Bezos Buys Beedle the Bard

Eat your hearts out, Potter fans. This book is not for you.

A single handwritten copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard:

... bound in brown Moroccan leather and embellished with five hand-chased hallmarked sterling silver ornaments and mounted moonstones ...

was snapped up by Amazon.com at auction house Sotheby's last week ... for a cool £1.95m (US$3.9)! All proceeds though go to a charity called The Children's Voice which helps vulnerable children in Eastern Europe.

The six other copies of the book have been given to those most closely connected with the Harry Potter books during the past 17 years.

Rowling describes writing the book as a good way to say goodbye to Harry.

You can oggle the pictures and read a synopsis on the Amazon.com website and you can watch the BBC's report here:

Haunted Book

This story about a C17th book about the execution of a priest and covered in his skin, and now appears to show an image of his face is sooo spooky ....

(For other cases of anthropodermic bibliopegy you might like to glance back at this post.)

Books Bound in Human Skin

Spike magazine linked to a rather ghoulish article by Dan Alban from The Recorder, the Harvard Law School newspaper. Alban writes about books bound in human skin. There's even a name, apparently for such a practice - anthropodermic bibliopegy!

Alban notes that the College of Physicians of Philadelphia has four such books, including one with a visible tattoo; and a there's a copy of the Koran at the Cleveland Public Library bound with the skin of a particularly pious believer! The picture on the left (from the article) is Account of William Corder's Trial bound in his skin.

Might be quite a fun way to memorialise yourself!