October 4, 2012
“Once upon a time,” the teacher begins reading to a group of eager 2nd grade listeners, “there was no little girl in a red hood, no young wizard starting a new school, but there was a scientist named Charles Darwin who had a big, new idea.” OK, that’s a totally made-up scene. I was just […]
October 3, 2012
Best-selling mystery writer Donna Leon is most famous for her Commissario Guido Brunetti series. But her new novel The Jewels of Paradise is based on a little-known Baroque composer Agostino Steffani. She collaborated with opera singer Cecilia Bartoli whose most recent recording Mission features Steffani’s music. Ms. Leon became friends with the opera star more […]
September 27, 2012
This year the week of Sept. 30 through Oct. 6 marks the 30th anniversary of Banned Books Week which celebrates the freedom to read. In a truly ironic twist, James Klise, young person’s author and school librarian, writes in this Chicago Tribune commentary from today’s paper that he was invited to speak to 8th graders […]
September 24, 2012
A man in Manila is so committed to reading that he has turned his home into a lending library. In fact, he encourages people to take books and keep them. He isn’t worried about losses because he believes that whatever he gives away will be replaced many times over. Hernando Guanlao has racks of books outside […]
September 22, 2012
EPL is bringing fantasy to life. Fantasy fiction, that is. In case you haven’t heard, NY Times Bestselling novelist Steven Erikson is coming to the library, and we couldn’t be more excited. Author of the critically acclaimed “Malazan Book of the Fallen” fantasy series, Erikson will visit the Community Meeting Room of EPL’s Main Branch […]
September 21, 2012
This month for Poetry 365 we’re featuring Heather Christle’s nimble new volume What Is Amazing. Following 2011’s inventively quirky The Trees the Trees, the jubilat editor’s third collection expands her formal range while retaining the voracious curiosity and playfulness found in her earlier work. Hip, irreverent, and darkly funny, these 49 poems “feel like pages […]
September 20, 2012
Barbara’s Bookstore, headquartered in Chicago, will be expanding their presence in Macy’s nationally starting next year, according to PW. This summer 40 stores around the country have opened patterned after the Chicago State Street setup. These are modest 1600 sq. ft. operations that will provide a small book area, but nothing close to a full […]
September 19, 2012
Ancient Egyptians didn’t only speak through hieroglyphs – they spoke and wrote Demotic Egyptian, meaning “the tongue of the demos, or the common people.” Now scholars at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute have published online a 2,000-page dictionary of these Demotic words. This Chicago Demotic Dictionary is being called “an indispensable tool for reconstructing […]
September 13, 2012
Philip Roth has written to Wikipedia denying that his novel The Human Stain was based on the life of Anatole Broyard. Instead, he contends, it was based on “an unhappy event in the life of my late friend Melvin Tumin, professor of sociology at Princeton for some 30 years.” The novel, published in 2000, deals […]
September 13, 2012
The six finalists for the Man Booker Prize (limited to English language books and authors from the Commonwealth, Ireland, or Zimbabwe) were announced this week. Hilary Mantel won three years ago and there’s been some speculation that she’s favored to win again for “Bring up the Bodies”. The rest of the list: Tan Twan Eng, […]
