TOP 100 BOOK SITES
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| The Authors' Hearts Beat Faster. Publishing Was So Close Now. . . Harlequin Enterprises, the queen of the romance world, has signed a partnership agreement with Author Solutions, a company that helps aspiring scribes self-publish their books. feeds.nytimes.com |
Linklog: Swift amusements, celebrity bloat and more A theme park for the Lilliputian in your life.• The Millions' always-interesting Year in Reading series is in full swing.• Has the celebrity memoir market eaten itself? Or, as Scott Pack suggests, is it just hiding behind all the vampire books?• A throwaway line picked up.• Follow Dickens's rewriting of A Christmas Carol.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 |
Milorad Pavic, Unorthodox Novelist, Dies at 80 Mr. Pavic was an internationally prominent Serbian writer whose novels upended the traditional relationship between reader and text. feeds.nytimes.com |
Lighthouse board's library goes to auction Northern Lighthouse Board collection, including works by great explorers, to be sold off to raise money for heritage workAn exceptional collection of books from the library of the Northern Lighthouse Board (NLB) will go under the hammer in Edinburgh this Wednesday.The sale will include works by some of the great heroes of 18th and 19th century exploration, including Captain James Cook, Matthew Flinders, Sir John Franklin, Mungo Park, Sir John Barrow, William Scoresby and Cpt George Vancouver, and any money raised may be used to buy back lighthouse buildings once sold off on the open market.The sale is seen as necessary because the Edinburgh-based NLB, which maintains Scotland's lighthouses and navigational aids, can no longer pay for its own history. The NLB's basic services are funded by lighthouse dues levied on shipping, but these do not cover maintenance on older lighthouses or allow the NLB to maintain their remaining artefacts.All proceeds from the sale will go to the newly established NLB Heritage Trust, which also has plans to begin commercially exploiting the NLB's extraordinary history.Alex Dove, book specialist at auctioneers Lyon & Turnbull, has hopes that the sale will raise more than £200,000. "We expect it to do very well," she said. "It's exciting for us to be able to work with such a great collection, particularly since most of the books are still in very good condition." She thinks the 200 separate lots will end up split between private collectors, with much of it going abroad.The sale will not include any of the NLB's core collection of engineering works or material by the Stevenson family. Between the late 18th century and the early 20th, the Stevensons built almost all of Scotland's major lighthouses including Bell Rock, Skerryvore and Muckle Flugga. Their most famous member, Robert Louis Stevenson, later used his maritime experiences as source material for fiction.Most of the books being sold would have been used by the NLB as vital reference material for lighthouse projects overseas. Over the years, the Stevensons built lighthouses all over the world and to prepare their designs would have needed the best information then available on sea conditions and local geography. Cook's early maps or Scoresby's plans were often the only written sources on parts of the globe which had yet to be properly mapped, let alone lit.Roger Lockwood, chief executive of the NLB, denies that the trust is flogging off the family silver or that this is the start of a wider attempt to sell off NLB assets. "We offered these books to the National Library, and when they turned them down we felt free to offer them on the open market," he said. "Besides, this is family silver that no one has looked at for years. They're great books, but they're not useful, and they're not part of our main engineering collection. The books have always been kept in a cabinet in the NLB's boardroom and probably haven't been taken out or read from one decade to the next."Money raised from the sale will be used to start maintaining some of the NLB's physical history. Since the 1970s, many lighthouse buildings have been sold off, with some being turned into private houses and others becoming successful hotels. Others have been less lucky. Lockwood hopes the new Trust will be able to buy back Eilean Glas lighthouse off Harris, whose owners were convicted of fraud and theft in 2004. "The owners originally tried to set up a hotel but that failed," he said. "It's now derelict. When I saw it three years ago, I thought, we've got to do something about it – it's in a really terrible state." The local community at Scalpay is also now interested in staging a buyout of the lighthouse.The Trust hopes to start a separate trading company to begin producing merchandise – clothing, toys, stationery – that can be sold through Royal National Lifeboat Institution shops.ScotlandHeritageBella Bathurstguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud by William WordsworthI wandered lonely as a cloudThat floats on high o'er vales and hills,When all at once I saw a crowd,A host, of golden daffodils;Beside the lake, beneath the trees,Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.Continuous as the stars that shineAnd twinkle on the milky way,They stretched in never-ending lineAlong the margin of a bay:Ten thousand saw I at a glance,Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.The waves beside them danced; but theyOut-did the sparkling waves in glee:A poet could not but be gay,In such a jocund company:I gazed— and gazed— but little thoughtWhat wealth the show to me had brought:For oft, when on my couch I lieIn vacant or in pensive mood,They flash upon that inward eyeWhich is the bliss of solitude;And then my heart with pleasure fills,And dances with the daffodils.William WordsworthPoetryguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds feeds.guardian.co.uk |