From The Guardian:
A book looted from a US library during the American civil war has finally been returned, almost 145 years overdue.
The only stipulation of the Illinois handball coach who returned the title – the first in WFP Napier’s four-volume History of the War in the Peninsula and in the South of France – was that he didn’t have to pay the $52,858 fine.
UK publishing companies are hoping to boost their businesses by creating an online presence via the social networking site Twitter. The site has seen the number of small, independent publishers surge in the last two weeks, as companies are using the service to interact with their market.
The Daily Telegraph has the full story.
The New York Times has a story today that mentions, among other things, the recently cancelled plans for a $5 million expansion to Powell’s Books.
An architect had already prepared the drawings. His bankers had signaled that financing was available. But the project no longer looked prudent, Mr. Powell concluded — not with sales down nearly 5 percent, stock markets extinguishing savings, home prices plunging and jobs disappearing.
Full article here. It’s only the first few paragraphs that talk about Powell’s, but it’s still worth a read for anyone who’s visited the bookstore or has an interest in it.
The Guardian books blog notes that the movie trailer for Where the Wild Things Are is out. The film is based on the classic children’s book by the same name (Wikipedia article on it is here) and will be released on October 16th.
From The Guardian:
The Vatican looks likely to call for a boycott of Angels and Demons, the prequel to the blockbuster film adaptation of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code.
Official Vatican newspaper Avvenire reported on Friday that it “cannot approve” of Ron Howard’s film, which is based on the eponymous book by Brown and opens worldwide on 15 May. The report prompted suspicions that the church is gearing up to call for a new boycott, after urging Catholics not to see the first film.
…except they are reputedly worried that a boycott could backfire and drive additional sales to the film. Full story here.
The Guardian has a story today suggesting as much:
Everyone’s looking at the pattern they’ve seen in music and video - an old medium changed radically by technology - and waiting for it to hit the book world. But the chances of that happening right now are very small indeed. Why? It’s fairly straightforward.
The real reason that the music industry came around to the idea of downloads wasn’t because they had a startling insight into the future, or even because Apple forced the issue by building a clever ecosystem around the iPod (it didn’t launch the iTunes store until 2003). It was because customers were choosing to pirate instead.
Reuters has a short video up about the movie Inkheart (based on the book by Cornelia Funke) and its world premiere. Nothing too fascinating, but it’s probably worth a look if you’ve read it and/or plan to see the film:
(Link to video on Reuters is here if the embedded video doesn’t play. You’ll have to watch a short commercial first.)
Published today in The Guardian:
The Wizard and the Hopping Pot: There was once a kindly old wizard who used his magic generously and wisely for his neighbours. But then he died and he left his lucky cooking pot to his son. His son was a meanie who didn’t like Muggles and refused to help anyone. The pot got very angry about this and grew warts and hopped around the village chasing him, until he changed his mind. The End.
J.K. Rowling’s remaining three stories receive a similar treatment. You can view the full article here.
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