Reader Roundup

Here are some things you should read/look at/listen to/smell/ or whatever:

First, visit the Old Bailey...online! Old Bailey is where London's Central Criminal Courts are located, and the online version archives reams of courtroom drama dating back to 1674. Example: Mistress Ann Petty, who was over sixty at the time of her conviction for "clipping money," was sentenced to "Be Drawn on a Hurdle or Sled to Smithfield (the usual place for such executions) and there to be burned to Death." The Old Bailey, it would seem, was pretty Old Testament.

Lea of LC's Adventures in Libraryland reviewed Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, a book I dearly want to read but keep forgetting to pick up. Thank you, Lea, for the reminder.

Also, Miriam Halahmy's post on An Awfully Big Blog Adventure reminds me how intensely disturbed I felt as teenage girl reading Lord of the Flies for the first time.

James Gleick of the New York Times makes the argument for digitizing rare and special book collections.

I also finished the wildly informative This Book is Overdue by Marilyn Johnson. As you may have guessed, I'm now slightly obsessed with librarians and (even more obsessed) with books.

And yesterday, instead of seeing the Women's World Cup, I had a Japanese/American personal film festival: I saw Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, as well as the film's Western remake, The Magnificent Seven. I guess we can all agree that soccer is good, heroism is better, and bandits should be annihilated in a violent manner.

Correction: An earlier version of this post conflated the Central Criminal Courts with the Old Bailey (which is a road, not an institution). I apologize for the error. I'm afraid my ignorance is showing.