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La Scène SF: A To Do List

1) Attend a lecture on the Crusades at The Mechanics' Institute, which boasts "the oldest library on the West Coast and one of the oldest chess clubs in the United States."

2) Hear Gayle Brandeis, author of the new novel Self Storage, talk at Book Passage in Corte Madera on Friday night. (I don't know if I will be able to make it over to Corte Madera, but this book is at the top of my must-read pile!)

3) Buy tickets to see the lovely Jonas and his band Mew play at the Fillmore on Friday, April 6th. Tickets go on sale this Sunday.

4) Brave the Juicy Couture crowd and the Bristol Farms picketers at the Westfield Centre to stock up on my favorite notebooks from Tokyo by way of MaiDo Stationery (4th floor next to Bloomies).

5)  Take an early "lunch" on Thursday and learn how to do three turns and spins at the Yerba Buena Ice Skating Rinks morning Coffee Club session.

Library Envy IX: Objectification

A gorgeous collection of library photographs at The Nonist (via The Morning News) and "A History of the Private, Royal, Imperial, Monastic and Public Libraries."

Image: STIFTSBIBLIOTHEK ST. GALLEN

Library Envy VIII: Jack's Shack

Jack White's early 20th century Colonial Detroit homemansion at 1731 Seminole--where he recorded Get Behind Me, Satan--is up for sale. According to Wit of the Staircase, it's listed at only $930,000. Coming from San Francisco, that seems like a bargain. I could happily spend many hours reading by the fireside in this dark and lovely library. (In a previous apartment I had my bedroom painted the same intense shade. The cracks between the windows and the window frames were roughly an inch in width, but the warm color, a floor heater, and the quilt my grandmother pieced when she was sixteen helped make the winters bearable.)

Library Envy VII: In the Attic

"So there we were in the attic, filled to the rafters with many painted Keith Moon portraits, hundreds of ornate silver absinthe spoons, hundreds more pairs of my barely or never worn designer shoes (sshhhh! private use of attic storage is against club regulations!) and my old letters."

Shhh... it's a scintillating secret society as dazzling as Wit of the Staircase's imagination.

Library Envy VI: The Morgan

Unfortunately the newly expanded Morgan Library had yet to reopen during my recent trip to NYC, but from the looks of it, it may be the new place to spend a rainy afternoon. The collection includes scores by Mozart, drawings by Rembrandt, and manuscripts by Dickens. From the May issue of Vogue:  "Perhaps the spring buzz about the Morgan library will inspire one of today's zillionares to build, instead of another McMansion, a great cultural oasis and share it with the public as the Morgan family did."

Library Envy V: Maggie the Cat and Lord Byron

This weekend while on the hunt for new additions to my vintage slip collection (inspired by la Liz in Butterfield 8 and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof), I picked up a deliciously threadbare biography on Lord Byron for $10. What I wouldn't give to check out the collection of 155,000 rare letters and manuscripts by the likes of Byron, Coleridge, and Sir Walter Scott that the National Library of Scotland just purchased for £31 million. Alas, the documents are going to be kept in a steel cage in Edinburgh. (Suddenly imagining  myself in a black leather cat burglar suit, scaling the roof of the library and then neatly  somersaulting through a maze of blue laser beams... )

"The Byron material is... enormously valuable and includes the manuscript of Childe Harold and love letters from Lady Caroline Lamb, as well as letters from a mystery love.  Other figures who feature in the archive are Benjamin Disraeli, Jane Austen, Mary Shelley and the explorer Isabella Bird." (via TEV)

Library Envy IV: Thomas Jefferson in Paris

One of the things he loved best about Paris was the book shopping. He said, "I suffer from the malady of bibliomania," and he spent most of his spare time in Paris perusing the bookshops. By the time he got back to the U.S., he had purchased enough books to fill two hundred fifty feet of shelves. (from The Writer's Almanac)

From the Archives: Library Envy Part III

Library Envy Part III

Edith Wharton's library, which remains intact,  includes signed copies of  novels such as the The Golden Bowl, by close friend and fellow novelist Henry James.

"The library has rarely been on public view since the writer's death in France in 1937, and its return to the Mount will provide scholars and Wharton aficionados with an opportunity to view the volumes that not only shaped Wharton's development but also reflected the broad sweep of her interests, from classical French theater and German drama to the novels of her peers and the delights of the then new-fangled automobile."

(The NYTimes via James Tata)

Related, from the archives: Library Envy Part I, Library Envy Part II, Today in Literary History, 5 Favorite Adaptations