The Bookcase of Curiosities is a corner of this site dedicated to the unexpected. Not every remarkable signed book was signed by its author. Sometimes the signature belongs to an actor who loved the work, a musician who lived inside it, a cultural figure whose connection to the text is oblique, personal, or simply wonderful. These are books with a story attached, where the signature adds a layer of meaning that no bibliographer could have predicted.
This section celebrates those happy accidents of collecting, the items that don’t fit neatly into any category but are too interesting to ignore. Each one is from my own shelves, and each one arrived with a conversation, a coincidence, or an encounter worth writing down.
There are pianists who play the notes, and pianists who play the notes AND the room. Lang Lang has always been firmly in the second camp, and that is precisely why critics have spent decades unsure what to do with him. Too theatrical, too demonstrative …simply too much! What they are now reluctantly beginning to …
Some books arrive with a story already attached. Others acquire one. The copy of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley: Essential Poems that sits in my collection belongs firmly to the second category, and the story it carries is one I find myself returning to. On the afternoon of 6 September 2019, the library of …
