River of Stars

Guy Gavriel Kay has a new book out. Its title? River of Stars. I suppose I should write a review of this book, since way back in the day I wrote an Honours thesis based in part on Kay's early work. (I fortunately came to my senses in time to escape the EngLit PhD trap, though!)

So for now this will just be a placeholder until I actually read the book and come up with something intelligent to say about it.

My prediction: I will, as always, be entranced by Kay's command of language, crafting of scenes, and his meticulous research into fascinating historical periods: but this book won't supplant A Song for Arbonne or The Lions of Al-Rassan from their places on the pedestal. Still, almost any book by Kay is intrinsically better than 95% of all commercial fiction, so I'm in for a treat.

The Bard Is No Longer Beached

I love dry wit.

In this story, a Washington, D.C. librarian was presented with a 400 year-old book by a man who asked that it be authenticated. It turned out that this was a stolen First Folio volume of Shakespeare's plays, printed in 1623.

This quote in particular cracked me up: "We have people come to us from time to time with questions about books," said Garland Scott, head of external relations at the library, one of the world's leading centers of Shakespearean research. "It's not every day that someone walks in with a First Folio." [The man claimed to be an international businessman who bought the volume in Cuba]

Plans are underway to return the stolen volume -- conservatively valued at 30M US$ -- to Durham University in England, missing since its theft in 1998.