March 6, 2014
George Saunders won $20,000 for his collection of stories Tenth of December. According to the judges of the Story Prize: “George Saunders offers a vision and version of our world that takes into account the serious menace all around us without denying the absurd pleasures that punctuate life.” Runners-up Andrea Barrett for Archangel and Rebecca […]
March 6, 2014
Imagine hearing Will Shakespeare read one of his sonnets to you. How about Dickens regaling listeners with a reading from Oliver Twist? Proust, reciting in French about those madeleines? That would require a time-traveler willing to schlep around a whole lot of not-yet-invented recording equipment. But for some authors of the more recent past, it is […]
March 4, 2014
French filmmaker Alain Resnais died on Saturday in Paris at the age of 91. Most well-known for his films Last Year at Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour, Mr. Resnais was often associated with French New Wave directors Jean-Luc Godard and Francoise Truffaut. “Fascinated by the ability of film editing to take apart and reassemble fragments […]
March 3, 2014
This list of “22 Books You Should Read Now, Based on Your Childhood Favorites” is causing quite the debate here at the Reader’s Services Desk. Some of the recommendations we vehemently disagree with: Swamplandia! for fans of A Wrinkle in Time??! Others are spot-on: Love The Giver? Try Never Let Me Go.
February 24, 2014
For the first time in history, 26 hats from Dr. Seuss’s personal collection, along with his original artwork, will be touring the country, stopping in six states. His sister Marnie said that he collected unique and historic hats using them as a foundation for his book The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, which marked its […]
February 21, 2014
“We’re in a juncture right now where bookstores as we have known them are at risk. Libraries as we’ve known them are at risk, publishers are at risk, American literature is at risk, as we’ve known it, and getting kids reading is at risk. The government has stepped in to help banks, automobiles, anything where […]
February 20, 2014
J.K. Rowling of Harry Potter fame announced that she has penned another Cormoran Strike mystery titled The Silkworm. It is to hit the bookstands next June and will still show the author as Robert Galbraith. The first Strike novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling, was met with mixed, but generally good reviews, but when it was leaked who […]
February 19, 2014
A handwritten letter written in 1891 by Alice in Wonderland author Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) will be auctioned in England March 19 – and is expected to be sold for 4,000 pounds or more. In it he writes that he hated being famous and sometimes wished he “had never written any books at all.” […]
February 13, 2014
On February 24, a portrait of Booker prize-winning author Hilary Mantel by Nick Lord will be on display at the British Library – making it the first painting of a living author to be displayed there. Although she had complained in the past that women are depicted in portraits as the “passive recipients of an […]
February 6, 2014
Wearable books may sound like science fiction, but engineers and researchers at MIT have created a wearable vest that hooks up to an e-book to allow readers to actually feel what the protagonist is going through. The MIT engineers tested their device combining “networked sensors and actuators” using the book The Girl Who Was Plugged […]
