First Edition

Eleanor Kohn Levy, a founder of a scholarship program for high school graduates, died Tuesday of a stroke at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 93.She and her husband, Lester S. Levy, were among the founders in 1924 of the Central Scholarship Bureau, which provides financial aid for high school graduates who attend accredited institutions."

Bird watchers will be flocking to Christie's in New York for a sighting of a rare species: a complete circa 1827-1838 first edition of John James Audubon's "Birds of America," which will be landing on the auction block Friday. The four leather-bound volumes, containing a total of 435 "double elephant folio"-size hand-colored engravings (measuring 29 1/2 by 39 1/2 inches each), are accompanied by five separate volumes of Audubon's text. They've been winging their way East since early October,stopping for public viewings in San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and New Orleans in hopes of enticing a bidder to spend an estimated $2.8 to $3.5 million for the renowned book, one of only a handful of copies remaining in private hands.

Havre de Grace. -- John Bartlett was a classic university-town book wonk. In 1836, aged 16, he went to work for a bookstore near the Harvard Yard. Soon the entire Cambridge community learned that if you wanted to know who said something, you should ask John.Even after he owned the store, John Bartlett continued fielding queries about quotes. He kept a notebook, which grew and grew, and in 1856 he published the first edition of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations. As it was exactly the sort of volume no literate home should be without, it was an instant success.

Fans of mystery writer Sue Grafton are snapping up the latest of her alphabet mysteries, " 'J' is for Judgment."But for another group of book lovers, the Grafton title to have is her first, " 'A' is for Alibi," and they're willing to pay up to $1,000 for a 1982 first edition in mint condition.A thousand dollars? For a Sue Grafton mystery?Hard to believe? How about $600 for Anne Rice's "Interview with the Vampire"? Or $700 for Tom Clancy's "The Hunt for Red October"?Instead of crumbling manuscripts or leather-bound classics, books published in the last two decades or even the last two months -- so-called hypermoderns -- are the choice of a new generation of collectors.

For seven years on selected Saturday mornings, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra director David Zinman has presided over the Casual Concert series, an audience-participation exploration of music that is less formal than the usual black-tie symphony affair.Now radio listeners across the country can hear various editions of the concerts, courtesy of the American Public Radio network.A four-show packaging of the concerts for national distribution premiered earlier this month, co-produced by the BSO, Baltimore's WJHU-FM (88.1)

SINCE it first appeared in 1969, the American Heritage Dictionary has been my favorite because of two unique features: the decisions of a panel of experts on the acceptability of various word usages and the 51-page index listing the so-called proto-Indo-European roots underlying English words.Thus the root "ster" (connoting stiffness) hides within words like stare, starch, stork, strut, startle and starve. When you consult these words and most other words in the body of the text, you are referred to the proper root in the index.

Not many mail carriers deliver their own magazine, but Larry Riggles does.The 43-year-old publishes Everyday Men, a general readership magazine aimed at hard-working, white- and blue-collar men with a passion for sports, hobbies and nostalgia. He can claim at least a few subscribers along his Frederick mail route."I've always been amazed at the number of magazines out there," Mr. Riggles says. "There are more magazines for women than men. Magazines aimed at men are all single topic -- sports, fishing, hunting or whatever.

Jane Boyd was in her mid-20s two decades ago when she saw the first edition of an extraordinary book called "Our Bodies, Ourselves."It had pictures of naked women and talked honestly about sex, men and health. "I thought it was startling at first," says Ms. Boyd, now 46 and a lecturer in women's studies at San Jose (Calif.) State University. "This was stuff I was told not to know."Three editions and 3 million copies later, "Our Bodies, Ourselves" is still raising eyebrows. The fourth and most recent edition, "The New Our Bodies, Ourselves," (Simon & Schuster, $20)

BORDEAUX. By Robert M. Parker Jr. Simon & Schuster. 1,027 pages. $35. JUST in time for festivities of the solstice comes a new, thicker, more expensive, second edition of Robert Parker's "Bordeaux," an encyclopedia of tastes and smells of the wines from this most famous grape-growing region of France.This is really a stunning piece of wine journalism. In just over a decade of serious, professional tasting, Parkton resident Parker, who publishes the internationally influential "Wine Advocate," has sampled, evaluated and cataloged virtually every wine made in this area over the past two decades.

At a book sale, not all the drama is between the covers of the books.Take the sale in October of the library of New York collector Richard Manney. Before the sale at Sotheby's in New York, dealers worried aloud that the recession would take its toll, predicting that the most expensive books would not sell.As the sale progressed, however, a contingent of dealers, mainly from California and London, began to compete, and some record prices were paid, notably for first editions of the classics of pop culture by such authors as Dashiell Hammett, Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Bram Stoker.