Cornellbooksellers.com

McGill University is joining the ranks of educational institutions that are digitizing their rare book collections for mass consumption (via Rare Book News).
On the whole I tend to see these projects as a positive move towards making antiquarian and obscure scholarship available to a much larger group than might otherwise be able to make use [...]

Long synonymous in the West for the middle-of-nowhere, Timbuktu has a fascinating history as a crossroads where Malinke, Berber, Islamic, and French cultures met, mingled and clashed since before the Middle Ages. A recent article in Der Spiegel (via Bookninja) describes efforts to preserve “an enchanted Aladdin’s Cave” of thousands of manuscripts and documents representing [...]

Back at the end of February, I wrote briefly about the influential Mervyn Peake and his novels, poetry and art.
Enter the Octopus recently posted a wonderful excerpt of a new book by the perhaps equally influential Michael Moorcock entitled LOVERS: Mervyn and Maeve Peake. A personal memoir.
I love the unabashedly hero-worshipful tone of Moorcock’s work [...]