Things Noted Here & There

Carnivalesque LVIII, an early modern edition of the festival, is delayed. Carnival of Genealogy LXXXVIII is up at Creative Gene. Both History Carnival and Carnivalesque are in need of hosts. If you're interested, contact sharon*at*earlymodernweb*dot*org*dot*uk.

Amidst the death and destruction in Port-au-Prince, damage to Haiti's galleries and religious institutions appears to be massive, but damage to its cultural institutions seems more limited. Despite some structural damage, both the National Library and the National Archives buildings remain standing. Major collections in the National Museum, which was built underground across from the National Palace, appear to have survived.

Simon Schama,"What objects say about our times," Financial Times, 22 January, previews"A History of the World in 100 Objects," Neil MacGregor's new series on the history of material culture that runs throughout 2010 on BBC,"Seven Ages Of Britain," David Dimbleby's art history series for BBC One, Holger Hoock's Empires of the Imagination: Politics, War, and the Arts in the British World, 1750-1850, which"reads British imperial history through its self-imaging," and Celina Fox's The Arts of Industry in the Age of Enlightenment which"restores the connection between drawing and technology originally embedded in the very word ‘art' ...."

Past its ninth hour, our colleague, Scott McLemee chaired a meeting of the National Book Critics Circle yesterday to choose finalists for NBCC's 2009 awards.

In Non-Fiction, the finalists are: Wendy Doniger's The Hindus: An Alternative History, Greg Grandin's Fordlandia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City, Richard Holmes The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, Tracy Kidder's Strength in What Remains, and William T. Vollmann, Imperial.

In Biography, the finalists are: Blake Bailey's Cheever: A Life, Brad Gooch's Flannery: A Life of Flannery O'Connor, Benjamin Moser's Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector, Stanislao G. Pugliese's Bitter Spring: A Life of Ignazio Silone, and Martha A. Sandweiss's Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line.

Finally, in Chinua Achebe's"What Nigeria means to me," Guardian, 23 January, the author of Things Fall Apart and The Education of a British-Protected Child tells of an"exciting" and"frustrating" experience with his country.