In The Spotlight

"Cats in Literature? It’s a Long Tail is a new exhibition at the British Library that explores how cats have inspired—and frightened—writers across the centuries.     "Cats reign supreme in the internet age, but humans’ fascination with fluffy felines is nothing new....

Evidently the office of the future has no desks or chairs, just a twisting maze of plinths - whatever they are. The idea is to free ourselves from the sedentary death trap of the desk and chair and create offices were we can "roam, perch, lie or even dangle, in any...

Here's an older but nonetheless fascinating post on an innovative book format call the flipback in England, the librinos in Spain the point2 in France, and the dwarsligger in the Netherlands. Regardless of what you call it, this book format is a real hardcover volume,...

Afraid of semicolons? Unsure of when to use the Oxford comma? Don’t fear, Ellen Jovin’s grammar table has you covered This may be something that you'll only see in the Big Apple. According to this post in the NY Times "Ms. Jovin is a new member of a city subway...

Here's A Real Page-Turner: Libraries Battle For Book-Sorting Championship Radio station WBUR in Boston reports that "once a year for the past five years, the New York and Brooklyn Public Libraries have faced off against Washington’s King County Library in a battle of...

According to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner "an intoxicated book lover broke the glass in one of the Noel Wien Library’s front doors to gain access after hours Tuesday night. According to library director Melissa Harter, the man “really wanted to read” and didn’t...

According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette A Dublin janitor has won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature from the university she cleans "Trinity College Dublin presented Ms. Caitríona Lally last week with the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, one of Ireland’s most...

Yes, it's true! The Bodleian Libraries is lifting the lid on its collection of 'obscene' and 'improper' books in the first ever display of items from the Libraries' restricted 'Phi' category.  Need some background? Well, "in the Victorian age, the Bodleian created a...

Evidently "a scientist in a remote outpost in Antarctica plunged a kitchen knife into his colleague because he was fed up with the man telling him the endings of books. According to the UK's Daily Record "Sergey Savitsky, 55, and Oleg Beloguzov, 52, were both avid...

It looks like it may have. Experiments with baboons recounted in this New Scientist post indicate "that some of the mental processing involved in reading evolved separately from the specialised language centres that are unique to human brains. In an impressive feat of...

The Joy of Waterboiling is the first foreign language book in contention for the much sought after Diagram Book prize. And what exactly is the Diagram book prize?  Well according to The Guardian it's an award that's been sponsored by trade magazine Bookseller for...