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| Scientists nose out clue to preserving books: their smell The complex perfume of ageing books has been broken down into its component chemicals by research that could assist conservatorsThe dusty smell of old books is one of the joys of visiting secondhand bookshops, and now scientists, who have identified it as combining "grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness", hope it can be used to help preserve valuable ageing titles.Researcher Matija Strlic, from University College London's Centre for Sustainable Heritage, decided to investigate the smell of old books after spotting a book expert sniffing a title to assess its age. "I noticed a conservator once who was smelling paper to assess its quality – and having seen that and knowing that the analysis of food aroma is a routine analytical problem, I decided to look for correlations between paper composition and its smell. And it worked," he said.His team investigated 72 books from the 19th and 20th centuries, pinning the smell down to the several hundred volatile organic compounds (VOCs) "off-gassing" from the paper as it ages. "The aroma of an old book is familiar to every user of a traditional library," they wrote. "A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness, this unmistakable smell is as much part of the book as its contents."Working in collaboration with curators from the National Archive in the Netherlands, they then identified the 15 most abundant VOCs, and used these to identify degradation markers which can be used to monitor the condition of ageing books by analysing the gasses they produce, without damaging the books themselves.They hope the research will be used to help libraries and museums preserve thei. "There is more work needed to develop an application which would work outside the laboratory. However, we are optimistic," said Strlic.The research, a joint project with partners from the UK, the Netherlands and Slovenia, was announced in the journal Analytical Chemistry.LibrariesBooksellersAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Guardian book club: week one Week one: John Mullan on jokes in Unseen AcademicalsTerry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, like the previous volumes of his Discworld series, is highly literary (spot the allusions to Keats or Browning or Shakespeare), but its generosity with jokes is not what a "literary novel" provides. There are great literary precedents for waggishness: Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy is a joke-driven novel – but then it is often accused of facetiousness or, as FR Leavis called it, "trifling". And Pratchett loves to trifle. When, in the opening sequence, a strange creature appears seemingly composed of "bits of beasts unknown to science or nightmare or even kebab", the authentic Pratchett tone is struck. A joke is an intervention that the author cannot resist. So Pratchett likes to throw in comments on the absurdity of what has just been said. "Glenda was taken aback and affronted at the same time, which was a bit of a squeeze . . ." In footnotes, Pratchett shakes his head at his own characters. When Mustrum Ridcully, archchancellor of the university, observes that "It's a long time since lunch," Pratchett the annotator is sceptical. "This may not be true. Wizards tend to think it's a long time to the next meal, right until they are consuming it."This is a joke about academics, for the story is set in Discworld's Unseen University. This academy for wizards is sometimes like an Oxbridge college (one running gag is that the professors are devoted to the richness of their collegiate cheeseboard) and sometimes like a new university specialising in modish subjects (the Senior Uncommon Room includes a professor of indefinite studies and a lecturer in recent runes). The denizens of the Unseen University are wizards (though "It's a bit harsh to call anybody a denizen"), but their characteristics are entirely human: they are devoted to smoking and drinking, and think of their stomachs before even the dusty traditions of their hallowed institutions. Or rather (as Pratchett-the-narrator might say), their most important traditions are gustatory. The leading representatives of the lower orders are themselves employed to prepare food for these ever-hungry academics. Glenda is head of the night kitchen and devoted to the production of pies for her lofty but stomach-centred employers. Juliet is her assistant, destined for a sparklier life as a fashion model. (Her only reading is a magazine called Bu-Bubbles.)Academic readers are likely to enjoy the fact that the university librarian has been turned into an orang-utan by a magical accident in The Light Fantastic. His inability to use human language seems not to interfere with his duties; his prehensile limbs are a big advantage on the university sports field. For the central joke is that the academics are forced by an obscure condition in a bequest to the university to take up the brutal and brutish sport of "foot-the-ball". But it is more amusing than this, for what we see at the beginning of the book is a mindless, rule-less sport played in the street by large masses of people. With the help of Nutt, who becomes their adviser and trainer, the academics will turn this warlike scrimmaging into a game with shape, speed, and an unintelligible offside law.Early Pratchett novels were more thoroughly parodies of fantasy literature, with the essential solemnity of Tolkien and his progeny satisfyingly brought to earth. (Not for nothing is one Discworld novel called Thud.) The joke was to insert into tales of magic and mythical beings characters with unremarkable faculties and a colloquial turn of phrase. In The Colour of Magic, the first Discworld volume, the wizard Rincewind's first words, when he is confronted on a dark hilltop above the burning city of Ankh-Morpork by Bravd the Hublander and his swordsman Weasel, are "Bugger off".Now, 37 Discworld novels in, it is clearly our world that is paralleled. The Times may officially be the Ankh-Morpork Times, but it is the newspaper that we all know, with its lame attempts at populism, its brilliant crosswords, and its self-consciously measured tones. "Glenda never normally read the leader column because there was only a certain number of times she was prepared to see the word 'however' used in a 120-word article." It is for our amusement that Pratchett has challenged himself to make his characters occasionally mention, as if naturally, the matter of their "favourite spoon". It is a homage to the Private Eye column "Me and My Spoon", itself a mockery of celebrity tediousness. But perhaps some readers will hardly notice.The book is larded with allusions and literary jokes. The brilliant Nutt, an autodidact who is Jeeves-like in his intellectual superiority to his social betters, is constantly defeated in his attempts to have his bookish references recognised by any other character. Explaining why pink is a suitably provocative colour for a football strip, he asks the football-mad Trev Likely: "I don't know if you have ever read Oftleberger's Die Wesentlichen Ungewissheiten Zugehörig der Offenkundigen Männlichkeit?" (The Essential Uncertainties Belonging to Overt Manliness, we translate). He continues impotently to recommend books with similarly stern academic German titles throughout the novel. If we are library lovers, like Pratchett, there are jokes just for us.John Mullan is professor of English at University College London. Join him and Terry Pratchett for a discussion on 14 December at 7pm, Hall One, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1. Tickets cost £9.50 online or £11.50 from the box office (Tel: 020 7520 1490 or kingsplace.co.uk).Terry PratchettJohn Mullanguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Linklog: Award-winning spines, Gutenberg's designers, and more Challenges of book design, number 3,847: can you make that award-winning tome fat enough to fit the award logos on the spine?• Challenges of book design, number one: finding a format to work with that fancy new "movable type".• Kirkus Reviews magazine is mourned, prompting a defence of negative reviews.• Things not to do as a romance heroine. (Via.)Peter Robinsguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2009 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
Chabon's 'Manhood' is an adventure, from childhood to parenthood Of the 39 essays in Michael Chabon's Manhood for Amateurs, all but one were previously published in magazines. The exception ... rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Stephenie Meyer launches Twilight: the graphic novel Meyer extends global franchise of the vampire romance with an illustrated retelling of the story that has already sold 85m books worldwideWe've had Twilight: the bestselling books, Twilight: the box office smash, and now author Stephenie Meyer has revealed that the next step in the vampire love story's world domination will be Twilight: the graphic novel.Illustrated by Korean artist Young Kim with input from Meyer on every panel, the first volume of Twilight: the Graphic Novel will be published on 16 March. Its publisher said the black and white title, with colour interspersed throughout, would combine "a rare fusion of Asian and western comic techniques".The cover shows human teenager Bella Swan sprawled on the grass – an image from the dream that first inspired Meyer to write the novel. "In my dream, two people were having an intense conversation in a meadow in the woods. One of these people was just your average girl. The other person was fantastically beautiful, sparkly, and a vampire," she has said. "I stayed in bed, thinking about the dream. I was so intrigued by the nameless couple's story that I hated the idea of forgetting it; it was the kind of dream that makes you want to call your friend and bore her with a detailed description."The American author said yesterday that Kim's graphic interpretation of her characters and settings was "very close" to what she was imagining while writing the series. "It takes me back to the days when I was writing Twilight," she told Entertainment Weekly. "It's been a while since I was really able to read Twilight; there is so much baggage attached to that book for me now. It seems like all I can see are the mistakes in the writing. Reading Young's version brought me back to the feeling I had when I was writing and it was just me and the characters again. I love that. I thank her for it."Meyer's Twilight saga – Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn – has sold 85m copies worldwide. Its UK publisher Little, Brown said it had sold more than a million copies of each novel in the series in Britain alone. "I can't say that I am done with Twilight forever," Meyer told EW. "I'm not working on anything new Twilight-related now, and probably not for a while. But there's still a possibility that I'll go back and close some of the open doors."Stephenie MeyerComicsChildren and teenagersPublishingAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |