Bookish Quotation du Jour

Conyers, Georgia-based “antediluvian, bibliomaniac, and curmudgeon” blogger Michael Gilleland recently posted this wonderful image and this wonderful quotation at the wonderful Laudator Temporis Acti:

“[T]here is nothing more fit to be looked at than the outside of a book. It is, as I may say from repeated experience, a pure and unmixed pleasure to have a goodly volume lying before you, and to know that you may open it if you please, and need not open it unless you please. It is a resource against ennui, if ennui should come upon you. To have the resource and not to feel the ennui, to enjoy your bottle in the present, and your book in the indefinite future, is a delightful condition of human existence.”

The quotation is from Thomas Love Peacock’s Crochet Castle (1831). The painting is Claude Raguet Hirst’s Companions (c. 1895)

Books in Chains

Before books were mass produced and easier – and more costly – to replace when stolen, librarians had to resort to emphatic security measures to keep their stock from wandering off, never to return.

Netherlands-based medievalist Erik Kwakkel took these photos in one of her country’s libraries, and his efforts were picked up by The Paris Review.

You can find more information about chained libraries (and links to primary sources) at Wikipedia.

Contributed by alert librarian, bibliophile, and Atlanta Booklover’s blog follower Anne Vagts

Re-Reading the Classics

Kevin Smokler has written a book entitled Practical Classics: 50 Reasons to Reread 50 Books You Haven’t Touched Since High School. 

The Rumpus’ interesting interview last month with Smokler is here.

Found via The Millions

‘Sequestration’ and the Library of Congress

The New York Times‘ has published an article about how the U.S. Congress’ recently-implemented automatic budget cuts (aka the “sequestration”) is affecting the Library of Congress.

Would that the work of the modern-day Library of Congress were limited to the needs of the individual members of Congress itself!  Or that the Congressional Research Staff would start responding to Congress members’ requests for information with some sort of boiler-plate message that begins “Due to the across-the-board cuts in the federal budget that your colleaguesrecently approved, we are sorry to inform you that…”!

Found at PhiloBiblos

Coming Soon to Atlanta: The Book Club Play

From The Ponce Press, May 2013, page 9:

Book clubs take the spotlight this spring with the Atlanta premiere of The Book Club Play by Karen Zacarias at Horizon Theatre. This “delightful, fresh comedy,” as heralded by Talkin’ Broadway, follows a tight-knit book club bound for pandemonium when it becomes the focus of a documentary film.

“If you’ve ever been in a book club (or just think they’re bizarre) you’ll love laughing with this quirky group of long-time friends as everything goes haywire,” say Horizon’s Co-Artistic/Producing Director Lisa Adler. “This is the kind of smart romp that has become Horizon’s tradmark, and we’re unleashing an emsemble of Atlanta’s most talented comic actors on our stage.”

Ana lives in a letter-perfect world with an adoring husband, the perfect job, and her greatest passion: Book Club. But when her cherished circle becomes the focus of a documentary film, their intimate discussions about life and literature take a turn for the hilarious in front of the inescapable camera lens. Add a provocative new member along with some surprising new book titles, and these six friends are bound for pandemonium. Will their beloved book club survive? Sprinkled with wit, joy, and novels galore, laughter meets literature in this delightful new comedy about books, the people who love them, and the side-splitting results when friends start reading between the lines.

General admission tickets for The Book Club Play are $20-$30.  Tickets may be ordered by phone at 404-584-7450 or online at http://www.horizontheatre.com. Performances start May 17 and run through June 23. Ticket prices are subject to change; 8 percent sales tax will be added to all ticket orders. Internet convenience fee added to all online orders. No refunds, exchanges, or late seating.

From the Horizon Theatre’s website:

• Showtimes: Wednesday-Friday at 8:00 PM; Saturday at 3:00 PM and 8:30 PM; Sunday at 5 PM. There is no 3 PM matinee on Saturday, May 18 or June 1.
• A chart showing ticket price discounts for groups of 10 or more.

Social Networks for Avid Readers

Responding to the controversial sale of GoodReads to Amazon.com earlier this year, ThirdScribe recently summarized the features of almost a dozen reader-centric social networks.

Not covered in ThirdScribe’s survey is yet another new social network for readers (which we saw mentioned at The Paris Review) called Riffle. An article describing Riffle is posted at Publishers Weekly.

You’ll find links to all these book-recommending, book-discussing, reading tracking/personal library-cataloging networks in The Atlanta Booklover’s Blog’s “Booklover’s Toolbox,” under the heading Social Networks (Title Recommendations, Book Discussions, Blogs, and Book Inventory Software) .

 

Personal Libraries: Pro and Con

In 2011, The New Yorker published James Woods’ lengthy complaint about having to dispose of his recently-deceased father-in-law’s enormous personal library. (Woods’ essay appears with others in his 2012 collection The Fun Stuff.)

In a blogpost written earlier this year, Nigel Beale, aka the Literary Tourist, takes issue with Woods’ cynical view of the value – and meaning – of (other people’s) largish personal libraries. Read Beale’s eloquent screed.