Fire Walk
Unstandardised, Decentralised Carnival Fire
Oliver Darkshire | LitHub | 14th March 2023
On the art of cataloguing rare books. Each entry must record precisely how "a book has survived the ravages of time" in as little space as possible. There is a secret language for this. "Foxed" means the pages are mottled. "Sophisticated" denotes a probable fake, but an interesting one. Sheepskin binding is "roan" and calfskin "vellum". Every bookseller uses these terms in their own way, too (1,752 words).
Podcast: Long Walk | Historically Thinking. Reassessing the story of Elizabethan explorer David Ingram, who in the 16C claimed to have walked from Mexico to Nova Scotia in just 11 months (64m 28s)
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