Sunday, April 20, 2008

Links & Reviews

- Tim notes two LT PALINET Podcasts from this week: Part one; Part two.

- Paul Collins has taken up Caleb Crain's 2006 challenge to find an earlier usage of the phrase "Mad--mad, I tell you!" than James Herne's 1879 play "Within an Inch of His Life." Paul discovered the phrase used in Caroline Hyde Butler Laing's 1855 novel The Old Farm House. Good find! Caleb comments here.

- Getting very meta here, but Laura at bookn3rd had a good links post this week; I recommend them all. In another post she mentioned a great piece from Deeplinking that I had saved up for today: "Glosses through the Ages," with some excellent images of marginalia. It also includes some interesting links to new sorts of online marginalia-makers that I hadn't seen before.

- Jim Watts reports that a Torah scroll was stolen from a Kenosha, WI synagogue recently, just before the Passover holiday. A neighboring synagogue loaned another Torah so that services could proceed as scheduled.

- Over at the Guardian book blog, Claire Armitstead asks "are there 'historic' moments that a bookish fly on the wall could actually see?"

Reviews

- Richard O'Mara reviews The Archimedes Codex in The Christian Science Monitor.

- Ralph Luker points out some good recent reviews on a number of topics, including Rick Brookhiser's NYT review of Steven Waldman's Founding Faith.

- Linc Chafee was on NPR's "Fresh Air" this week to discuss his new book, Against the Tide.

- Scott Douglas, author of the delightful McSweeneys feature "Dispatches from a Public Librarian" and of the new memoir Quiet Please, did a Q&A this week with PopMatters. He's also been blogging at Speak Quietly. And there's a Stuart Kelly review of Quiet Please in today's Scotsman.

- Richard Cox comments on Jeannette Bastian and Donna Webber's new SAA publication: Archival Internships: A Guide for Faculty, Supervisors, and Students. He notes the tension between practical training and theoretical education, which is at the heart of archival (and library) education.

- Danny Heitman's new book about an episode in Audubon's life, A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House, is reviewed by Ed Cullen.