop music....
Drinking bookshelves
The Sloom & Slordig design firm came up with these in 2002.Each book gets a box the rest is up to you.Thanks to Design Milk for the lead
One for the Cookbook Hall of Shame
Cooking With Pooh: Yummy Tummy Cookie Cutter Treats. Published by Mouse Works in 1995. Target audience: Ages 4-8Yikes. Imagine this in the hands of a young reader who takes the title literally!How did this one get past the editors?Thanks to A Wandering Eye for the lead
A Step Closer to a World Digital Library
"Libraries are inherently islands of freedom and antidotes to fanaticism" - James H. Billington, Librarian of CongressThe prototype for the World Digital Library was unveiled yesterday to a group of reporters in Paris.The Library, expected to launch in 2008, is an online initiative created by the U.S. Library of Congress, the U.N. cultural body UNESCO and 5 international partner libraries; Egypt's Bibliotheca Alexandrina, the National Library of Egypt, the National Library of Brazil, the National Library of Russia and the Russian State Library"The international digital library will be free and multilingual, with contributions from around the world, including rare books,...