Due to the changing landscape in the book world many booksellers have closed up shop recently but this story tops them all. Over 100 bookstalls were demolished in one fell swoop in the Koti area of Andhra Pradesh in southern India. The government has built new stalls for the booksellers elsewhere and when the November 4 deadline to move came and went the demolition team showed up with many book stall owners still entrenched in their stalls"The Koti book stalls besides being a landmark are popular among the students for availability of all kinds of secondhand booksPolice resorted to lathi-charge...
New York Times Visits the Arion Press
Nice plug for Andrew Hoyem and his Arion Press in the Week Ahead section of today's Sunday New York Times. Michael Kimmelman paid the press a visit and in its San Francisco digs and ties it in nicely to the Arion booth at the International Print Fair in New York.There is still hopeNYT article hereArion Press here
Bly Stays Home
Photo by Kyndall Harkness, Minneapolis Star & TribuneKudos to the University of Minnesota for coming up with the money to acquire the archive of Robert Bly, arguably Minnesota's greatest literary figure since John Berryman.For $775,000 they get:1. 80,000 pages of handwritten manuscripts2. his journal spanning nearly 50 years3. notebooks of his "morning poems";4. drafts of translations;5. hundreds of audio and videotapes,6. correspondence and first dibs on all future outputIt is a refreshing change to have an author's archive stay in his hometown. So much of a writer's output relates to their sense of place and something is lost each time...
Book Thief Hall of Shame
Another book thief caught - another book thief goes unpunishedNorman Buckley, a librarian at Manchester Central Library in England was convicted of stealing more than 450 books in a little over a year and then selling some of them online. The judge stated that Buckley "threatened the city's literary heritage" then handed down a 15 month suspended sentence meaning he doesn't serve any jail time. One would think the judge might have a higher regard for the city's literary heritage.A librarian caught stealing books - Oouch!Read full article