For the first time, after who knows how many thousands of years, the sacred texts of the world's three monastic faiths, Judiasm, Christianilty and Islam have been gathered together for an exhibition at the British Library.The exhibit Sacred: Discover What We Share: The World's Greatest Collection of Jewish, Christian and Muslim Holy Books brings together the rarest sacred texts in existence.Highlights include:A tattered copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls andA"Qur'an commissioned for a 14th-century Mongol ruler of modern Iran who was born a shaman, baptised a Christian, and converted first to Buddhism, then Sunni and finally Shia Islam."There is a...
The Book Review Shuffle
The Book Review sections of all major newspapers are under intense pressure these days.The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) campaign to Save the Book Review is a noble effort and one I fully support but the problem is not in saving the Book Review sections it is about reinventing them.It is about widening the scope of their missions. The book landscape has changes dramatically in the last 10 years while the book review sections, for the most part, have barely moved.It is about serving all the different types of book lovers that exist in our communities not simply covering newly...
Which Way Is Up? Trying to Make Sense of the Current State of the Bookshop
If you are an independent bookseller and your door is still open you are to be commended. The systematic onslaught against independent businesses that is a byproduct of our current economic policy and technological advances has been steady and ruthless for the last decade. Luckily the bookstore is faring better than the independent (or the patronizing tag the mom & pop) hardware or drug store. I don't have the numbers but I would bet the % of these that have gone out of business in the last 10 years is far greater than the % of bookstores that have closed...
Book Arts Roundup: JAB, Kiefer, Buzz, Bindings and Hidy
It is nice to see JAB (Journal of Book Arts) being published again. After a few year hiatus issue 21 has just been released. The journal is now being published by Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts and is "Still dedicated to providing a forum for critical, theoretical, and creative engagement with artists’ books". A highlight of the new issue is Elisabeth Long's article Editioning One-of-a-Kind Multiples: Notes Toward An Understanding of Anselm Kiefer’s BooksI concur that the display of Keifer's book art (or book art as a whole) has suffered from museum curators not having the...
Hovering Over New Arrivals
University of Washington Bookstore employee "preparing for the 2008 Shelving Olympics."Via Shelf Life