Reading about the reading life: July 13, 2018 edition

Welcome to another edition of "Reading about the reading life" here at The Itinerant Librarian. This is where I collect stories about reading and the reading life. Basically, these are items related to reading, maybe writing and literacy, that I find interesting and think my four readers might find interesting as well with a little commentary. As with other features I do on this blog, I do it when I have time or feel like it. Comments are always welcome (within reason). 

It has been a while since the last time I made one of these posts. Let's see what interesting things we have for this week.

• The German publisher Taschen enters the Hong Kong book market. They are planning on  really making a mark as among their offerings is a Ferrari book that costs HK $250,000. Story via South China Morning Post.
• A profile of Colombia's "lord of books." Via The Christian Science Monitor. 
• Interesting piece on Tarot's rising popularity, especially in Great Britain. Part of the reason? Worries over Brexit. Story via BBC. 
• Via The Toronto Star, a story explaining why Canadian libraries have difficulties adding audiobooks to their collections. This is not just Canadian libraries. U.S. libraries face the issue too thanks to some racketeering on part of book publishers (that is a polite way to put it). This happens in Canada just as Canada overall is having a boom in people reading audiobooks.
• The story of how once Los Angeles was a destination for rare books. Via Lit Hub.
• Also via Lit Hub, some stories of interesting and amazing finds of rare books in various places.
• Via Atlas Obscura, a story on the old practice of binding old books with  scraps of even older books. 
• An item more to remember Anthony Bourdain. Via Open Culture, read about and find links to watch Bourdain's free show Raw Craft.

A couple of items in Spanish, via Lecturalia:

• The mystery of Ivan the Terrible's lost library. 
• On the origins of bookmarks.