blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

“(It) belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.” - Walt Whitman on baseball

With this year’s World Series rapidly approaching, it is not difficult to see what Whitman means.  Even after falling behind football in popularity, baseball dominates America’s October conversations.  And, if we take a look at recent literary releases like Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding (2011), Michael Chabon’s Summerland (2002), and David James Duncan’s The Brothers K (1992), it is clear that baseball dominates not just our national attention, but our national imagination.

Bestselling spy novelist, David John Moore Cornwell—John le Carré—was born October 19, 1931, in Poole, England. He had a rough childhood characterized by betrayals and dishonesty. His mother abandoned the family when he was five and the family was frequently uprooted due to his father's penchant for fraud. As a child, his father actively discouraged reading. "Anyone caught reading a book," le Carré said, "was not being loyal."

Oscar Wilde is often remembered for his bright wit and lavish lifestyle as well as his works The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray. Master of the epigram, he coined phrases such as "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken" and "Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much." He lived much of his life as an evangelist for the Aesthetic movement in art, believing that life should be beautiful. What life delivered him, however, was not so idyllic.

Cult classic, The Princess Bride, is back in the news. Today—over forty years after the book was published and 27 years after the movie was released—star Cary Elwes has released his first-hand account of the making of the film. Titled, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride, Elwes shares behind-the-scenes anecdotes and photographs. When asked if it was as much fun to make the film as it looked, Elwes responded, “It was more fun than it looked.”

When it comes to comedic writing, P.G. Wodehouse was one of the greats. His body of work extends from novels and short stories to Broadway musicals. Yet, his legacy chiefly relies on two series of books: “The Blandings Castle Saga” and stories about valet extraordinaire, Jeeves. Both worlds were created by Wodehouse in the 1910s, but he added to the stories for sixty years, until he passed away in 1975. 

Today, we kick off a series about the most exceptional libraries in the world. Focusing on everything from Shakespeare to botany, they hold some of the rarest books and print materials on earth.  For those of you who cannot physically visit these places, we hope our articles will provide a peek into the amazing breadth and richness of book collecting. 

There are three must-see vacation destinations for the Shakespeare lover: his home in Stratford-upon-Avon, the Globe Theatre in London, and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. 

Writing Western novels hardly seems like an effective way to make it in Hollywood, but for Elmore Leonard it worked wonders. The 1940s through 1960s saw peak interest in Western dramas due to the affordability and availability of cinema and television. Leonard began his writing career during the 1950s producing a string of Westerns: five novels and thirty short stories. However, once the genre had peaked, Leonard moved on to a more contemporary interest—crime.

Many were surprised when Patrick Modiano won the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. None more than the winner himself. “I wasn’t expecting this at all,” he confessed.

So, who is this new Nobel laureate? It is a fair question, for while the Frenchman is beloved in his own country, he received little international recognition before yesterday’s bombshell. His quiet reputation was in part by design. A humble man, he avoids interviews and rejected his nomination to the Académie Francaise for fear that it would bring unwanted fame.

It would be an understatement to say that Russian writer Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn had a complicated relationship with his motherland. Despite suffering constant persecution during his adult life, Solzhenitsyn remained faithful to his culture, language, and countrymen. He revealed the cruel reality of the Soviet system to the world in both his fiction and his memoirs, for which he received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Literature. The world applauded him; the USSR tried to ruin him.

Fridtjof Nansen was an explorer, scientist, sportsman, diplomat, and humanitarian as well as one of the most interesting people you’ve never heard of. He was the first man to traverse Greenland’s interior, traveled closer to the North Pole than anyone in his day, broke national cross-country skiing records, was a leading researcher of neuroanatomy, and created an internationally-recognized passport for stateless refugees. To top it all off, he had one fantastic mustache.