For the last few years, when the holiday season has come around, I've looked back to previous centuries for the newsworthy events of the year. Today, please join me on a whistle stop tour through 1811 ....
If you thought that 2011 was an interesting year to live through, you should try 1811!
The Great Comet
The Great Comet draws the eyes of many to the night sky, including artist and poet William Blake who incorporates it into one of his most famous paintings, "The Ghost of a Flea" (which is also one of his smallest at less than 9x7 inches). The comet would be sufficiently memorable that Tolstoy, writing War and Peace almost 60 years later, has the character of Pierre observe this "enormous and brilliant comet [...] which was said to portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world."
Good Year for Wine
1811 was also an exceptional year for wine, a fact that winemakers of the time (and perhaps even today) would say is not coincidental as some of the strongest vintages of the last two centuries have been in years with visible comets. But it is a bad year for the 41-year-old Beethoven who, having lost his patron and most of his hearing, enters a period of physical illness and low output.
Meanwhile, in Germany, Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué begins the peak period of his popularity with the publication of Undine - the much translated and retold story of a water spirit who marries a knight in order to gain a soul, which is considered one of the earliest German romances.
Austen and Shelley Jane Austen's first book, Sense and Sensibility, is published. She will see three more books published before her untimely death six years later at the age of 42.
Percy Bysshe Shelley is in fine form, publishing a novel and a treatise on atheism. The latter results in him being expelled from Oxford. Married twice (having run away with both women when they were 16), fathering at least six children by three women, and burning through all his money, Shelley will drown eleven years later in dubious circumstances.
I'm not a big fan of "self help" books, steering away from tomes that threaten to give me step by step improvement instructions. Instead I prefer to learn from other people's narratives (that is to say, other people's mistakes) - which is just what one can do from No Cheating, No Dying.
The English language is a wonderful thing. For a whistle stop tour through it's 1500 year (or thereabouts) history, sit back and enjoy The History of English in 10 Minutes produced by Britain's Open University:
Amazon's $34 billion annual revenues are larger than the GDPs of half the countries in the world.
Amazon's web sales are five times the combined web sales of Walmart, Target and Buy.com.
Amazon serves 137 million customers a week, 33% more than voted in the 2010 USA elections. That's 19.5 million customers daily - equal to the population of Beijing, or the number of Americans who live on less than $6000 a year.
The average amount brought in by one of Amazon's unique users is $189. That's almost five times as valuable as Ebay's average ($39).
Amazon owns 1/10th of North America's e-commerce pie.
If Amazon's active users were a country, their population would be twice that of Canada.
With 50,000 preorders, Kindle Fire is set to double the launch of the iPad.
Amazon's current cloud platform could store 82 books for each person on the earth.
Amazon's warehouse space has grown from a 400 square foot garage in 1995 to 25 million square feet - equivalent to more than 700 Madison Square Gardens.
Thanks to FrugalDad.com for these stats and the elegant infographic below that charts the rise, and rise, of Amazon...
Congratulations to Alan Hollinghurst for his UK National Book Award win. The Stranger's Child, which was controversially omitted from this year's Man Booker shortlist, won him the Author of the Year Award at last Friday's Galaxy National Book Awards.
Looking for a crafty gift idea for a book lover - how about about a pair of bookends?
Visit babble.com for 25 inspiring ideas, most of which can be made on a shoestring - and should be possible to create even if, like me, you're somewhat challenged when it comes to craft projects!
Most book trailers are, frankly, dull but occasionally one comes along that breaks the mold such as this one for Machine Man by Australian author Max Barry:
This week marks the USA's 30th annual Banned Books Week (sponsored by half a dozen American library, bookseller, journalist and publisher associations; and endorsed by about half a dozen more.) During Banned Books Week, bookstores and libraries across the USA celebrate (for want of a better word) the books that have been challenged or outright banned from libraries with in store displays, readings and so forth.
A challenge is defined as a formal, written complaint, filed with a library or school requesting that materials be removed because of content or appropriateness. Over the past ten years, the American Library Association has recorded 4660 challenges - which they estimate represents about one in four or five of the actual number of challenges, as most go unreported. Of these reported, about 30% of challenges are due to "sexually explicit" material, about a quarter due to "offensive language", about one in five due to material deemed "unsuited to age group", about 10% due to "violence", and 8% due to homosexuality.
In a series of lectures, Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk ruminated on what goes on in the mind of a person reading a novel. His thoughts are summarized by Susan K. Perry, Ph.D. below.
Do these match your experiences? The point about finishing a (great) novel and feeling that it had been written just for me particularly struck home - it maybe irrational but it's so true!
The slow-mo implosion of Borders has created an enormous amount of commentary, but perhaps none as visceral as the poster spotted in a Borders in Santa Rosa, California.
Things We Never Told You. Ode To A Bookstore Death
We hate it when a book becomes popular simply because it was turned into a movie.
It confused us when we were asked where the non-fiction section is.
Nicholas Sparks is not a good writer. If you like him, fine, but facts are facts.
We greatly dislike the phrase "QUICK QUESTION". It's never true. And everyone seems to have one.
Your summer reading list was our summer reading NIGHTMARE. Also, it's called summer reading, not "three days before school starts" reading.
It's true that we lean to the left and think Glenn Beck is an idiot.
We always knew when you were intently reading Better Homes and Gardens, it was really a hidden Playboy.
The Great Comet
Jane Austen's first book, Sense and Sensibility, is published. She will see three more books published before her untimely death six years later at the age of 42.
Percy Bysshe Shelley is in fine form, publishing a novel and a treatise on atheism. The latter results in him being expelled from Oxford. Married twice (having run away with both women when they were 16), fathering at least six children by three women, and burning through all his money, Shelley will drown eleven years later in dubious circumstances.
This week marks the USA's 30th annual Banned Books Week (sponsored by half a dozen American library, bookseller, journalist and publisher associations; and endorsed by about half a dozen more.) During Banned Books Week, bookstores and libraries across the USA celebrate (for want of a better word) the books that have been challenged or outright banned from libraries with in store displays, readings and so forth. 
