NEA report on reading in America. Most useful to me as a source of statistics on who reads and how much.

The most exquisite book-porn video ever: the remaking, from original dies, of the 19th-century Pictorial Websters. Watch a beautiful book being made, from dies to Linotype all the way through binding. Drool. However, I looked for how much the book costs; the answer is "More than I can afford."

Hilarious. Example:

Book Titles, If They Were Written Today

Then: The Wealth of Nations
Now: Invisible Hands: The Mysterious Market Forces That Control Our Lives and How to Profit from Them

Sounds like this place is a reminder of a better day.

I haven't read enough novels in the past year. Let's mine this list and make it happen.

More book drooling.

Single-page view of Keynes's General Theory.

Some of these look like they're worth investigating. An unfortunately large fraction are of the form "Economics, she crazy"! Like evolutionary psychology, behavioral economics has been muddled too much on the way to the popular press.

Toread.

What's most charming about this piece to me is the number of little details of book-reading that ring true -- like his ability to remember where on a page a quote is, or the fact that you often CAN tell a book by its cover. Bravo, Luc Sante.

Beautiful photos from inside the NYPL. Drool drool drool.

Highly recommended, if you're into typography, information design, map design, and the evolution of the above.

Upload photos of your bookshelves. I considered setting aside a website to do this very thing, but it looks like it's already been tackled by a far larger group than would ever find mine.

On the continuing theme of 'clever ways to store your books.'

In response to Cosma's bookshelf-pr0n link.

Every book Art Garfunkel has read since 1968.

Toread. Title self-explanatory.

A warehouse where books that no one reads from the British Library go. You'd think that if people really aren't reading them -- e.g., they've been un-checked-out for 50 years -- they'd scan-and-OCR them, or sell them. A warehouse seems a waste.

Self-explanatory. To check out.

An atlas of American empire and its effects. Toread.

Interesting-sounding book. Title self-explanatory.

Um, dang. James got a *lot* of books for free.

Grimmelmann has it exactly right: it is not the job of the world's information providers to organize information. That is the web's job. It is exactly right to call the librarians' ideas "oldthink."