The curious tale of the stolen books 24 April 2013Last updated at 19:48 ET By Martin Vennard BBC World Service London's Lambeth Palace, home to the Archbishop of Canterbury, also has a leading historic book collection. The palace's library was the scene of a major crime that stayed undiscovered for decades. A sealed letter that arrived at one of Britain's most historic libraries in February 2011 was to leave its staff stunned. The letter had been written before his death by a former employee of Lambeth Palace Library. Staff had known since the mid-1970s that dozens of its valuable books had been stolen. Continue reading the main story Lambeth's recovered books Key works now back at the Palace include: "We were staggered," says Declan Kelly, director of libraries and archives for the Church of England. They contained some 1,000 volumes, made up of 1,400 publications, many from the collections of three 17th century archbishops of Canterbury - John Whitgift, Richard Bancroft and George Abbot. Continue reading the main story
Custom Coffee Table Acts as Giant Nintendo Controller Charles Lushear of custom design studio The Boho Workbench in Venice Beach, California, has created this fully functional Nintendo Controller Coffee Table. The table (which is 42″ x 18.25″ x 18″) ditches plastic in favor of maple, mahogany and walnut, and lets you play NES games using the aesthetically designed piece of furniture. It features a removable glass top for when you aren’t playing games, a retractable cord, dovetail joinery and mid century modern legs. A nonfunctional version is available, as well as a composite materials version that is painted to look exactly like the original controller. USB capability can also be added, and the designer is currently working on an inverted color scheme version and one with Wii capability for those without a NES console. The coffee tables are made to order and the production time is 4-6 weeks. The Boho Workbench
The Riddle Of Mark Twain's Passion For Joan Of Arc On a December night in 1905, the New York City chapter of the Society of Illustrators managed to do something many thought impossible. With one calculated stroke they left Mark Twain, author and noted quipster, speechless. The writer had just risen to address the group. As he began to speak, a girl emerged from the back of the room. Her hair was cropped just below her ears; her face was angular but radiant. When the writer finally spoke, he did so slowly, carefully. “Now there's an illustration, gentlemen — a real illustration. Mark Twain’s obsession with Joan of Arc has to rank among the most baffling and least talked about enigmas in American literature. The same might also be said of his book about the French heroine. Take the following passage, drawn from the book’s climactic trial scenes: Of course I had been expecting such news every day for many days; but no matter, the shock of it almost took my breath away and set me trembling like a leaf. The story went something like this: Mrs.
J. Robert Oppenheimer From Conservapedia J. Robert Oppenheimer Julius[1] Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) was an American theoretical physicist and director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of four laboratories[2] involved in the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bomb. He was also a secret member of the Communist Party.[3] Early life Oppenheimer was born in New York in 1904,[4] the eldest son of Julius and Ella (née Freedman) Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer's parents were of Jewish descent, but did not observe religious traditions, sending him (via limousine)[11] to New York's elite[12] Ethical Culture[13] Society School.[14] Ethical Culture, a secular humanist religion,[15] is indifferent to the existence of God, replacing the Ten Commandments[16] with a commitment to "social justice Oppenheimer never did embrace Judaism, turning instead to philosophical Hinduism. Education Oppenheimer went to Paris for a rest. In 1926, Oppenheimer left Cambridge for the University of Göttingen in Germany.
25 Things I'm Learning From Closing a Bookstore. - jlsathre A while back I wrote "25 Things I Learned From Opening a Bookstore." This is the other bookend. 1. When people ask why you're closing, you can tell them that the economy's poor and people are buying Nooks. But it's more fun to tell them that it's time to move on because you've read everything in the store. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. "You mean the ones that are worth a lot of money?" Yes they do. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. And, once again, that pesky fifth grader shows his face. 24. 25.
I like words When copywriter Robert Pirosh landed in Hollywood in 1934, eager to become a screenwriter, he wrote and sent the following letter to all the directors, producers, and studio executives he could think of. The approach worked, and after securing three interviews he took a job as a junior writer with MGM. (Source: Dear Wit.) Dear Sir:I like words. I like fat buttery words, such as ooze, turpitude, glutinous, toady. Philip Larkin complete by Michael Dirda Is Philip Larkin a great poet? Ask most literate readers and the answer is an enormous yes. But detractors still complain that he is a Johnny One-Note, sour about life and unduly obsessed with “the solving emptiness/ That lies just under all we do.” Near his writing desk Larkin kept the dozen poets he most loved: Hardy, Wordsworth, Ch ...
Nothing good gets away Steinbeck replied the same day. His beautiful letter of advice can be enjoyed below. (Source: Steinbeck: A Life in Letters; Image: Thom and John Steinbeck with their father in 1954, courtesy of UC Berkeley.) New York November 10, 1958Dear Thom:We had your letter this morning. More Scientific Evidence That Reading Is Good for You - Arit John A growing body of research in the sciences is discovering what bookworms, 9th-grade English teachers and underemployed liberal arts majors have known for ages: reading is really, really good for you. Besides making you an empathetic, sexy, cultured and all around more interesting human being, reading apparently provides definite benefits to your mental health, sharpening the mind as it ages. A study released in Neurology found that reading and similar activities reduced the rate of cognitive decline in dementia patients. Researchers examined the brains of 294 patients post-mortem and found a slower rate of decline in patients who reported more early-life and late-life cognitive activity, such as reading, writing and playing games. "The study showed that mentally active patients — ones who read and wrote regularly — declined at a significantly slower rate than those who had an average amount of activity," notes NPR's Annalisa Quinn. With all that in mind, go forth and read freely.
Hand Crafted Typographic Comic Book-Inspired Shazam Table Displaying a striking typographic design, this coffee table embodies the love for comic books and their wonderful other-worldly feeling – the Shazam Table composes an appealing atmosphere tinted with a little bit of of magic. Imagined by EViL ED and Dan Robotic of Evil Robot Designs – an artistic duo creating spectacular furniture pieces that sit at the border between geek and cool – the Shazam Table was hand crafted in solid American Walnut and finished with a light gloss oil. Resting on stained black oak feet, the table was inspired by comic book sound effects and beautifully integrated within contemporary settings. Hollow on the inside, the walnut coffee table filters light and casts shadow through its 40 cm high carefully cut body – a modern interpretation of our culture seen through the eyes of its creators. The bespoke coffee table measures 100 cm in length and is 40 cm wide – why now take a tape measure and see where it would fit in your home?
Ernest Hemingway: How the great American novelist became the literary equivalent of the Nike swoosh Ernest Hemingway would be aghast to see what has become of Ernest Hemingway. Against the gray obscurity that awaits most writers in death, his image, 50 years later, has become the literary equivalent of the Nike swoosh or golden arches. Who doesn’t have a mental picture of the gray beard and safari shirt? Who couldn’t vamp a Hemingway-like sentence in a pinch? The Hemingway of these portraits (the least absurd of them, anyway) is the Hemingway that comes through in his best-known stories: a virile, intense man of hard-living habits and a few brilliantly selected words. That’s no coincidence. A mistake that people tend to make in reading, praising, teaching Hemingway is to assume that he was foremost a stylist. Hemingway is due for reappraisal partly because his gamey, war-seeking, booze-quaffing corpus seems today quixotically out of sync with our twee and environmentally aware era; the Hemingway we think we know is a Zeus-hued action figurine from another time and place.
Hang on, my love, and grow big and strong It took nine months for Iggy Pop to reply to then-21-year-old Laurence's fan letter, but really the timing couldn't have been more perfect as on the morning his thoughtful note did arrive at her home in Paris, Laurence's family were being evicted by bailiffs. Laurence recalls that moment back in 1995: "By the time I finished I was in tears. Not only had Iggy Pop received the letter I had sent him nine months before, and I could have missed his if he'd sent it a day later, but he had read the whole 'fucking' 20 pages, including the bit about my Adidas dress (a semi-innocent allusion on my part), and all the rest, my description of being the child of an acrimonious divorce with the string of social workers, lawyers, greedy estate agents and bailiffs at the door, the fear, the anger, the frustration, the love." Iggy's empathetic, handwritten response addressed Laurence's problems with both grace and eloquence, and really can't be praised enough. Transcript follows. Transcript