And the National Book Award for the Altered Book of the Year goes to...Valerie Plame's recently released memoir "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House," In fact it just might be the most widely distributed altered book in publishing history.About 15% of the entire book is visibly altered with gray bars eliminating text, sometimes for pages at a time. The CIA originally wanted 35% of the text to be redacted. A court battle ensued between the publisher, Simon & Schuster, and the government. The Bush administration won by about 15%.The title of the book...
Pull the Plug on Book TV
or at least let's change the name. How about Books and History; Books and Washington; Non-Fiction for the Masses.Book TV has as little to do with the diverse culture and life of books as the Bush administration has to do with democracy.Before you throw the book at me for this one head over to the Guardian to read Daniel Kalder's piece Literary TV to put you off reading forever.He amusingly reminds us how downright ridiculous much of Book TV is and how extended viewing can be seen as a low grade form of torture guaranteed to ruin your weekend.Book TV...
Library of Congress Refutes Washington Post Article: Books are Not Missing They’re Just Not on the Shelf
The folks at the Library of Congress (LOC) got a lot of heat on Capitol Hill last week. Much of it centered around the Washington Post story, Materials Missing at Library of Congress, proclaiming that 17% of the material at the LOC is missing.Matt Raymond over at the Library of Congress blog shares with us the library's response via an article by Gail Fineberg in the internal LOC newsletter the Gazette titled IG's NOS Report Prompts Questions and Answers (IG = Inspector General; NOS = Not on Shelf). Excerpt is reproduced below.The library claims that all the missing material is...
The Black Hole at the Library of Congress
Jefferson Building Stacks, Deck 15A recent survey at the LOC found that over 10% of the collection has been misplaced and was unable to be retrieved when requested. Where these items are nobody knows.A little over 10% might not seem like a substantial attrition rate but when you consider that the Library of Congress holds more than 130 million items then things get a little scary.That's over 13 million items! For a little perspective the entire Seattle Public Library collection (including books, audio books, CDs, DVDs, books in large type, and magazines and newspapers) is 2 million items.Part of the...
What’s In David Copperfield’s Warehouse?
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...