The Fine Books Blog

'Double Fold' at 10

2011-04-04T14:16:45Z

Has it really been ten years since Nicholson Baker shook up the cozy world inhabited by librarians and conservators with publication of Double Fold, his National Book Critics Circle Award-winning...

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Memories on the Block

2011-02-15T21:31:17Z

Call it bittersweet, if you like, but the sale next week of the entire contents of the City of Boston's Graphic Arts Printing Plant at 174 North St., is yet another passing of the torch, and proof...

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Reynolds Price, Author, "Fellow Bibliomaniac"

2011-01-21T22:45:00Z

Reynolds Price, a true southern gentleman and one of the outstanding American writers of his generation, died yesterday at 77, in Durham, North Carolina, of heart failure. While known best for his...

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Bowdlerizing Mark Twain

2011-01-08T14:49:02Z

If Michiko Kakutani's column in today's New York Times is not the best read and most emailed piece in the paper, then not enough people are paying attention. Her take on the announcement that a new...

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Some Nick's Picks to Start the Year

2011-01-02T16:50:02Z

I have decided to start the new year off with a few books that came to my attention a bit too late to make my holiday roundups, but which are eminently worthy of notice all the same. Think of each...

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Nick's Picks: Stocking Stuffers

2010-12-05T16:45:00Z

My Reading Life, by Pat Conroy; Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 333 pages, $25. One of America's truly great storytellers, the incomparable Pat Conroy, is also a determined bibliophile--indeed one of the...

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William E. Self, Producer, Bookman

2010-11-23T02:00:15Z

The passing last week of the Hollywood film and television producer William E. Self was noted by prominent obituaries published in the Los Angeles Times and New York Times, both of which I recommend...

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Nick's Picks: Five Winners

2010-11-09T23:55:16Z

Looking for some stocking stuffers? Here are five beauties I particularly recommend, with more to follow in the weeks to come. Venice: Pure City, by Peter Ackroyd; Nan Talese/Doubleday, 403 pages,...

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Little Rock Centennial

2010-10-19T15:16:18Z

The Little Rock Public Library—known since 1975 as the Central Library of Arkansas System, or CALS—is observing it's hundredth birthday this year, an ongoing celebration that I was pleased to...

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NYPL Selects New President

2010-10-06T13:57:50Z

Anthony Marx, the president of Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts, has confirmed to Bloomberg News that he will become the new president of the New York Public Library next year, succeeding...

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A Pair of Keepers

2010-09-13T14:02:14Z

I am delighted to report the publication of two books that I have been eager for some time to see appear between hard covers, having had the opportunity to know a bit about them beforehand, and to...

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In Tribute to Peter Howard

2010-08-22T18:47:32Z

For the last couple of weeks, the booktryst blog has been running a series of moving tributes to a legendary California bookseller under the collective heading, "A Wake for the Still Alive: Peter B....

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Toby Holtzman, Bookman

2010-08-07T18:15:51Z

One of the most extraordinary bibliophiles I have ever met, Irwin T. "Toby" Holtzman, passed away in Detroit this past week at 82, leaving behind his lovely wife Shirley, three children, three...

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1 x 700

2010-07-27T13:39:54Z

I am forever fascinated by bibliophiles who go beyond focusing their energy and resources on the collected works of one author to acquiring as many different copies as they can of a single book,...

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Thomas Jefferson's 'Bibliomany'

2010-07-04T14:59:50Z

What better way for bibliophiles to observe the Fourth of July than to reflect a bit on the legendary passion the author of the Declaration of Independence had for his books, and for the care he took...

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