Reading About the Reading Life: October 14, 2016 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).  

I have a few items for this week, so let's take a look at a few things I have been reading recently: 

• Here are 18 cool home libraries. Via Web Urbanist. These are the kind of home set ups I can only dream about. 
• The fate of niche bookstores, those small stores that usually specialize in a genre or some other small specialty, varies from negative and doom to more positive depending on who you ask. Publishers Weekly sounds a bit pessimistic at the start of this article citing closings left and right. This other article in The Houston Chronicle sounds a bit more optimistic.
• The New York Times has an interesting piece on antiquarian book dealers and how they deal with any rare book thefts. 
• And speaking of rare books and materials, here is a small look at the market of rare science books and manuscripts. Via New Atlas.
• Via CPH Post, a positive note from Denmark, where more people are visiting Danish libraries. 
• Finally for this week, in translation news, the earliest known Arabic short stories have been translated  into English. According to the piece, some of these are more fantastic than The Arabian Nights. Story via The Independent.