From CBC.ca:

Like Trekkies or Beatles fanatics, James Bond buffs are proud of the factoid retention that comes with their obsessive fandom. Thus, when the Fleming Collection – an art museum originally endowed by Robert Fleming, financier grandfather of Bond creator Ian Fleming – announced the launch of an exhibit celebrating the cover art of James Bond novels, the calls started pouring in.

“We’ve had to deal with the fans every step of the way,” says Selina Skipwith, curator of Bond Bound. “The responses to the literature on our website were like” — and here she affects a drippy tone to mimic a Bond fan — “‘You say Fleming was 43 when he wrote Casino Royale, but in fact he turned 44 before he handed the manuscript to the publisher, Jonathan Cape.’”

Luckily, as keeper of the Fleming Collection, Skipwith is armed with more Bond minutiae than most aficionados. In preparation for the exhibit, which opened April 22, she returned to the Fleming oeuvre, rereading dozens of novels and comparing cover artwork from dozens of countries. Skipwith is the ultimate Bond girl – at least until late June, when the exhibit closes and, in all probability, London will be Bonded out.

Only in the U.K. would the curator of a major exhibit openly mock that exhibit’s target audience.

Library Thing, a social networking website for booklovers, is offering, for your browsing pleasure, the libraries of such luminaries as James Joyce, Sylvia Plath, and Adam Smith, mostly compiled from collections held by museums and estates.

Some libraries provide few surprises: for instance, Ernest Hemingway had about a million books on hunting, bullfighting, and the first World War. But on the other hand, there’s something very touching about picturing Tupac Shakur settling down with a nice cup of tea and The Diary of Anaïs Nin.

From CBC.ca:

When Canadian troops liberated western Holland from Nazi rule in May 1945, a 21-year-old Dutch artist named Mart Kempers was among the cheering throngs who greeted them.

Before the year was out, Mr. Kempers would create a series of visually striking images that captured the moment of liberation for a children’s book, hi ha canada, published in 1945 by Rotterdam publishing house Luctor.

Because of paper shortages due to the war, hi ha canada probably had a print run of only a few hundred copies, making it a rare find. The ever intrepid Library and Archives Canada recently acquired a copy after a long and bloody hunt, and now everyone can go and have a read:

Members of the public can look at the book in a special reading room at Library and Archives Canada if they abide by the rules, which include wearing special gloves to protect its yellowing pages from natural oils on our fingers.

Library and Archives Canada will feature hi ha canada on its website Wednesday as part of a new program to better publicize new acquisitions and treasures in its immense collection of books, maps, newspapers, portraits and music.

C. Max Magee at The Millions points us to the latest in lit fun: literary action figures.

While most kids were playing with G.I. Joes or Barbies, we at The Millions were more likely to have our nose in a book. Finally, there are molded plastic figurines for us too, though its not clear whether they are fully posable or offer kung-fu grip action. We’ll take what we can get. Who among us wouldn’t enjoy staging our own literary roundtables with the likes of Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, and Charles Dickens?

Magee doesn’t mention whether the figures come with a free inhaler refill and anti-wedgie kit.

For bonus wedgie points, The Millions also points us to a complete list of the Wikipedia entries updated and added to by author Nicholson Baker – a list that does not include, interestingly enough, the Wikipedia article on Baker himself.

A British architecture firm, Levitate Architects, has come up with a novel way for apartment-dwellers to accommodate their too-large book collections. In a genius stroke, they have created a combo bookshelf/staircase, which you can see for yourself here.

How is it that no one has thought to do this before? And where can we get one made?

Author Timothy Taylor has a story in the December issue of The Walrus about John Meier, a B.C. man who has collected, amongst many other things, every single Governor General’s Award English fiction winner since the prize’s inception in 1936. As the article points out, not even the Governor General has all of them. Former GG Adrienne Clarkson even made a special trip to the man’s home in 2004 to see the collection.

The governor general, with her high-profile schedule, had precisely one hour for John Meier, he had been informed by security. Clarkson — sipping tea, asking questions, and leafing through this history of Canadian letters — stayed for two and a half. Meier told her collecting stories, anecdotes about the authors. He also spoke about his latest project, writing and publishing a descriptive bibliography of the collection covering the first seventy years of the prize. For those unfamiliar with these most bookish of books, these catalogues of minute publishing information, that undertaking is best understood as near-Sisyphean. Meier had set out to find all the publishing information for each title, scattered as that data would be through library and publishers’ archives across the English-speaking world.

GG winners aren’t all Meier has, of course. He’s also got:

Galley proofs of The Color Purple. An advance review copy of A Confederacy of Dunces. A first edition of Geek Love, signed by Katherine Dunn to her editor. Advance review copies of both Cat’s Cradle and Slaughterhouse-Five. I recall Meier considering the long shelf devoted to Irving for a moment — Meier loved John Irving — before pulling out a mint-condition copy of The Hotel New Hampshire, an unusual early-state shot from the manuscript. Inside was a slip of paper from the publisher indicating that the book had been given to Robertson Davies. A moment later, I was holding Tom Robbins’s Another Roadside Attraction, the original Doubleday & Company file copy. Meier had a galley of that one, too — an ultra-rare Cerlox-bound version, the very first setting of the type.

Given that level of obsessiveness, is it shocking to learn that Meier is also an inventor and that his father was a scientific adviser to Howard Hughes?