Bookworm

Published on Friday 7 November 2008 19:30

CALLING THE CURIOUS

They were toying with the idea of calling it Bibliomundo or the Ministry of Stuff but, when it opens today, Edinburgh's Festival of Libraries is what it will be called. A mistake, I feel, as "festival" and "libraries" aren't words that naturally cling together.

Be that as it may, the week-long festival at Adam House in Chambers Street will be hosting 40 stalls at which you can find out more about local history, politics, geology, astronomy, health, well-being and much more. The point being that Edinburgh has 135 different kinds of libraries; that most of us don't know about them, and that it's time we did.

Still, "festival of libraries"... already the grey mist has descended, the eyes are growing heavy. Why not "festival of curiosity"? Why not highlight some of the most weird and wonderful questions librarians get asked? Why not ask where in the city you'd find a 1,200-book resource on bee-keeping, or first editions of Copernicus or – with Remembrance Sunday in mind – of the First World War poets?

I only ask because I think a festival of libraries is a fine thing – but next year maybe it should change its name?

BODY OF EVIDENCE

STILL, it's not as if they aren't trying to innovate. Today, for example, you can "borrow" a "living book". In practice this means that you turn up, select a title such as "war veteran", "policeman", Pole" or "poet" and a real person materialises for you to question. You can only do this for half an hour at a time, though, and all living books have to be returned once you've finished with them.

CLASSY CLASSICS

MERE books, by comparison, might seem paltry things. Yet the new range of Penguin Classics designed by Bill Amberg shows just how beautiful even an ordinary paperback can be made to be.

Amberg picked six of his favourite books – The Picture of Dorian Gray, A Room with a View, The Great Gatsby, The Big Sleep, Brideshead Revisited and Breakfast at Tiffany's – and gave them a soft leather binding in rich brown buffalo calf with linked bookmark to match. They're 50 each – but even in a credit crunch, they're so lovely that they're worth it.

MODESTY RULES

FINALLY, hats off to Anthony Horowitz for turning down a fortune to pen his memoirs. "It just felt like a form of self-abuse," he notes in the current issue of the Bookseller, in which he lambasts stars' tendencies to publish intimate details of their lives – in Jonathan Ross's case, genital warts and all.