Best of the Year Lists

November 22, 2009

It’s that time of the year again when the Best of the Year lists covering  a motley array of topics are sprinkled throughout the web. Publishers Weekly created quite a stir when its top ten books of the year list was released with an absence of female authors. In response, Women in Letter and Literary […]


And the winners of the 2009 Annual National Book Awards are…

November 21, 2009

Best of the National Book Awards Fiction: The Complete Stories, by Flannery O’Connor In celebration of “60 years of honoring great American books,” the National Book Foundation featured 77 fiction winners from 1950 to 2008 on their website. From this prestigious collection, 140 writers chose six finalists. The public was then invited to take part in an online poll […]


In the Pink Again

November 20, 2009

Once again the Recent Arrivals section on the 2nd floor East is teeming with books so interesting you’ll wish there were more hours in the day in which to stick your face in a book. Stop on in and step on up and be sure to look for the pink Recent Arrivals stickers to let […]


A Sad Tale of the Library without Books

November 17, 2009

      On NPR last week, I listened to a story about Cushing Academy, a private prep school about 90 minutes outside Boston, that got rid of all the books in their library. [!!]  Here’s the news story from the Boston Globe: Say Goodbye to the Books. I found the comments thread especially illuminating. Many, many […]


In Other Words

November 15, 2009

Word nerds of the world rejoice: the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary is here! After 44 years of work, 4,000 pages, and 800,000 meanings the first ever historical thesaurus is ready to answer everything you ever wanted to know about the history of our language. The book chronologically and thematically arranges all the […]


Vincent van Gogh in his own words

November 3, 2009

“There is scarcely one letter by Van Gogh which I, who am certainly no expert, do not find fascinating.”            – W. H. Auden Fifteen years in the making, the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute in The Hague have just released a comprehensive, annotated edition of Vincent van Gogh’s letters, which serve as a […]


Five Muslim American poets at Northwestern University

October 19, 2009

When   Monday, October 26, 2009   Time   10:00 AM – 7:00 PM   Where   Annie May Swift Auditorium 1920 Campus Dr   map it Audience   – Faculty/Staff – Student – Public Contact   Jennifer Lynn Britton   j-britton@northwestern.edu Group   English Department More Info   http://www.english.northwestern.edu/documents/MuslimAmPoets.pdf Kazim Ali, Ibtisam Barakat,Raza Ali […]


Michael Pollan vs. Meat

October 17, 2009

The always venerable Democracy Now is today reporting that administrators at California Polytechnic State University refused to let author Michael Pollan (The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food) deliver a planned lecture on sustainable food at the university last night. An esteemed author and expert on food politics and sustainable agriculture being muzzled at a state […]


Library Funnies…

October 17, 2009

“Beauty is Nothing Without Brains” (…or a reference interview gone horribly wrong?)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy1gTAsB9gg]


Under Observation

October 11, 2009

The 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded to Herta Müller, “who, with the concentration of poetry and the frankness of prose, depicts the landscape of the dispossessed.” A native of Romania, Müller was one of many who opposed the oppressive Ceauşescu regime, and much of her work reflects the theme of living under […]


Translate »