100 Places to Connect With Other Bibliophiles Online

Reading is no longer an individual activity. Click here for 100 different sites and networks to find other bibliophiles like you.

New Bond Penguin Covers

These retro covers for Penguin's reissues of Ian Fleming's master spy stories fit the style and sexiness that fans all over the world have come to associate with James Bond. Some of the covers are completely original while others pay homage to the movie based upon them. See Dr. No for the now iconic white knife belt worn by Ursula Andress and then most recently by Halle Berry.

'Holiday reading: 38 books to make a better Tory'

The Guardian blog says this compilation has been billed by some of the papers as a list intended to help Tory MPs "think more like David Cameron".

Pierre Berès

Pierre Berès, the king of French booksellers, friend to Picasso and Éluard, publisher of Barthes and Aragon, has died recently at age 95. The New York Times reports "Mr. Berès had already staged a memorable exit from the world of books in 2005. Closing the store he had run since the late 1930s on the Avenue Friedland, near the Arc de Triomphe, he put his collection of 12,000 books up for sale. In a series of six sales at Drouet, the auction house, spaced out over two years, records fell as bidders lined up for treasures like the first edition of Rimbaud’s “Season in Hell,” inscribed by the author to Verlaine.

The sale realized more than 35 million euros. Mr. Berès headed off to retirement in his modern villa in St. Tropez, but not before making a final grand gesture. Unexpectedly, he removed from the sale and donated to the French nation an edition of “The Charterhouse of Parma” that included Stendhal’s revisions, undertaken after he read Balzac’s criticisms of the novel’s opening pages.

Early on he displayed nerve and charm, two qualities that would carry him far. At 13 he knocked on the door of Georges Clemenceau, the former prime minister of France, presented him with a notebook and asked for his autograph. Captivated, the old man complied, unaware that the supplicant on his doorstep had approached every other member of the French Academy to gather a complete set of autographs.

While still a student, Mr. Berès set up as a dealer, buying new first editions and reselling them later at a small profit. André Gide, who lived a few doors away on the Rue Vaneau, entrusted him with three of his manuscripts to sell.

Electronic Enlightenment

The New Yorker reports on the 'Electronic Enlightenment', Oxford University Press' new online database of letters from the “long eighteenth century.”

"For instance, who knew that David Hume suffered from anxiety coupled with a terrible sense of inadequacy? In a letter to George Cheyne, the famous doctor and author of “The English Malady,” a treatise on melancholy and the sedentary life, a twenty-two-year-old Hume wrote: Having read many Books of Morality, such as Cicero, Seneca & Plutarch, & being smit with their beautiful Representations of Virtue & Philosophy, I undertook the Improvement of my Temper & Will … till I had already ruin’d my Health ... I went under a Course of Bitters, & Anti-hysteric Pills. Drunk an English Pint of Claret Wine every Day, & rode 8 or 10 Scotch Miles.

Still he remained in a funk, his “greatest calamity” a failure to emulate the Ancients: “I had no Hopes of delivering my Opinions with such Elegance & Neatness, as to draw to me the Attention of the World, & I wou’d rather live & dye in Obscurity than produce them maim’d & imperfect.”

We know how he feels, of course, being writers ourselves. Thankfully, we have little chance of developing scurvy spots on our fingers-though headaches, brought on by long hours of Web browsing, are a constant threat. We’ll have to put up with them for the time being, as there are one thousand eighty-nine letters in Hume’s correspondence, and fifty-three thousand and growing on the EE site. Its developers say that you should think of it as a “community resource,” meaning that it’s open to contributions. Institutions and libraries already have access, and individuals will be able to subscribe soon".

Society Is Turning Artists Into Criminals

Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford University law professor, whose writings have profoundly influenced debates about intellectual property in the digital age, had announced a year ago "that he'd had enough of advocating for the reform of copyright law and would devote his energies to fighting corruption and the influence of money on American politics. His latest book, 'Remix', argues that the legal system is making criminals out of young people who produce entertaining or informative videos, music, and other art works through piecing together parts of others' works. He advocates a new type of economy that allows both market competition and people to freely share their art". This comes from the Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus.

Doris Lessing

Ansible magazine reports on a New York Times interview with Doris Lessing

Q: 'For the last two decades, most of your fiction has veered toward science fiction, which has disappointed literary critics like Harold Bloom.' A: 'I can't be bothered with Bloom. A lot of people think some of my best writing is in science fiction, and they are just as significant as bloody Bloom.'

Q: 'When you won the Nobel Prize in Literature last year, he described the choice as "pure political correctness", presumably because you are female. A: 'Yes, I remember. It was a very malicious thing. If he gets the Nobel Prize, believe me, I won't be as bitchy.' (NY Times magazine, 27 July)

Sport in Fiction

Mark Lawson has sprinted through sport in fiction - from The Pickwick Papers to this year's hit, Netherland and authors recommend their favourite sporting books.

A useful list of science fiction about ecological disasters can be found at the Magic Dragon site.

Why good girls love the bad guys

Regina Barreca, a professor of English at the University of Connecticut, wonders in a lineup of the three leading men from The Dark Knight, whom would most women go for?

"Even though there will be howls of outrage, here's the truth: Most women would want to date The Joker. Face it: A lot of women still crave the Bad Boy. A great many otherwise sane women would confess, if given full immunity from our rational tsk-tsking selves, "That poor, tortured soul, The Joker? I could work with him. He's got potential. OK, so he has a nasty habit of using pencils as weapons. I bet his secret wish is to be a writer. Maybe I could get him to start journaling. Or scrapbooking. After all, he's creative, and I'm deeply attracted to creative types. I - and I alone - could discover the real reason for his scars. Or at least I could help with his makeup. That pancake stuff has got to go."

The real joke, of course, is that some women actually think genuinely misogynist, enraged, embittered, violent, self-destructive types can be reformed by a little love. (Insert diabolical laugh here.) When they are left in debt, in trouble, incarcerated, inconsolable or inchoate after these guys pass through their lives like tornadoes, taking everything with them, the women are less likely to fall for the Bad Boy fantasy again.

But it happens...Even when the good guys were supposed to be turning bad and becoming more complex and emotionally chaotic, they still had no resonance. You just know they'd want to go to tailgate parties, see their old frat brothers, play golf on the weekends, and snorkel for adventure. Christian Bale spent too much time breathing through his mouth. And even with only half a face, the blond guy still looked like he should have been on the cover of a Wheaties box.

The Joker, however, was somebody who would keep you up late talking on the cell phone long after the good boys went to bed early so they could get up and hit the gym before work.

The Joker is the after-hours man. He's the one your girlfriends would be flirting with when you left the table to buy another round of drinks (the nice guys would buy; for The Joker, you'd probably pay). He's fearless - fearless enough to set fire to a mountain of money (which is why you'd have to buy the drinks).

Like Satan from John Milton's Paradise Lost, or hump-backed Richard III, or gourmand Hannibal Lecter, or any character played by Denis Leary, The Joker is the embodiment of evil, who's - heaven help us - sexy. At the feet of such guys, women fling themselves, as if said guys had money in their socks. Wolfish in their appetites, brutal, determined and sadistic, these antiheroes rage for freedom. And let's not fool ourselves: Since little-girlhood, we're trained to find the Big Bad Wolf seductive. From Charlotte Bronte to Barbara Cartland, thousands of novels and tales insist that women have to find the man who will colonize their emotions, enslave their passions, and rule over their lives. In the name of finding love, women must seek out a fascist. Sylvia Plath wrote "Daddy," the definitive poem on the subject ("Every woman adores a Fascist") - right before she took her own life.

André Rieu biography precedes his Australian visit

André Rieu owes a lot of his Australian success to the promotion of his music on Foxtel's Ovation channel. 'My Music, My Life', the biography of André Rieu, the charismatic Dutch violinist and conductor, is shortly to be released by Hardie Grant in Australia. With over 10 million worldwide in CD sales and over one million overall sales in Australia, André Rieu has become an international classic music phenomenon. This biography written his wife, Marjorie, looks at the musical childhood and path to success of this classical superstar, whose extravagant concerts earned him the title of the 'Waltz King'. André's second visit to Australia for a full concert tour is in November.

Trends, tattoos, literature, books - All The Sad Young Literary Tats

Tattoos are not the sole preserve of rugby league players. This blog indicates the literati play their part too.

"Some readers are strict formalists: one guy's got an ellipsis on his wrist, I guess because a semicolon would have been pretentious. Others are fond of Vonnegut and Thomas. But if there's a discernible trend here, it's in the damaged goods department. Meet the smarter version of the tramp stamp: call it the borderline blazon. Sylvia Plath on either arm?"

A photo montage can be found here.

Odd Book Title

Taking Life Imprisonment Seriously. Dirk van Zyl Smit. Kluwer. 2002

Quote of the Week

Her journalism, like a diamond, will sparkle more if it is cut. Raymond Mortimer on Susan Sontag.