Carpe Libra

In case you are interested, PETA came out with their annual awards for animal-friendliness. This years winner for best children’s book is, The Great Escape by Natalie Haynes.
The plot runs like this:
Millie, the main character, turn vegetarian and anti-vivisection after seeing a PETA table. She then rescues cats from a laboratory while helping her dad [...]

Watership Down is a rabbit-centric novel by Richard Adams. It features two main pet peeves to many of our reviewers
1) Talking animals
2) Made up words for a new language
Watership Down is based on an actual location, Nuthanger Farm is an actual place (you can see photos here). For an in-depth look at the country the [...]

Andersen idolized Dickens, so when he had the opportunity to meet Dickens, he turned the meeting into a stay at Dickens’ house where he promised “I shall not inconvenience you too much.”
However, Dickens had a different view on what “inconvenience” meant. Andersen stayed for five weeks, prompting Dickens to write on the guestroom mirror, “Hans [...]

Mr. Burroughs is the creator of Tarzan of the Apes. He accumulated quite the following and possession, including a ranch community of writers.
His grandson, Danton, was selected to one day be in charge of his estate and the other day he was scheduled to be named chairman of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Inc. But there was a house [...]

Here are eight facts about Charles Dickens from Neatorama.
For instance, he claimed to be able to heal people through mesmerism, but he also suffered from epilepsy his whole life. But I guess you can’t mesmerize yourself, or at least not as frequently as required to cure epilepsy.

Reading the Carp 500 is tough and takes a long time. But if you’re feeling really ambitious, here is a list of 1001 books to read before you die (which apparently means it doesn’t count if you read them after you die, which is good to know beforehand).

Take a look at this collection of cooly-designed bookshelves.
If only I had a secret room I would totally use their design for making the bookcase door.
To do list for today: Make secret room.

I have a critical eye, I guess. I notice typos everywhere. One of my favorite books, Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell, is also one of the most irritating books I’ve ever read because of typos everywhere.
The problem with being aware of typos is that once you notice them you can’t help but notice them everywhere. [...]

The Book Bench, the book-related blog of The New Yorker, has a post on a disputed photo of Emily Dickinson with links to articles on whether this photo is legit. This would be the kind of thing you would be interested in if you were interested in this kind of thing.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the US’s #1 bookseller, Barnes & Noble, is contemplating taking over the #2 bookseller, Borders.
Whether such a deal would pass antitrust hurdles is unclear. Barnes & Noble has about 20% to 22% of the retail book market, while Borders controls 10% to 12%, estimates Albert Greco, a professor at [...]