Brian Jay Jones's Blog, page 29

Decimal Points Matter

Mark Bartlett, Head Librarian at the New York Society Library, informs me that the replacement cost for the missing Law of Nations was actually $1,200, and not $12,000, as reported in the New York Daily News article that I quoted here yesterday.  He also provided this link to an NBC New York story on the matter, with a short video of the book in question.

Thanks for the clarification, Mark!

No Longer Long Overdue

Yesterday at the New York Society Library, the estate of George Washington's Mount Vernon presented the library with a copy of one of the two overdue books the first president checked out in the late 1700s. (You can read my original post about this right here.)

In a formal ceremony at the NYSL, James Rees, the executive director of Mount Vernon, presented NYSL chairman Charles Berry with a copy of The Law of Nations, one of the two books that Washington checked out of the library in October...

Reflections on the BIO Conference

The first Compleat Biographers Conference — sponsored by the Biographers International Organization (BIO) — was held in Boston this past weekend, and I'd have to call it an enormous success.  It was easily the best, most informative conference I've ever attended, with plenty of interesting sessions, great speakers, and — perhaps the best part — plenty of opportunities to sit and talk with fellow writers, editors, agents, or book lovers. 

Want a highlight reel?  Here's a sampling of  just a...

See You In The Funny Papers!

When I was in junior high — heck, even high school, if I'm being honest — I had dreams of being a newspaper cartoonist. Hey, it didn't seem that unreasonable at the time – I was (and kinda still am) a fairly respectable cartoonist (though my repertoire is admittedly limited) and I read nearly every strip out there, even those I considered snoozers like Mary Worth or Garfield.  Further, I wasn't naive about it: I knew selling a strip took more than just the ability to write and draw.  I did...

Hip To Be From 'Burque

While I was born in Kansas and have lived for most of my adult life on the Atlantic Seaboard, if you ask me where I'm from, I'll tell you that I'm a New Mexican. More specifically, I'm from Albuquerque.  That's it in the photo above — you're looking across the Rio Grande, past the glowing downtown, with the Sandia Mountains squatting on the city's east side. Pretty nice.

I moved to Albuquerque when I was six years old — and while I briefly attended junior high school in the Midwest, I still...

Still More Credit Where Credit's Due

Last winter, when I junked my old and slow Dell desktop in favor of a MacBook laptop, I had to switch my home banking program to a new software.  I had been running Microsoft Money for years, and was generally happy with it.  I don't need anything fancy in the home finances department — I don't invest in the stock market or track my retirement or anything like that — so my requirements are fairly simple: I  want it to look like a checkbook, and I want to be able to print out reports at the...

…And One More, While I'm At It.

Speaking of new releases, The Tavernier Stones — the debut novel of my pal Stephen Parrish — hit bookstores this past Saturday. Stephen's a deep-drill researcher with a passion for his subject (he's got  degrees in both gemology and cartography, which makes him the Indiana Jones of jewelers), and his novel is sort of like Bones meets The Da Vinci Code:

When the well-preserved body of seventeenth-century mapmaker Johannes Cellarius floats to the surface of a bog in northern Germany, a 57-carat...

Happy Launch Day, Jonathan Bender!

Congratulations to Lego addict (and fellow member of the Lyons Den) Jonathan Bender, on the release of his way-cool book LEGO: A Love Story. If you've been following Jonathan on his blog for the last few years (like I have), you know that he approached Lego as a sort of enthusiastic amateur, and developed the chops to become a master builder.  C'mon, how much fun does this sound? Check it out:

In search of answers and adventure, Jonathan Bender sets out to explore the quirky world of adult...

"I Cannot Tell A Lie: They Were Under My Bed."

Those of us who have sheepishly returned an overdue library book and paid the seventy cent fine can be a bit less embarassed now — because thanks to some recent record scrubbing by the New York Society Library, we found out we're in good company: George Washington has two overdue books. 

According to the story in the  Guardian:

The library's ledgers show that Washington took out the books on 5 October 1789, some five months into his presidency at a time when New York was still the capital. They...

Conference Call

A few things.

First, here's a laurel and hearty handshake extended to T.J. Stiles, winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Biography for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. Stiles pulled off a literary hat trick, of sorts, by having his biography awarded both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award for non-fiction.  Plus he's a Caro fan, which gives him even more points in my book.  Not that he needed them. Anyway, congratulations all around.

Speaking of Pulitzer Prize...