November 5, 2013
Today’s Chicago Trib ran a front page story on the popularity and the global growth of the Little Free Library movement which has been reported about on this blog a number of times in the past. Free books housed in charming (weather-proof) little structures are placed on private property for passersby to use. They can […]
November 5, 2013
The 2014 Neustadt International Prize for Literature has been awarded to Mozambican author Antonio Emilio Leite Couto (Mia Couto). The first Mozambican author to be nominated for and to win this prize, Couto noted: “It is a sad moment for Mozambique because we are starting a war that we thought would never come back again. So […]
November 4, 2013
Chicago’s Lane Tech student body and the school’s 451 Degrees Banned Book Club received the Illinois Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Award for their protest against the removal of Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis. Chicago Public schools removed the novel from seventh grade classrooms because of its “powerful images of torture.” Lane Tech students waved signs […]
November 4, 2013
Interesting article in Sunday’s NYTimes Book Review section asked more than a dozen authors to talk about how new and changing technologies affect their storytelling. The writers commenting include Lee Child, Marisha Pessl, Frederick Forsyth, Douglas Coupland, Emily Giffin, and Ander Monson, among others. I love Margaret Atwood‘s response: “Do new technologies change what plot […]
November 2, 2013
An article about Israel’s attempt to preserve most of their websites for history caught my attention. Israel’s archive will be produced through the National Library. The stated purpose of this activity is to “preserve online publications published on Israeli websites for coming generations, just as books and other printed material are preserved.” Who else is pursuing this? The US […]
November 1, 2013
As many Jane Austen fans prepare to read Pride and Prejudice from the servants’ point of view in Longbourn, they may wonder how they would have fared in the social whirl of the Regency world. Would you have triumphed, like one of Austen’s heroines, or suffered ridicule and fallen into disrepute? Now, you can join […]
October 29, 2013
This is another example of people who are anxiously trying to give their children an extra advantage in life. Is it necessary for toddlers, people who are too young to handle the pages of a regular book, to be introduced to Romeo and Juliet and Anna Karenina? Even if the book is transformed into a […]
October 25, 2013
Dickinson – that is. The Emily Dickinson Archive which was inaugurated Wednesday gives scholars and lay readers access to “high-resolution photos of thousands of the poet’s manuscripts, including envelopes or bits of paper with poems jotted on them, letters, doodles, and many, many exuberant em-dashes.” The project reignited a decades-long dispute between Harvard and Amherst, […]
October 24, 2013
Today on NPR’s Morning Edition, Susan Stamberg reported literary news that will please fans of the author J. D. Salinger. Salinger’s most famous work, The Catcher in the Rye, narrated by disaffected teen Holden Caulfield, captured the imagination of millions of readers and became an enduring icon of America’s youth in the early 50s. A […]
October 23, 2013
Unlike many librarians, Patricia Ann Kettles did not have an easy time learning how to read. Held back in school and labeled “emotionally disabled,” she can readily relate to kids who may be having a hard time. The Staten Island librarian read her first book at the age of 10. She credits one special teacher […]
