Most of the major crime authors have passed through the doors of Murder One to sign books and take part in events; the shop would also meet requests for any crime title in print in both the UK and the US. Jakubowski had been planning to retire at the end of the year anyway, and says he was "very close to a sale, but the credit crunch intervened and everyone got very, very shy."

The news of Murder One's closure has prompted much mourning online, with the prominent crime fiction blogger Sarah Weinman calling it a "huge loss to the mystery community". "It's pretty shameful that London does not now have a single mystery bookstore," wrote the crime author Mark Billingham on Weinman's blog. "I was a loyal customer long before I had the enormous buzz of seeing my own books stocked in there."

How many academic authors does it take to write an article?

A recent article 'The ATLAS Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider,' has over 2,900 authors - calling into question what an 'author' actually is!

'Please, Sir, I Want Some More

David Kelly in the New York Times collects some quirky ancedotes. According to an article in Science Times , “a group of British researchers - two dietitians, a pediatrician and a historian … found that going on the Oliver Twist diet would guarantee radical weight loss and rapid descent into illness.”

There have been other important literary/scientific discoveries in recent years, most of which have gone unreported in the mainstream press:Russian theologians and transportation officials concluded that if you decide to throw yourself under a train, making the sign of the cross beforehand isn’t going to save you...Finally, meteorologists at Trinity College, Dublin, proved beyond a reasonable doubt that when snow is general all over Ireland, it does indeed fall on both the living and the dead.

Of course, these considerable achievements were undermined by last month’s debacle at the Sorbonne, where embarrassed philosophers and physicists failed in their all-too-ambitious effort to isolate the metaphysical properties of the madeleine. Quelle humiliation."

Poirot gets keys to the City of London

The London Evening Standard reports "hats off to David Suchet who was given the Freedom of the City of London at the Guildhall today. The actor is best known for playing Agatha Christie's Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. The honour, which dates back to the 13th century, allows Suchet to drive sheep over London Bridge and carry a naked sword in public - though not at the same time. A bonus is that if he is found drunk by the police he is put in a taxi home rather than in a cell. The 62-year-old was nominated for the freedom of the City because he's a member of the Worshipful Company of Watermen and Lightermen and once lived on a canal boat. "Being a Londoner, born in Paddington, I'm just so proud and it makes me feel that I really belong," he said."

The Legend of the Bacon Bookmark

A suitably titled blog - Bibliobuffet - has a piece by Laine Farley on odd items left in books.

One of the themes I’ve found in researching bookmarks is the odd items left in books. I have over 60 references to articles, often in local newspapers. These articles are of the human interest type or sometimes are used to promote a library event, like a used book sale. I suspect the cub reporter gets the job of interviewing the library staff about these curiosities.

The list of found items ranges from expected objects like tickets, letters, grocery lists, bobby pins, photos and money to more unusual items such as bullets, condoms and a laminated cockroach. A recurring theme is finding a slice of bacon, sometimes cooked, sometimes raw. In one case it was described as "book jerky" because it had been in the book so long.

At first I suspected that the bacon bookmark was an urban myth, but there are those who swear it happened to them or to a co-worker or in England. I began to look specifically for stories about bacon used as a bookmark, and I found many including those at libraries in Salida, CO, Fort Lauderdale, FL, Danville, IL, Multnomah County, WA, Napa, CA, St. Louis, MO and Cincinnati, OH (the source of the “book jerky” reference). Libraries in Lincoln City, NE, Kansas City, MO and St. John’s, Worcester, England also boasted displays of their bizarre bookmarks. The oldest reference is from Omaha, NE which reported that the Omaha Public Library “has a new trophy in its collection of things used as bookmarks-a slice of bacon.” The article wryly observed that “the library staff will not undertake to preserve it.”

Even the hallowed halls of academia have been sullied by the bacon bookmark phenomenon as reported in Harvard Magazine in 2001, although it allegedly occurred in Enfield, Middlesex, England, and at Columbia they were more likely to find a fried egg. Harvard’s best effort was a pink cake. A preservation librarian at Indiana University was so appalled that she called for establishing the Worst Bookmark of the Year Award after finding a Hostess apple pie inside a book. She also mentioned the legendary bacon bookmark.

Last year, I was amused to see that Demco, a supplier of library products, sponsored a “Bacon as Bookmarks” contest where library staff could submit stories about the most unusual bookmarks they had found. The prize was a copy of The Bookmark Book. Sure enough, an Ohio librarian told of a book returned by a 6th grade girl with a piece of uncooked bacon in it. “When questioned, she said that her mother had been yelling at her to hurry up because they needed to leave. She grabbed the first thing she could find to mark the place in her book!” Finally, an explanation for how and why so many pieces of bacon have been entombed in books, and a lesson for us all to keep plenty of bookmarks near the kitchen table. As the British Library’s bookmark advises, “Save your bacon-use a bookmark."

Readers have commented as follows:

"There’s an essay by Virginia Woolf in which she urges readers to make their marks in books-that is the right way to read. She mentions that readers had done so in her books. A Woolf scholar I know went to Woolf’s village library to see what those marks were-hoping for illuminating marginalia from Woolf’s neighbors in Rodmell.

What she found? Jam and butter stains.

It’s nice to know that Woolf would endorse the bacon bookmark (though probably not much of a bacon-eater herself).

I’ve never put meat products in any of my books but one evening on the A train to Brooklyn I witnessed a woman smashing a flasher’s meat product with a rather large hardbound book. I wish I knew the title!!!!"

A book that perhaps the ACT Government needs for Civic!

THE CITY AFTER DARK: CULTURAL PLANNING AND GOVERNANCE OF THE NIGHT-TIME ECONOMY IN PARRAMATTA David Rowe and others / Centre for Cultural Research.

"The development and management of the night-time economy is one of the most important issues facing cities around the globe. It needs to be addressed in a range of different contemporary urban locations across Australia, including all state capitals and, less obviously, in regional centres.

Parramatta, though part of the Sydney conurbation, is a significant city in its own right, with a night-time economy that has undergone growth and evolution over the past decade. Its developing night-time economy has been received with a typical mix of optimism about economic, cultural and social benefits as well as anxiety about law and order, social strains, and the dynamics of participation and exclusion.

The pilot project reported here examines the development, culture, experience and governance of the night-time economy in Parramatta in order to help develop policy-making for the long-term economic, cultural and social sustainability of its urban night-time leisure spaces."

ACT Writers Centre Festivals 2009

A series of events that will enliven the literary day as well as the night, can be found on the ACT Writers' Centre website. The first will be Scribble: young readers, young writers festival, on Friday 6 - Saturday 7 February 2009.

This will include a school holiday program for 6-12 year olds from 27-30 January; a professional development workshop for teachers on 27 January; children’s book manuscript consultations with well known former publisher, Mark MacLeod; a poetry slam on 6 February; workshops, panel sessions and a zine fair all day on 7 February.

ABE reports on its most expensive book sales of the year

Etudes à l'Eau-Forte by Francis Seymour Haden - $17,216

A collection of 25 etchings by Seymour Hayden - 24 of the plates depict the landscape around London, the Thames, Ireland and Wales and the final one is a portrait of Thomas Haden. The text reproduces an article printed in the Gazette des Beaux-Arts by Philippe Burty and contains a catalogue of the etched work of Seymour Haden.

L'Abou Naddara, Journal Arabe Illustre (1878-1884) by James Sanua - $13,000

First edition published in 1878 and signed by author. The complete set of the first eight years of Sahifat Abou Naddara issued in Paris. Sanua was called Ya'qub Rufa'il Sanu in Arabic but was often referred to by his pseudonym, Abu Naddara (‘father of spectacles’).

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling - $12,874

Rare first edition signed by JK with the dust wrapper panels signed by the cover artist Cliff Wright. The first issue has a misaligned block of text which was corrected in the subsequent issues.

Specimens of British minerals selected from the cabinet of Philip Rashleigh by Philip Rashleigh - $12,754

Cornish landowner Philip Rashleigh formed one of the most outstanding early collections of mineral specimens (housed in the Royal Cornwall Museum at Truro) and this work describes his best specimens.

AbeBooks' Most Expensive Sales of Children’s & Young Adult Books in 2008

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling - $12,874

Rare first edition signed by JK with the dust wrapper panels signed by the cover artist Cliff Wright. The first issue has a misaligned block of text which was corrected in the subsequent issues.

Grimms Fairy Tales by Jakob & Wilhelm Grimm - $11,388

A first edition, first issue copy of these famous fairy tales including 22 etched plates by George Cruikshank. It is housed in a clamshell box.

The Edge Chronicles by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell - $7,000

A complete set of the children’s fantasy series containing Beyond the Deepwoods, Stormchaser, Midnight Over Sanctaphrax, Cloud Wolf, Curse of the Gloamglozer, Last of the Sky Pirates, Vox, and Freeglader. All titles are first UK editions with signatures of Stewart and Riddell.

Most Expensive Oddities (Robert Messenger of the Canberra Times should have bought the first one!)

George Bernard Shaw’s typewriter $7,979

Along the top edge of the machine’s guarantee in faded ink, Shaw had written the words "Bernard Shaw, Ayot St Lawrence, Welwyn Herts". He had also written the date, 9th Feb 1935.

Signed letter by Katherine Mansfield - $5,414

An autographed letter to her father by Katherine Mansfield - written four months before her death from tuberculosis.

Autograph of Sir Joshua Reynolds - $3,764

A rare letter from the 18th century portrait painter.

Expensive Popular items

Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama - $5,500

Signed first edition of the 2004 reissue of the President-elect’s first book.

Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer - $4,000

A complete set of all four books from Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. All books are first editions, first printings in fine condition. All copies are signed by the author.

Space Odyssey Series by Arthur C Clarke - $3,750

First editions of the Space Odyssey Series - all signed by Arthur C. Clarke, who died in 2008.

Quote of the Week

"We must respect the living but the truth is good enough for the dead". Voltaire.

Odd Book Title

The Inheritance of Hairy Ear Rims. By Reginald Rugggles Gates and P. N. Bhaduri, Edinburgh, Mankind Quarterly, 1961

Thanks to Debbie Campbell of the National Library, Libraries Australia reports the only copy in Australia is at the University of Sydney Library.

Pun of the Week

When Boston began a clean-up campaign in 1946 it was their first grime wave.