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February 6, 2009

In the News: Stolen Books, Toxic Debt

A book dealer convicted of stealing and then auctioning more than thirty books from the library of Sir Evelyn de Rothschild will spend twenty-eight months in jail.

The reputation of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner has been threatened by the release of “The World According to K,” a book that charges the politician with profiting off of his charitable image.

“Toxic debt” was chosen as Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary 2008 Word of the Year, with honorable mentions going to “bromance,” “textaholic,” and “guerilla gardener.”

“We have ample evidence throughout history of what happens when we start banning books…the society will suffer,” the author Rudolfo Anaya said of a central California school board’s decision to ban his novel, “Bless Me, Ultima.”

The rock musician and tabloid star Pete Doherty was once considered a “potential poet laureate,” according to the University Philosophical Society at Trinity College, in Dublin.

The Balinese writers Nyoman Tusthi Eddy and Nengah Tinggen are among the recipients of this year’s Rancage Literary Awards.

“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows” was the most borrowed book from public libraries in the U.K. last year; it was checked out 108,775 times.

Square One Publishers will reissue W. E. B. Du Bois’s long out-of-print “The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America” this month to coincide with the one-hundredth anniversary of the N.A.A.C.P.

One and a half million books will be made available to cell-phone users with Internet access, courtesy of Google.

The British Library will recognize outstanding achievements in pamphlet poetry with two prizes, each with a purse of five thousand pounds.

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