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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
October 17, 2009
“Beauty is Nothing Without Brains” (…or a reference interview gone horribly wrong?)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy1gTAsB9gg]
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 […]
October 5, 2009
There is something about maps that inspires wonder, excitement, and possibility. But with today’s heavy reliance on GPS units, satellites, radar, and other technological advances to the world of travel, much of the mystery and allure of stepping out into the unknown has been lost. It has become so easy to just hop into a car, […]
