"I'll persistently demand that no material connected to Franz Kafka leaves the State of Israel," the state archivist, Dr. Yehoshua Freundlich, told Haaretz on Wednesday following the July 7 report that parts of the writer's legacy are in Israel. German parties have over the past few days expressed great interest in receiving the material, and estimated that it contains an original manuscript of one of Kafka's stories along with his illustrations, as well as letters from his close friend, the writer Max Brod.

...In the meantime, the material remains in the Tel Aviv apartment, and the whole world is awaiting the decision of Esther Hoffe's daughters regarding the estate's future. The fact that it is located in a private apartment does not enable the state archivist to remove the material by force, but only to prevent it from being taken out of the country. "We have a problem. I am not a policeman and I cannot enter people's apartments," Freundlich said".

Google launches a virtual world ‘Lively’

The Buffaloblog notes the launch of Google's new virtual world as follows.

"The new initiative will pose as Google’s answer to Second Life, where users can indulge in an alter ego life through a user-created avatar. Google thinks Lively will encourage even more people to dive into alternate realities because it isn't tethered to one website like Second Life, and it doesn't cost anything to use. After installing a small packet of software, a user can enter Lively from other websites, like social networking sites and blogs.

So what are the implications for the future? Well one could argue that, as Google’s main mission is to provide information to web users, we may all, one day, access our information in virtual environments. Will we see the virtual Wikipedia Grand Library where we access user generated information (in a beautifully constructed virtual building) with our avatars and discuss our findings in the Wikipedia Café situated next door? Rather than inputting text into a search engine will we put our questions to a virtual character at the Google Information Centre? ...Already social networking and blogging are at the forefront of how people receive their daily information, putting a face and a 3d, interactive, world to that is surely just around the corner. Alternate realities? I think Google are being modest, this may soon be reality for us all"

BUT Andrea L. Foster, writing in The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Ccampus notes that: 'Scholars Are Skeptical of Google's New Virtual World'.

"Virtual-world scholars seem unimpressed by the project. The Terra Nova blog has assembled their comments. Aaron Delwiche, an assistant professor of communications at Trinity University, is disappointed that Lively does not allow people to create their own content, a feature of the virtual world Second Life. "Google has given us an impoverished space in which content can only be developed in-house or by 'trusted developers,'" he writes. Vili Lehdonvirta, a researcher at the Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, says this about Mr. Delwiche's observation. "I don't think it's true that Second Life style dedicated tools for creating complex 3D content are a prerequisite for creativity and expression. People used to build pianos out of fish steaks and chessboards in Ultima Online," he writes of the popular three-dimensional game. "Still, I agree that it would be really cool if Google came out with advanced content creation tools that are easy to use."

AND Stephen Cohen has accused Google of "using and discarding librarians".

"Is Google casting aside the library community? That's the recent conclusion of some librarians. The giant technology company once courted librarians to back its controversial project that digitizes books from academic libraries and makes all or parts of the texts available online. Now it seems Google no longer needs them, the librarians say. Steven M. Cohen, a senior librarian at Law Library Management Inc., notes on his blog that Google last updated its "Librarian Central" blog a year ago. "So, Google will continue to use librarians, scan their books, profit from it, and then leave us in the information dust to rot like an old microfilm machine," writes Mr. Cohen. "It’s sad really. But then again, we fell for it."

Subsequently, Google have made some placatory noises to librarians in the United States, but clearly the Google caravan has moved on.

Dodgy House Calls!

The Bookride Blog recently posted some fascinating notes on visits to houses in England by secondhand and antiquarian booksellers.

"Strangest call? A pal of mine, now ennobled, was called to a house full of books in North London. When he arrived he realised there was a noisy afternoon party going on that had developed into an orgy and he swears he had to tread on the odd buttock as he made his way to the desirable book collection. The call had come through his ad in 'Time Out' and he noted many of the participants were not young. Being a dealer he did not make an excuse and leave but made a good offer and returned to clear the books after the last raver had left.

Martin Stone swears he bought a great collection of modern firsts from an adult bookshop in Liverpool after the owner was shot one lunchtime by a crazed gunman. There were a dozen copies of 'Clockwork Orange' - first eds, fine in fine, trouble was most were splashed with the late owner's blood.

At a house call performed by myself and my brother the owner of the books, a Rachman type landlord, refused to part with them after accepting the money in cash. To be fair we had taken half of them to the waiting Volvo when he cried 'you've had enough.' During an argument he struck my brother, never a wise move as he has a fiery Irish temper. The altercation became heated, further blows were exchanged and the police were called by one of his tenants. None of his rather cowed tenants would witness against their landlord and we never got the other half of the books that we had paid for. One of the police remarked 'I thought bookselling was a quiet sort of job.'

On the subject of eventful calls, our now ennobled colleague (noted above for doing a house call during an orgy) found himself getting arrested during another house call. His patch was South London - which explains it. He was at the appartment of some fallen posh boys, like something out of 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels'. He was up a ladder looking at some pretty decent leather bound sets (not just Scott, but Wilkie Collins, Hardy, Le Fanu, Gissing etc.,) the last gasp of a country house library. Suddenly the police burst in and arrested the half dozen upper class layabouts and hauled them off with our friend who was ordered to come down off the ladder and shut up. He protested vehemently about having nothing to do with it all. Later that day he was released with an apology, his father being some kind of Q.C. Apparently the lads had been importing hashish from Morocco. He never got the books".

Frank Moorhouse on the Tensions Between Imagination and Historical Research

The ANU Staff News reports that the Miles Franklin Award-winning author Frank Moorhouse recently investigated the tension between imagination and historical research in a seminar at ANU. His comments echo those of Kate Grenville in her essays and speeches on this topic arising from the book The Secret River.

"The 2008 Coombs Creative Arts Fellow discussed the role of imagination in historical research and the contradictions between the two. “There has always been a tension between creative writers and scholars,” he said. “I’m interested in what the imagination is, and where it gets its validity from.”... “Some authors claim that they ‘just do it’. I don’t believe that. I usually put myself into a sort of ‘isolation’ in order to think clearly and truly imagine.”

Frank used the experience of writing two of his League of Nations series, Grand Days and Dark Palace, to illustrate the research that is undertaken in order to write a historical novel. He said that the best historical novels need to be based not only on the research of scholars but on the author’s own research, so the writer can begin to imagine and have their own feelings on the topic".

University of Teesside has the original plans for the Sydney Harbour Bridge

A £1.6 million project to explore, conserve and catalogue more than 600 feet of material relating to the steel industry in the Teesside area, between the University of Teesside and Teesside Archives, has been launched. Included in the British Steel Collection are the original plans for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in Australia, images showing the construction of the Forth Road Bridge in Scotland and the Auckland Harbour Bridge in New Zealand. Funding for the project comes from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

100 Unbelievably Useful Reference Sites You’ve Never Heard Of By Laura Milligan

Beyond Google, Wikipedia and other generic reference sites, the Internet boasts a multitude of search engines, dictionaries, reference desks and databases that have organized and archived information for quick and easy searches. In this list, we’ve compiled just 100 of our favorites, for teachers, students, hypochondriacs, procrastinators, bookworms, sports nuts and more.

Dial up a literary magazine for free!

The publisher Hamish Hamilton has launched an excellent new free literary magazine called Five Dials, the first issue contains new writing by Iain Sinclair, Hari Kunzru and Rachel Lichtenstein, and an agony-uncle column from Alain de Botton! Its formatted more for printing out than reading on the screen, but in whatever form you read this magazine do keep an eye out for future issues. Dial me up (Scotty) Hamish!

The End: the best movie endings ever, from E.T. to Casablanca

Is it E.T. leaving in a spaceship or Butch and Sundance going down in a hail of bullets? Here Times critics choose their Top 20 film endings. BUT beware of plot endings revealed in the synopses.

Goodbye to all that- Robert Graves?

The British literary pages have recently been agog with the claims that Robert Graves was involved in the large-scale artistic theft from Laura Riding Jackson, a fellow poet and former lover. Dr Mark Jacobs, a research fellow at Nottingham Trent University, is quoted in the UK Independent newspaper, following his analysis of 700 letters of Jackson's. She is said to have told him that Graves "sucked, bled, squeezed, plucked, picked, grabbed, dipped, sliced, carved, lifted the body of my work".

True lies?

Professor John Sutherland of University College London, and a regular contributor to a number of British newspapers, exposes some "tryths" about Higher Education

Check out our in the Education Guardian.

"There are five 'truths' about the current state of higher education that everyone (outside of HE) knows. All are true and all are, to some degree, myths. Let's call them 'tryths' and put them to the test...

A major destabilising factor is that young students are, in the main, better at handling things electronic than their (much) elders and betters. It's significant, for example, that Persaud is decades younger than those on the tribunals judging him. Another factor, destabilising the old way of doing things, is the sheer mass of information now readily available, without leg or arm effort, to the savvy student. One could argue that we are moving away from intellectual individualism (a post-romantic conception in the West) to something resembling a Confucian system in which only masters are privileged to be original thinkers. Why should we expect every first year undergraduate to be a Frank Kermode - or every PhD student, for that matter?

Most students, in my observation of them, are not cheats by nature. But they accommodate to things as they are. Some countervailing accommodation is needed by the system. It astonishes me, for example, that students are instructed to switch off their phones in lectures and seminars, thus cutting off the exchange of information and opinion by silent text; or that students are not encouraged to bring in sub-laptop computers so that they can, while attending, look up relevant information. Surely having the wikipedia entry on George Eliot, or the Gutenberg e-text, on the screen in front of you, while attending to lecture on Middlemarch, for example, would enhance the instruction?"

Don't Cry For Me, R2D2

The Chronicle of Higher Education's Wired Campus reports that "musicians can breathe a sigh of relief: Computers don't do as well when performing music at eliciting an emotional response. That's the conclusion of a study published today in the journal PLoS ONE. Researchers in Germany and the United Kingdom played selections from piano sonatas by Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert to 20 listeners, while monitoring their brains' responses by electroencephalogram, better known as EEG. Volunteers who listened to recordings of professional pianists showed more emotional activity of the brain than did those who listened to recordings made by computer. "Our results suggest that musicians actually tell us something when they play," said Stefan Koelsch, who led the work".

The actual article 'Effects of Unexpected Chords and of Performer's Expression on Brain Responses and Electrodermal Activity' by Stefan Koelsch1, Simone Kilches, Nikolaus Steinbeis, Stefanie Schelinski can be found in the Open Access journal, Public Library of Science at:

Ray Bradbury mourns Acres of Books

Kevin Roderick in LA Observed quotes Ray Bradbury on the impending loss of the famous Acres of Books Bookshop in Long Beach California. Ray Bradbury spoke at the iconic Long Beach bookstore and railed about its threatened closure and the dearth of bookstores in certain areas around Los Angeles..."Right now there are no bookstores in downtown L.A. That's terrible. That's stupid, isn't it?...There's no really big bookstore, Pickwick used to be there, it was a very important bookstore....Bookstores should be the center of our life. There's no bookstore in Venice, California right now. There's no bookstore in Ocean Park. There's no bookstore in Beverly Hills. Jesus Christ, how dumb can you get! There's not one bookstore in Beverly Hills! All those stupid people, wandering around, looking for ideas. That is such a dumb place. That's why I'm here...This is my home.

If this place could be kept here, if you're going to build a mall, they should build it around here. They should be the center of the mall. They should be a shrine. They should have a crucifix up in front. I will come and bless the goddamn place. And I mean that. I want this store to remain here and they can build a mall around it...It should be surrounded by other fascinating stores. It shouldn't be moved. It shouldn't be changed because it's the best bookstore in Long Beach and one of the best in California".

Sony e-book reader confronted by the Rabble blog

The Rabble blog does not think too much of Sony's new e-book reader. "Sony's idea is that you will buy a Book (about $300) and then spend even more money at the Sony eBook Store online, where it sells e-books burdened with Digital Rights Management (DRM)locks. Scott McClellan's insider peek at the Bush Administration, What Happened, is available for $16.77, for example. But, once I buy that ebook, I can't share it, resell it or make copies of it. So,I have absolutely no intention of buying it, or anything else from Sony's online bookstore. Why? Because I want to have the same rights with my electronic content as I have with my books in the real world. DRM takes those rights away".

Welsh book prize fiasco

A writer’s agony after the recent Welsh book award fiasco recalls the Victorian Premier's Prize gaff of several years ago.

Sally Williams writing in the Western Mail observed that Tom Bullough who was called to the stage as a Wales Book of the Year winner said he had a ‘cruel glimpse of hell’, when it emerged just moments later that there had been a mistake.

"Tom Bullough, author of The Claude Glass, was named the victor at the glittering ceremony at The Hilton Cardiff on Tuesday night, he kissed his wife and beamed as he proudly strode to the stage. The writer, who has been eking out a living in the Cambrian Mountains was euphoric, believing he had won the £10,000 prize which had been his ultimate goal over the past 10 years...But his expression turned to horror when Heritage Minister Rhodri Glyn Thomas quickly told the audience he had announced the results wrongly and that Dannie Abse’s The Presence was the winner".

Carmen out reading!

A fascinating piece on reading to the workers in Cuba.

"In Cuba, reading out loud to the workers in cigar factories became an industry-wide tradition in 1865. In that year Saturnino Martínez, a consummate smoker, journalist and poet, published the La Aurora journal, which was an advanced publication for the working class mainly used to enlighten the cigar workers sector. Martínez had the brilliant and altruistic idea of using people to read to the workers during working hours and he first organized readings in the El Figaro factory in Havana.

Today, all over Cuba, this tradition is alive and well. Readers are in all the factories, from Santiago to Havana to Pinar del Río. The readings have specific timetables and generally begin with the headlines of the day's newspapers. After reading the newspaper, the readers take a break and then begin reading the unfinished book from the day before. Most are women.

The workers themselves choose the book. It might be a classical novel or one by a contemporary author usually found in public libraries, or even in private collections. The choice of books can vary from a political manifesto to a work by Edgar Allan Poe or Gabriel García Marquez. However, the most popular books are detective stories as well as books by Agatha Christie and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle".

SUMMER BOOKS ROUND-UP

In the northern hemisphere, the literary pages are full of books to take on your summer holidays, with many contributors raising the perennial question as to whether they should take the long,unread classic, such as War and Peace or just grab the latest Jodi Picoult or Jeffrey Archer. One such list is as follows:

Melissa McClements takes us around the world with the best books of the year so far.

Given the current state of the British summer, no wonder reading is often an indoor activity. The Guardian says "think of Jane Eyre snuggled up on the window seat at Gateshead Hall, dreaming over Bewick's Birds, or David Copperfield sitting on his bed and 'reading as if for life'. But there are people who love reading outside"

Signed CS Lewis Narnia books boost Church appeal in Oxford

According to the Oxford Mail, the "Oxford Oratory Church of St Aloysius, in Woodstock Road, is set to receive the windfall thanks to the generosity of Walter Hooper. The church is launching a £3m appeal to carry out renovation work and build a new chapel and student accommodation. Mr Hooper, 77, who lives in North Oxford, briefly worked as CS Lewis's private secretary in 1963, shortly before the author's death. Mr Hooper has donated 11 CS Lewis titles, including three signed first editions - The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader, The Horse And His Boy and The Last Battle. All 11 books are estimated to sell for up to £3,000 each at auction. The books will be auctioned by Sotheby's in London on July 17. Philip Berrington, books specialist for Sotheby's, said: "With the film of Prince Caspian coming out, the timing for this auction couldn't be better. The connection between Walter Hooper and CS Lewis makes these books very collectable."

Lynne Truss on text speak

The Guardian quotes Lynne Truss as follows:

"As someone who sends texts messages more or less non-stop, I enjoy one particular aspect of texting more than anything else: that it is possible to sit in a crowded railway carriage laboriously spelling out quite long words in full, and using an enormous amount of punctuation, without anyone being aware of how outrageously subversive I am being. My texts are of epic length. "SMS 4" I am notified on-screen, but I merely smile inwardly at this warning against extravagance, and see if I can finish (for once) without getting to "SMS 5". No one around me can tell, as I thumb the keys, that my secret delight is to shorten no words, use no smiley faces, eschew predictive text, and employ no handy abbreviations except for "LOL" - which I always use, wilfully incorrectly, to signify "lots of love".

We pedants are supposed to hate texting, but we don't. We are in love with effective communication, and there's nothing more effective than sending a message direct from your phone to someone else's, sometimes from the hairdresser's (which I mention for a reason). "I CANT BELIEVE U PUT APOSTROPHE IN HAIRDRESSERS," a friend texted me recently (he obviously had a bit of time on his hands, too). "Oh, I felt the apostrophe was required," I texted back, happily - in both upper and lower case, with regular spacing, and a comma after "Oh".

How well do you know literary Edinburgh?

Edinburgh has long commanded a special place in the hearts of littérateurs. From Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott to modern-day residents Ian Rankin and JK Rowling. In addition to its numerous literary landmarks and centres, the city also plays host every year to a major international book festival, which returns in August this year, with Sean Connery being a notable guest with his new autobiography. Chevk out The Guardian quiz.

Is IMPAC the best and fairest global book prize?

Maria Dickenson, her latest column on the Irish book scene, comments:

"As I write, we have a book sitting at No 8 in our paperback charts that, as far as I can see, peaked in the UK at position 4,428. This title is not an Irish interest one - far from it, being a fiction work from a Lebanese Canadian set in war-torn Beirut. It comes from a UK publishing house, and there is plenty of stock available. So why is it selling in Ireland and not in Britain?

The title in question is Rawi Hage's De Niro's Game (Old Street Publishing), and it is the winner of the 2008 IMPAC prize. While based in Dublin - as an initiative of Dublin Corporation - the IMPAC is a truly international and democratic award, and is certainly worthy of recognition beyond its home country. Hage this year beat off longlist competition from established literary giants such as Margaret Atwood, Philip Roth, Richard Ford and Man Booker-winner Kiran Desai.

The list of previous winners is equally diverse, both in terms of style and nationality, hailing from Norway, America, Morocco, Turkey, France, Canada, England, Australia, Romania, Spain, with only one (Colm Toibin) from the prize's home country. Probably the most familiar names to UK readers would be Orhan Pamuk, whose My Name is Red (Faber) won in 2003... In an era when the fate of most books can be largely reliant on marketing spend and promotions, it is refreshing to see international literary talent getting mass-market attention.

This year's winner is a searing portrait of the terror and horror of ordinary life in Beirut, where Hage grew up. According to The Irish Times, “Hage has a story to tell based on experiences that burn the eye and the soul, while the reader is left reeling”. The judges' citation hailed the novel's “originality, its power, its lyricism, as well as its humane appeal”, marking it as “the work of a major literary talent”. The author's answer, given in his acceptance speech, gives an indication of his eloquence and the quality of his writing: “I am reminded of the Cuban Painter Marcelo Pogolotti, who said: 'In an era as turbulent and painful as the one we are living through, art is bound to show its rough, bitter and violent side.' And I would add, its inherently beautiful and humane side as well. To all those women and men of letters, and all artists who have gone beyond the aesthetics of the singular to represent the multiple and diverse, to all those men and women who have chosen the painful and costly portrayal of truth over tribal self-righteousness, I am grateful. We should all be grateful. To all those librarians who currently and historically have gathered and diffused knowledge, beauty, and resistance, even as the waves of hatred and ignorance periodically cover words, burn books, and stifle thought, I say: I am an admirer and an ally.”

Inspiring stuff, eh? The IMPAC award, Ladies and Gentlemen. Get on board".

Unusual and odd book titles

In addition to the regular quote of the week, I thought I'd give a title each week from current and historical book titles, particularly those from the UK Bookseller magazine's annual list.

The 2007 list included the classic "How Green Were the Nazi's", (Ohio University Press) and "The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification" (Abrams).

Quote of the Week

Voltaire on his death bed was advised to renounce the devil. He replied "now is not the time to make enemies".