Summer Reading

Its that time of year again! Geneseo is getting geared up to select a book for the freshman Summer Reading program. Here are the recommended selections so far....
It is also the year SUNY Geneseo marks the centennial of Susan B. Anthony's death, with a college-year celebration, "Susan B. Anthony: Women's Rights, Women's Power" (2006-07). We are looking at reading a book which will integrate with the celebration. Any suggestions?

End-of-year list of books...

What do your end-of-year-book lists say about you? According to blog of a bookslut, quite a lot!

Berenstein Bears author

Stan Berenstain, co-creator of the beloved "Berenstain Bears" series for children, has passed away at 82. Read his obituary in The Boston Globe, The New York Times, LA Times, The Washington Post, AP, The Seattle Times, The Miami Herald...

looking for a series book?

Finding a book in series order is always a pain in the neck. The Nebraska Library Commission solves this problem! For major authors, they have produced a Books in Series database, which can be searched by author, book title, or series title. My search was using Peter Danielson, author of the Children of the Lion series, which, by the way is a pseudonym for multiple authors who wrote the books in this series.

historical fiction

If you are a fan of historical fiction, you may want to check out the Historical Novel Society website. Their aim is to " ... review every new work of adult historical fiction released in the USA or the UK. Selected titles from Canada and Australia are also reviewed, as are selected children's/young adult titles, for a grand total of over 800 reviews per year" Ambitious, but they publish the Historical Novels Review which does just that.

2005 Notable books

Read about the The New York Times 100 Notable Books of the Year here...
(Note: registration to the NY Times may be required)

NBA winner -- Poetry

W. S. Merwin, author of Migration: New and Selected Poems, is the winner of the 2005 National Book Award for poetry. Merwin is a poet's poet -- he lives and writes in Hawaii and is not affiliated with any college or university -- just writes! When I worked at the downtown public library I stumbled onto a collection of his poems, Finding the Islands; a collection of three stanza poems like the following excerpt from the poem "At Home":

As the ants know
where the honey is
I know the way to you
____

where we live
we look far out to sea
and our clothes are behind us in the bedroom

His poetry is beautiful and evocative.

NBA Winner -- Fiction

The National Book Awards were finally announced this past week. William Vollman won the Fiction award for his novel, Europe Central...

classic

Just finished reading To Kill a Mockingbird -- about time! I still don't understand why this book wasn't required reading when I attended school. Perhaps too controversial? Although this doesn't seem right, considering the book's themes could be just as applicable today. Racism, bigotry, violence -- all still relevant topics which need to be addressed and discussed in public schools.

Anarchist in the Library

Dr. Siva Vaidhyanathan is coming to Geneseo! An NYU Professor of Culture and Communication, Dr. Vaidhyanathan is going to be the keynote speaker at our annual SUNYLA (SUNY Librarians' Association) Conference. Author of The Anarchist in the Library: How the Clash Between Freedom and Control is Hacking the Real World and Crashing the System, Dr. Vaidhyanathan is a former journalist and cultural historian and media scholar. His previous book was on copyright and intellectual property. He will be speaking at SUNY Geneseo on June 15, 2006. Can't wait!

Sleuths unite!

How many of you were Nancy Drew fans when you were kids? I was a HUGE fan and thought what better way to celebrate my book-lovin' youth than to host a a Nancy Drew sleuth party !Wouldn't this be loads of fun?

2005 Booker winner

John Banville was awarded the Booker Prize last month for his novel The Sea. Read why he finally feels his critics have been silenced...

Wikibooks

The Creators of Wikipedia have introduced Wikibooks which is an editable, open content source of textbooks. "This site is a wiki, meaning that anyone, including you, can edit any book module right now by clicking on the edit this page link that appears in every Wikibooks module...".

Nobel Prize

British playwright Harold Pinter has been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Read more at ... Washington Post, The New York Times, LA Times ...

way cool

Note: from the Web4Lib discussion list...
"In a celebration of the Public Domain, the Internet Archive's Bookmobile will be coming to a town near you, bringing with it the ability to access, download, and print one of the almost 20,000 public domain books currently available online..."

Forward Prize

The 2005 Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection has gone to Helen Farish, a Brit and debut author of Intimates...

Open WorldCat

Attention all you non-librarians out there:
There is a new search function through OCLC WorldCAT which allows you to search for a book title and locate it at your closest library or bookseller. It is called Find in a Library and it works with Yahoo, Google or on a Firefox browser toolbar. Type in the name of the book and the word "worldcat" afterwards and..voila! Look for the tab marked "Reviews" -- you can post reader reviews and have another chance to interact with readers interested in the same books...

Man Booker shortlist

Ok, so they will be announcing the Man Booker Prize winner tomorrow, but I wish to try and at least stay one step ahead at some point in the game! Zadie Smith made the 2005 shortlist, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it will be her novel, On Beauty, announced tomorrow...

Rea Award

Ann Beattie, fabulous short story writer and social novelist, has won the $30, 000 Rea Award for the Short Story ... there must be something about Charlottesville, Virginia -- Beattie calls it home, as do John Grisham, Rita Dove, and Jan Karon just to name a few ...

hangin' out in D.C.

Jeff & I just got back from Washington, D.C. LATE last night. The National Book Festival was a success from all the signs we saw -- long lines, sold out books, sore feet....I was the last person to get a book signed by Diana Gabaldon...she signed books for two hours -- and there were STILL people waiting in line!

Once more...

Cornell University has an online exhibition honoring Vladimir Nabokov and the 50th Anniversary of the publication of Lolita. I know, I know -- I sound obsessed, but the site is pretty impressive.

Library of Congress tomfoolery...

Imagine! The Library of Congress stuffed into the size of a sugar cube -- oh, the possibilities!

Man Booker finalists announced

The finalists for the Man Booker Prize were announced today....

National Book Festival

If only I were closer....The National Book Festival will be held in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, September 24, 2005, sponsored by the Library of Congress and hosted by First Lady Laura Bush. My favorite author, Diana Gabaldon is going to be there signing her new book, A Breath of Snow and Ashes! Hmmm....my birthday is the following week...maybe somebody will surprise me with a ticket??

NYC

Some days I miss NYC...like today when I open up the Times and see a two-page ad for the 2005 Fall Season for the 92nd Street Y, "At once a lecture hall, a performance space, a school, a health center and a community organization, the Y remains focused on its mission of enriching the lives of the people who pass through its doors...". The 92nd Street Y Reading Series will feature authors like Salman Rushdie, Louise Erdrich, Joan Didion, Bobbie Ann Mason and more...

The Man Booker Prize 2005

Ok -- so they announced the Man Booker Prize Longlist a month ago -- so sue me! I've been a little busy this summer. This prestigious British Commonwealth award always has some surefire good reads in contemporary fiction -- take a look...

a global warming reading list...

I saw an especially interesting Meet the Press with Tim Russert this past Sunday. Mr. Russert's several interviews included people in Bush's cabinet, local & state officials from Louisiana & Mississippi, as well as a few scientific experts talking about global climate change and the impact this has had on the low-lying coastal areas of the U.S. I thought it would be relevant to put together a reading list for those interested in how a hurricane of Katrina's magnitude can have such a devastating affect on the region...

Some websites...
EPA Global Warming Site
Global Warming Primer (from the Chesapeake Climate Action Network)
Global Warming: Early Warning Signs
Global Warming (from the The Cooler Heads Coalition, a subgroup of the National Consumer Coalition)

Some books...
Bayou Farewell : The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast, by Mike Tidwell
Climate Change : Impact on Coastal Habitation, edited by Doeke Eisma (this title has chapters such as "Impact of climatic change on coastal cities" and "River flux to the sea: impact of human intervention on river systems and adjacent coastal areas")
The Discovery of Global Warming, by Spencer R. Weart
Firefly Guide to Global Hazards, by Robert L. Kovach and Bill McGuire (Abstract states, "A compelling, richly illustrated guide to the many large-scale natural disasters that affect life on Earth, both globally and locally. The guide is vital reading for those interested in the environment, geophysics and current affairs. It provides clear descriptions of all types of hazards and the threats they pose")
Holding Back the Sea: The Struggle for America's Natural Legacy on the Gulf Coast, by Christopher Hallowell

disaster relief

The Louisiana Library Association is accepting monetary donations to help schools, public, and academic libraries cope with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina...

Lolita -- again...

First thing I do in the mornings (after coffee and breakfast, of course) is read Arts & Letters Daily ... this morning I was treated to an article on Lolita, which dear readers may remember I read back in July . It amazes me that this novel still captivates people after 5o years -- not just because of its topic, too, but the reactions to the novel are still controversial after so many years.

disappearance

I'm baaaaaack! This past month has been crazy -- moving to a new house, work going crazy... now back to your regularly scheduled program...

getting lost

The art of getting lost...seems like I am always in a hurry to get somewhere, be somewhere else, do something else. Who has time to get lost anymore? Rebecca Solnit wanders through the urban and suburban cultural landscape in her new collection of essays, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, which appears to be a treatise on taking the time to roam and wander and just get ... well, lost.

Hitchfest

Thanks to Arts & Letters Daily for the New Statesman review of Christopher Hitchens' latest book, Love, Poverty & War. Now I know that I should NEVER call him "Chris" if I meet him...

best characters in fiction

Who is your favorite character from fiction? NPR reproduced a list of the 100 Best Fictional Characters since 1900 and I must ask -- Hana from Ondaatje's The English Patient???? I'm not sure she would make my top 100 if I was asked to choose...

lovin' Lolita

Ok, I've got to admit, I felt some sympathy for poor 'ol Humbert Humbert. I'm almost done with reading Nabokov's Lolita, (two pages left for crying out loud!) and the novel is hysterically sad -- you may ask, "is there such a thing?" -- but try reading a novel about a delusional pedophile who goes to extraordinary lengths to get the girl of his dreams (albeit a 12-year old) and you, too, may want to laugh and cry. The obvious problem with this is that Humbert is a pedophile, so why would you feel sympathy for him? But he narrates the story with such obvious desire and this crazy sense of self-importance, not even realizing Lolita's a person, not in any conscious way, that you only feel sorry for him. Must find a copy of the movie and see how someone else visualizes the story.

do you know the most harmful books of 19th & 20 C.?

Apparently, reading Democracy and Education by John Dewey and The Feminine Mystique are harmful to you...

writer bio

Interesting article about writer Mark Helprin I found through Arts & Letters Daily today...

Shelby Foote obituary

Shelby Foote, noted Southern writer and Civil War historian, has passed away at age 88.
Read obituaries here: NY Times, The Washington Post, LA Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, International Herald-Tribune, Boston Globe, StarTribune.com, CNN ...

Oprah's baaaaack...

Yes, its true -- Oprah's Book Club is back and better than ever! Bookninja rhapsodizes about why those in the literary community are obsessed with this woman and her book club ...

free books

Well...sorta...
More like free in the sense that these are books in the public domain and available for anyone to read or download...

beach reading

Books you need to bring to the beach this summer...
{Note: thanks to LII!}

consumption

What I bought at Borders last night (because I couldn't help myself...)

Small Island by Andrea Levy (recently won the Whitbread Award)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
War Trash by Ha Jin
Trying Again by Ann Douglas and John Sussman
Dead Souls by Ian Rankin

Author of the Day: cranky writers

There is something loveable about Christopher Hitchens, which I have stated before, but now I have proof others love him!
Here are selected articles & interviews: The Atlantic Monthly (must be a subscriber to read), The Guardian Unlimited: Books, History News Network, Identity Theory: the narrative thread, Stop Smiling Magazine, The Village Voice, The Weekly Standard

Gabaldon update...

I am so excited -- it looks like the next book in Diana Gabaldon's wonderful Claire and Jamie Fraser series will be published in September 2005...just in time for my birthday!

Orange Prize winner

The 2005 Orange Prize winner for Fiction is Lionel Shriver's novel, We Need to Talk About Kevin...

Keillor fans

Any Garrison Keillor fans out there? If you are, then you probably will be interested in The Writer's Almanac, "a daily program of poetry and history hosted by Garrison Keillor" usually found on public radio stations across the country. Today's entries include a poem, literary trivia and a short essay by Keillor...

mocking me

To Kill a Mockingbird is that one great American novel I have never read, but always meant to. Maybe I'll try to dig into it this summer while sitting by my brand new pool...
In the meantime, I should check out this resource guide to start thinking about the larger themes of the novel.

Potter parties

Can't wait until the new Harry Potter book comes out? Check out this site which keeps track of "Potter Parties" happening all over the world... {Note: thanks to ResearchBuzz}

literary maps

What a neat idea ... The New York Times created a literary map of Manhattan, designating all the great literary landmarks. Thanks to Susan who let me read her copy of the Book Review!

tricky evolution topic

Apparently children are not supposed to know about evolution...picture book author Lisa Westberg Peters has written a book about evolution for children and was told not to talk about the book at an elementary school in Stillwater, Minnesota, where she was invited to speak. She refused to visit the school...

sex scenes worth mentioning

Nerve.com has a monthly award for the best literary sex scene, called the Henry Miller award. Sue Miller won for May, with her novel Lost in the Forest...

summer adventures

Librarian Nancy Pearl recommended some adventure novels for summer reading on NPR...

pop-ups

Remember those cute pop-up books from when you were a kid? Well, the University of North Texas Libraries has a wonderful site which takes you on a tour through the history of pop-up and moveable picture books...
{Note: found on LII.org}

Book Sense winner

Book Sense, the online commercial venture of independent booksellers across the U.S., announced their 2005 Book Sense Book of the Year award for fiction: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke...

books to remember

The New York Public Library has an annual 25 Books to Remember -- a list of the 25 best books from the previous year's publications, both fiction and nonfiction. The list is compiled by a committee of librarians who read TONS of reviews to narrow down the list to 25 -- I should know! I served on the committee selecting the books for the 1998 list...

Austen adapted

Finished another retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice over the weekend. This book is entitled Vanity and Vexation: a novel of pride and prejudice by Kate Fenton. The new twist in this story involves a middle-aged reporter-turned-novelist, who moves to the country and stumbles into a real-life Pride and Prejudice plot. The Mr. Darcy character in this new P&P is a dark, arrogant, & headstrong female director named Mary. The Elizabeth Bennet character is reversed, and is now Nick Bevan, the novelist. Misunderstandings and mix-ups ensue, with much hilarity. One particularly neat device involves a "novel-within-a-novel" plot twist which surprises the reader halfway through the novel.

freaky economics

Book of the Day goes to...
Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen Dubner, which has been getting all kinds of crazy press in the past few weeks. Yesterday, the two authors were interviewed on the TODAY show with Matt Lauer about their controversial new book. The two authors come to some startling conclusions about ideas, using rigorous statistical analysis. Examples include: "Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime?"
Read some reviews here: About.com, BookBrowse, English Rules, Powell's Books, SocioWeb, The Weekly Standard...

foreign fiction prize

The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, given out by Arts Council England, was announced. The winner is Windows on the World by Frédéric Beigbeder -- a novel about September 11th.

one wild and crazy guy...

I'm in the midst of listening to Steve Martin narrate his novella, Shopgirl -- its fantastic by the way -- and found out that the movie version is to be released in October 2005, starring Claire Danes, and (of course!) Steve Martin as two of the main characters. His most recent novel, The Pleasure of My Company recently won Martin a Grammy for Best Spoken Word album of 2004...

fast-food reading

Want to learn how to read more -- faster? Steve Leveen shows us how... (p.s. this guy happens to know his stuff -- he is CEO of Levenger)

fragmentary white noise

From the "wow, what do people do with all their free time?" category via Bookslut today...
Here's the hook -- "White Noise on White Noise is a collection of 36 randomly selected fragments of text from Don DeLillo's novel White Noise. The identifying details of each fragment - the page number it appears on, the line number to begin quoting from and the number of lines to quote - were selected using a random number generator. The fragments appear in page number order, to provide an experience akin to quickly browsing through the novel in a bookstore..."
The novel was interesting, but come on, is this really necessary?

Litblog Co-Op

Litblog Co-Op is a literary blog which features articles, reviews, news, and information designed to get attention for contemporary fiction titles normally ignored by the mainstream press. They are also starting a book club called Read This! to promote awareness of lesser known titles. Members will nominate titles and on May 15th a book title will be announced, with reviews to follow. Readers of Litblog will have a chance to submit comments...
{Note: I found this bit over on Steven Cohen's Library Stuff }

book I forgot

My friend Darlene and I were having dinner and I was trying to think of this book: Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson...a genuinely great novel . I originally listened to this on tape and the narrator was outstanding. Effie and her mother, Nora, tell each stories -- many involving ghosts and the pull of Scottish history on today's Scots. Effie tries to find out who her father is and who she herself is, while navigating her way into adulthood. Clever, engrossing and humorous in all the right places. Her new one is Case Histories, also involving families, which I was able to pick up at ALA, but never managed to read! I think I will shift it to the top of the reading pile...

literary moms

Found this in my LII email newsletter today -- called Literary Mama: A Literary Magazine for the Maternally Inclined, an "...online literary magazine features writing by mother writers about the complexities and many faces of motherhood..."

women in the suburbs

The Guardian interviews Hilary Mantel and her new book featuring psychics and their infiltrataion infiltration into middle-class suburban England...

favorite author news

Andrea Levy is interviewed over at Salon.com...

Orange Prize for Fiction...

The Orange Prize has three American contenders! Read the shortlist of finalists for 2005...

back to basics

Apparently religious persecution was a good thing...In his recent book, George Weigel tells us why America and Europe should get back to their Christian roots and forget about secularism.(Arts & Letter Daily)

radio censorship

I had often thought of volunteering to read for the Niagara Frontier Radio Reading Service for the Blind when I went to graduate school in Buffalo. Now they have come under the censor's careful watch after an incident earlier this year. Channel 7 in Buffalo carried the reading service over a secondary audio feed for its blind and visually impaired customers, but earlier this year after a listener complained about a "naughty" word being read during a reading of Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons, Channel 7 pulled the service during certain hours. Guess that means they aren't going to be reading Catcher in the Rye anytime soon...

yummy...

There have been many times I "inhaled" a book, but I've never eaten one! Apparently Books2Eat is an International Edible Book Festival where edible book art is made and enjoyed. Bon Appetit!

improved NY Times?

Ever want to know what bloggers are saying about articles in the NY Times? Now you can! The Annotated New York Times will let you track blog citations to feature articles in the NY Times...cool!

makin' me hungry!

I just discovered the Association of Food Journalists' website through a recommendation of LII. I have always wanted to read more food criticism, so maybe I will check out their 2004 award winners in "excellence in reporting, writing, and photography in all media, and newspaper food section design and content". Mmmm good!

trouble with the church...

Jon Krakauer is a pretty harmless outdoor adventure writer, but apparently he has problems with the Mormon Church...

new review site...

Well, its not technically a new book review site, but its new to me! Reviews of Books is comprehensive, has lots of reviews to recent contemporary literary fiction, and is comprised of links to sources of published reviews, not reader reviews. Kudos!

Pulitzer Prizes announced...

Gilead by Marilynne Robinson has won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Other prizes went to winners in drama, poetry, nonfiction, history and biography...

feminist

Andrea Dworkin, radical feminist and writer, has died at the age of 58 from unknown causes...

Kiriyama book prize

The 2005 winners of the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize have been announced...

poetry alert

April is National Poetry Month! Start writing those sonnets...

crime fiction

Crime fans need to check this out! University at Buffalo has a database called Gumshoes, Sleuths & Snoopers: a crime fiction content database based on the George Kelley Paperback and Pulp Fiction Collection which provides detailed content information for the detective and mystery novels in UB's pulp fiction collection.

Saul Bellow obituary

Saul Bellow, Nobel Laureate and prolific novelist of contemporary society, has died at age 89....

Jane, Jane, Jane...

I really want to admire this woman, but it is so hard! Jane Fonda tells all in her self-absorbed memoir...

Rwanda

Ever since viewing "Hotel Rwanda" back in February, I can't get this film out of my mind. I picked up Philip Gourevitch's 1998 nonfiction work, We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed with Our Families: stories from Rwanda, and have not been able to put it down. It is incomprehensible to me that the world turned such a blind eye to the carnage and massacre that went on in that small African country in 1994. It amazes me that there are people like Paul Rusesabagina existing in such utter chaos and triumphing over such lack of humanity. He is featured in Gourevitch's work, which outlines the history of the conflict between the two ethnic groups, Hutus and Tutsis, and tells the story of those who fought and those who survived. Powerful...

down and dirty

Turns out Charlotte Bronte was a sex-obsessed genius...

Commonwealth Prize...

Whoo hoo! Andrea Levy won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Small Island...

Austenphile

I just finished reading The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler. Engaging read, but best understood if you already have some familiarity with the novels of Jane Austen. I first read Austen in college, starting with Sense and Sensibility and loved her, but some people get extremely worked up about her writing. TJABC is about a book club of five women and one man who get together monthly to read all the novels of Jane Austen. In the process, we discover the remarkable similarities between Austen's novels and the book club members' lives. It was convincing in its portrayal of readers' love of Austen's works, but the ending fell flat and kind of slapped together; too contrived. Austen is so beloved, her fans will love this book, no matter the content...

boys and books...

Boys can read! The author of the The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales, Jon Scieszka, has created (with the help of publisher Penguin Putnam) a new literacy initiative aimed at getting boys to read. Simply called Guys Read, it is a webpage full of interesting information for librarians, teachers, and parents, but not much of interest to their target demographic, the actual boys...

long time...

Whew...Jeff and I just got back from Hawaii on Tuesday afternoon and were exhausted! With the wedding and honeymoon, I haven't posted in two weeks so I will try and make up for it in the next few days.

Austen as art...

Jane Austen has always been popular, but is seeing an impressive resurgence in recent years, most notably in film and updates of her novels. Professor Deborah Kaplan writes an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about the cultural hierarchy of "Austenmania" and studying Austen's works in the very different light of the 20th century. I like this essay by a Geneseo professor which discusses how to read Jane Austen for students new to Austen and her works.

double trouble...

Andrea Levy, one of the best writers in Britain today, has just been shortlisted for awards in two different categories of the British Book Awards. Levy is the author of Small Island, Fruit of the Lemon and Every Light in the House Burnin' and won the Whitbread and Orange Prizes for fiction, both in the same year. Phenomenally gifted, she writes of the Caribbean identity in Britain and being a black female in a white male dominated society.

new novel by Brooks...

Year of Wonders was one of the best books I have read in a while and now the author, Geraldine Brooks, has a new novel being published. This book is set in America during the Civil War and is actually the story of Louisa May Alcott's absent patriarch, Mr. March, from the Little Women books. Brooks' husband is Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic, a nonfiction examination of those crazy Civil War re-enactors. Maybe she used it as a source?

B&N Discover New Writers...

The Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers awards have been announced. First prize in Nonfiction goes to a Rochester, NY native, Alison Smith, for her memoir, Name All the Animals.
First prize in Fiction goes to John Dalton for his novel, Heaven Lake.
I'm currently listening to Name All the Animals on CD and it is a wonderful memoir, although the author reads the novel herself and does not use much inflection. Its still worth listening to...

another special day...

Today is World Book Day and the BBC has asked readers to vote for their favorite books...

special day to read

Not only is March 2nd my friend Kim's birthday, but it is also Dr. Seuss'! The NEA's Read Across America event was, "...initially created as a one-day event to celebrate reading on Dr. Seuss' birthday, March 2...has grown into a nationwide initiative that promotes reading every day"...

books as furniture

What do you do with old books? Someone had a great idea of making furniture with them...

Pacific book prize

The Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize has released their nominees for this year's awards in fiction and nonfiction titles which "...contribute to greater understanding and cooperation among the peoples and nations of the Pacific Rim and South Asia...".

first-time

There is always a first time. The Observer interviews six spankin' new authors on their literary debuts...

...and the nominee is?

The National Book Critics Circle recently announced their nominees for the poetry prize...

a prose novelist...

Francine Prose wrote a wonderful novel a few years back called Blue Angel, which dealt with the fallout from a professor's indiscretion with a young student and the eventual collapse of his career. At the time I also read Tim O'Brien's novel, A Tomcat in Love, which involved very similar themes about an older professor's libido problems with the young co-eds on campus and although a huge fan of O'Brien's work, I believe Prose's novel was better written. Now, Prose has a new novel coming out -- A Changed Man, which may be even better than her previous novel...

Sedaris in the house

I knew there was a reason to go to ALA Annual Conference in June -- David Sedaris will keynote the conference and I am going to miss it! I guess I will just have to keep listening to him on NPR...

returning books

Apparently, its only appropriate at libraries -- why returning books to your local bookstore sucks...

advice from the Bookslut...

Jessa Crispin over at Bookslut has recommended Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell. The review by Publisher's Weekly didn't make the book sound that exciting, but then I read the review at the Washington Post Book World and my reader radar started dinging...

fat french women

What a relief -- it turns out that French women do get fat after all! Here I was worried after the book French Women Don't Get Fat: The Secret of Eating For Pleasure was published and became such a sensation...

nightstand

Here's what is on my nightstand to be read:
The Crisis of the Old Order, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will be Killed With our Families: stories from Rwanda, Phillip Gourevitch
"I" is for Innocent, Sue Grafton
Zen Attitude, Sujata Massey
The weblog handbook : practical advice on creating and maintaining your blog, Rebecca Blood
Blog On : the essential guide to building dynamic weblogs, Todd Stauffer
Becoming a Critical Thinker : a user friendly manual, Sherry Diestler
Keeping Current : advanced Internet strategies to meet librarian and patron needs, Steven Cohen

So much to read, so little time...

PUBLIB Best Books

PUBLIB, the discussion listserv for public librarians, just issued its list of recommended "Best Books for 2004", a compilation of librarians' favorites from around the country...

Franzen in the news...

Is Jonathan Franzen selling out to Hollywood? It appears that there will be a movie version of Franzen's award-winning novel The Corrections, but isn't this strange coming from the guy who didn't even want the book tainted with the Oprah sticker on the dust jacket?

recommendation

So now I've seen two recommendations for Sam Lipsyte's new book, Home Land in just one day. Any writer who is considered to be so funny a reviewer calls David Sedaris a lightweight in comparison has got to be checked out. Over at the blog Elegant Variation the book has gotten a highly enthusiastic review and reviewer Jim Ruland recommends that readers check out Sam Lipsyte's earlier work...

taping the prez

Gary Price of ResourceShelf has a great link to WhiteHouseTapes.org, which is a wonderful archive of presidential tapes collected by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia: "This site is designed as a service to the research community by making freely available all of the presidential recordings, along with relevant research materials, so that scholars, teachers, students, and the public can hear and use these remarkable tapes for themselves". Many of the recordings were originally recorded in secret, but are now available for the first time to the public...

literary weblogs

This blog thing is really catchin' on! USA Today has an article on the how literary weblogs are filling a niche on the Internet ...

hard-boiled detective...

Blood Shot by Sara Paretsky
After reading the fifth novel in Paretsky's indomitable V.I. Warshawski mystery series, you certainly can't say you don't know the author's political leanings. When Caroline Dijak, the daughter of a friend from Warshawski's old neighborhood asks V.I. for help locating her father, the private eye reluctantly agrees. What begins is an investigation involving murder, incest, insurance fraud, and a cover-up going back thirty years. The plot of Blood Shot involves Caroline's quest for the father she never knew. Her mother, Louisa, is dying, and will not tell her. Warshawski is called in and begins her investigation, but before she gets very far, Caroline calls it off, a friend is murdered and V.I. begins to investigate that death. This novel was rich in plot developments and revealed a layer of Warshawski's character that previous novels have only begun to peel. I'm intrigued and plan to keep on reading this series, because I can sense they will only get better as we learn more about the motivation behind Warshawski and her battle with inner demons. My only gripe is that it is taking a long time to get a reader hooked. I think most readers would probably have given up by now, but if they haven't, it is well worth the read! As a "hard-boiled" mystery series, the V.I. Warshawski novels are probably on the light side, although she gets into more than her share of battles and tussles with the bad guys. Its always a pleasure to read a good mystery novel with a feisty heroine, though, rather than a novel with a damsel in distress...

Booker award nominees

The International Booker Award nominees were announced Friday in the UK ...

gonzo obituary...

Hunter S. Thompson, gonzo journalist and author of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, has killed himself at age 67...obituaries at The Washington Post, the Denver Post, The New York Times, CNN.com, MSNBC.com, Newsday, ABC News...

freshman summer reading...

I found it interesting that Lafayette College chose Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers as its freshman orientation reading for 2005. Here at my college, we discussed using this book as our summer reading for freshman, but voted against it because of the format (graphic novel) and size (way too big for a backpack!). It looks like Lafayette is more concerned about the social controversy it will create, which I think is why it is an ideal choice for provoking discussion among incoming freshman. Our choice for 2005 is Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, which itself will create enough controversy for one small liberal arts college (public, at that!)...

war is hell...

Every time I think about the soldiers fighting in Iraq, I get this anxious feeling in my gut and my heart goes out to anyone over there. War is never fought by those in power. It is always the powerless and those at a disadvantage who fight wars for the rest of us. Nick Arvin has recently published a novel about a young boy sent off to war, although his soldier fights in France during World War II. The novel approaches the character differently than most; his soldier is a coward, and it examines what is at the heart of all of us -- the desire to flee and run, "...but at its existential best, Articles of War makes you wonder how you would handle yourself in a ditch, surrounded by snipers, and under orders to kill..." I do wonder how most of us would handle it, including those in power -- how would they handle those conflicting desires; on the one hand to run, and on the other, the desire to kill?

read all about it!

For those of us who were in diapers or not even born yet, Watergate remains a fuzzy story we learned in school. However, this was a a major scandal which brought down a President and damaged countless careers, as well as many Americans' faith in government. Now papers from Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein's investigation have been donated to the University of Texas at Austin, where we can read all about it.

brooding detectives...

One of my favorite detectives in mystery fiction is Inspector John Rebus, or, as I like to call him -- The Brooding Detective. One of the most recent additions to this series, Resurrection Men earned Rankin the Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of 2004. This moody series of novels by author Ian Rankin has a new addition, Fleshmarket Alley, which promises to be just as dark and disturbing.

book awards

National Book Critics Circle finalists for nonfiction have been announced...

day after...

So, its the day after Valentine's Day and my sweetie has left for a two day school conference. Tonight I plan to curl up with a good Sara Paretsky novel to ease the pain. If you love P.I. mystery novels and are a Sue Grafton fan, you will LOVE Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski mystery series. The characters are extremely similar, except that Warshawski is much classier and feminine than Kinsey Millhone. They both kick butt, though...

Wal-Mart ditty...

I laughed out loud when I read the list of shitty Wal-Mart bookshelves ditties. Its the second list, so scroll down! Don't be surprised if you laugh out loud and wake your neighbor...

bollywood and Jane Austen...

Its official! Bride & Prejudice, Gurinder Chadha's (Bend it Like Beckham) newest film, is about to be released. Ok, so the Washington Post's review is not glowing, but as the reviewer notes, "...you're not watching "Bride" for narrative structure and precise plot development, are you? No, you're watching it so you can snicker along as Lalita and her sisters decry boorish beaus in "No Wife, No Life" or watch an entire village burst into song as a young bride-to-be dances through a marketplace. Just look at the pretty pictures, and nod your head to the beat..." Jane Austen, eat your heart out! I, for one, think that Jane would love it if she were alive today. She's probably one of literature's finest writers of social satire, and I think she would appreciate Chadha's clever adaptation. Hmmm...methinks maybe Jane Eyre might be next...

a sad day for the Theatre....

I just got word that Arthur Miller has died at age 89. The New York Times and the Associated Press (via MSNBC) both have obituaries up already.

complete contrarian...

I have to admit it -- I love Christopher Hitchens. I mean, the guy is ornery as all get out, but he is just so passionate about what he hates! Love, Poverty, and War is the latest collection of his contrariness and is full of passion and vitriol ---and, ooh, what I wouldn't do for one-tenth of his feeling!

delicious library...

Wow! As if I didn't have enough to do at home already...now there is an at-home library system where you can scan, catalog and store information about your books, music, and movies right in your own home!! Now all of you librarian wanna-bees can finally catalog your holdings for the whole world to see...

food as journalism...

Several years ago I was visiting my sister in Atlanta and we went to a reading and book signing at a Chapter 11 Books store. The author was Michael Pollan and the reading was from his book, The Botany of Desire. It was an interesting talk about the history of four different plants in America: the potato, the apple, marijuana, and the tulip. Now, it looks like he is working on another book which examines "...three principal food chains: the industrial, the organic, and the hunter-gatherer...". His book Second Nature explores his deepening obsession with gardening, which I can relate to! Pollan is a definite 'must-read' for budding gardeners and anyone interested in the history of the food supply...

bush as bibliophile?

Ok, I'm shocked and awed...President Bush is a Tom Wolfe fan?? Here is one of my favorite quotes from the story, "...Mr. Bush added that "in this job, there are some simple pleasures in life that really help you cope. One is Barney the dog, and the other is books. I mean, books are a great escape. Books are a way to get your mind on something else." Aaaah, words of wisdom we should all live by...

goin' a wandering...

Who doesn't want to travel to far-flung places and meet exotic locals in mysterious places? Read this review of The Geographer's Library by Jon Fasman. This debut novel sounds twisty and turny enough to merit a look -- the description reminds me of Iain Pears' novel An Instance of the Fingerpost -- published in 1998 and set in the 17th century involving a murder, narrated by four different people. One of the best mystery novels I've ever read...

addendum to 50s fascination...

In addition to reviews on A Consumers' Republic, here is a multimedia presentation of Dr. Cohen's lectures, her biography and background on the book...

50s fascination...

The 1950s are a fascinating time period -- post WWII, America was a booming industrialized powerhouse, just bursting from the repressed, lean years of the 1940s. Beyond the Gray Flannel Suit Books from the 1950s that Made American Culture explores the books of this period which had an impact on the culture and society at large. Far from being bland or conforming, I think the 1950s had an enormous impact on American culture, and not all of it bad. America was at its height of consumerism and you saw technology and innovation reach a high level of sophistication, especially when it came to outfitting the average suburban home. Another book, A Consumers' Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America by Lizabeth Cohen is a fascinating look at the political underpinnings to consumption and how it changed America, and I think it is one of the best books you can read to achieve an understanding as to how American political power really works in our modern age...

right to die...

The right-to-die issue has been politicized by both the left and right, and the Supreme Court's recent refusal to hear the Florida case of Terri Schiavo has fueled the flames of the religious right and added political ramifications with Jeb Bush and the Florida Legislature's intercession in the case. Last year I read a controversial book by Peter Singer called Rethinking Life and Death: the collapse of our traditional ethics, which discussed the ethics of animal rights, abortion, the brain dead, as well as poverty and the crime of "speciesism". What interests me about this book in relation to the Schiavo case is this desire to regulate the moral decisions of individuals by the religous right, especially this issue of "right-to-life". In the Schiavo case, it appears that the husband wants to let his wife die naturally, but the parents claim she is "alive" and "responds". Is it ethically valid to keep someone (who is in a persistent vegetative state and has no brain function whatsoever) "alive" on a feeding tube at the same time when there are countless people around the world starving and dying of curable diseases? Many criticize Singer for his views, but more importantly, I think he tries to make valid arguments for issues we need to discuss openly in society. Along the same lines, Harper's Magazine has an essay this month by Garret Keizer which is worth reading. The author gives a rational argument for why PAS (physician assisted suicide) must be a personal decision between a person and his or her doctor, and is currently being thwarted by the religious right and moral relativism. Fascinating...

How FOX Broke the Rules...

Read Powells.com review of Kimmel's book on FOX Television and decided to chime in with the review I wrote last year:
"Kimmel, a Boston correspondent for the entertainment industry newspaper Variety, chronicles the turbulent growing pains of FOX television in this new history of FOX’s struggle to become the fourth television network. Although unauthorized by the network, this narrative of the birth of FOX Television is laden with first person accounts and Kimmel relies on several former Fox executives and staff members for behind-the-scenes information. The book is full of quotes and anecdotes from key meetings and events at FOX since 1985, and is best read as an updated companion piece to Alex Ben Bock’s 1990 history of the network, Outfoxed. From Married…with Children to Malcolm in the Middle, FOX has radically changed the face of broadcast television and Kimmel emphasizes this point throughout his book. However, it works more as a social history than a critique of FOX, and Kimmel ably details the history of a broadcaster once called “the coat-hanger network”."
I still think the book works as a social and cultural analyis of how FOX re-energized television in the early nineties. It didn't necessarily make television better, but the book does make a good point of showing FOX's development into an American pop culture powerhouse, for good or bad.

plagiarism problem

Copying from someone else's work isn't just a problem in academia, as evidenced by the discovery of plagiarism in the books of popular historians Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin. A recent article in WQ talks about the rash of plagiarism affecting some noted historians and academics who should have known better...

open access...

"Open-access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions... ". The OA initiative is becoming popular in academic libraries and higher education because of the rising costs of journal subscriptions, budget cuts and copyright barriers. OA offers a whole new system of scholarly communication in academia...

The librarian who came in from the cold...

As I was driving to work today, I listened to NPR and heard Steve Inskeep interview Nancy Pearl, the librarian from Seattle who is the muse for the Librarian Action Figure -- that ghastly little stereotypical librarian who shushes loud children with one powerful motion of her finger to her lips! Pearl is also the author of Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason and was talking about overlooked spy novels everyone should read.

Librarian saves the world...

"Jeanette Winter has created a book about a librarian who saved 70 percent of an Iraqi town's books during the U.S. invasion. The book is called The Librarian of Basra: A True Story from Iraq." Listen to the transcript of her interview with reporter Michele Norris on NPR...

Bush has a book club?

Reading this article on W's newest favorite book is a bit troubling, since I wasn't aware he even read. So, it shouldn't surprise me that the book is entitled, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror. Ooh, scary...

college socializing

Ok, so I'm an old fart. I just realized this in class this morning when one of the students mentioned Thefacebook.com and I had no idea what she was talking about! Turns out it is this really cool social networking tool that college students are using all over the country. They can search for old high school classmates, peers interested in the same political views, fellow booklovers, where to party, and more. I wish they had this when I was in college...

sorry Virginia, there is no God...

Essay by Natalie Angier on raising one's children as atheists. Angier is the author of Woman: An Intimate Geography and has won the Pulitzer Prize for her beat reporting in the sciences.

wotd

Have you ever tried to increase your vocabulary by reading the dictionary? Well, I tried to do that word-a-day stuff, too, but now Dictionary.com makes it easy by subscribing to their RSS feed on Bloglines. Now you can get a word-of-the-day delivered right to you instead of lifting those darn heavy dictionaries...

battle against FDR

Could the Bushies really hate FDR's legacy enough to dismantle Social Security? In light of this, "It's difficult to discern the short-term political gain for Republicans to try to dismantle Social Security now. So the payoff must be more psychological or intellectual. Now that they indisputably control all three branches of government, Republicans finally have the opportunity to slay some of the liberal demons that have been bedeviling them for so long." Finally after 70 years, they might get their way. Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s Pulitzer Prize-winning series about FDR is a good introduction to the social and economic goals of New Deal policies in light of the Depression, for those with a taste for reading more about why Social Security was necessary.

british invasion

Need a list of books to read for the upcoming year? Look no further than the "tortoises & hares" of 2005, a list of upcoming novels and nonfiction by major British authors.

awards

I missed it last week, but the Caldecott & Newberry Medal Award winners were announced on January 17 at ALA Midwinter meeting. The best in children's literature were given to Kira-Kira, by Cynthia Kadohata (Newberry) and Kitten's First Full Moon, written and illustrated by Kevin Henkes (Caldecott). I bought a copy of Henkes book when he published it last year -- wonderful black & white illustrations. I knew it was a keeper!

a nation divided...

The digital divide is real, and ever-widening, according to a report issued by the Kaiser Family Foundation -- it also appears that poor children are the ones most affected:
"According to the most recent major government datasets, based on information collected in 2001, 4 in10 children have never used the Internet, and lower income
and minority youth are far less likely than other children to have gone online. While 75% of children from families earning over $75,000 a year have gone online, less than half (49%) of those from families earning $20-35,000 and only 37% of those earning under $20,000 a year have gone online. Similarly, while two-thirds (67%) of white children have gone online,
just 45% of African American and 37% of Hispanic youth have done so."
A disturbing trend...

Rye redux

Its Holden Caulfield meets Ayn Rand in this dystopian look at the inhumanity of the human condition. A cynical young man hits the road and finds himself in a brutual police state somewhere in Europe, where he learns about that all-important concept; freedom...

Fightin' over fair use...

As a librarian, here is an issue near and dear to my sweet little heart -- copyright and fair use. An interesting article in this month's Bookforum discusses "...recent laws—like the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which increased protection of copyrighted material on the Internet, and the Sonny Bono Act—{which} have elevated intellectual property's status to such a degree that many courts and corporations often treat it in virtually the same way as they do physical property. " I'm all for writer's protection of their intellectual property, but I think it goes too far when you have huge corporations like FOX News try and put a copyright on words and phrases, a la "fair and balanced"...

Everything is free on the web, no?

Here is an interesting article about the origins of Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia on the web. What is special about this encyclopedia is the ability for anyone to edit its contents. How revolutionary! There are some cool links to other wiki sites, where anyone is free to add an article or edit content. Democracy still lives on the internet...

Oh, Canada...

America's first international bestseller turns out to be Canadian in origin. It appears the inspiration for Uncle Tom's Cabin was a runaway slave named Josiah Henson who escaped and made his way to freedom in Ontario, Canada. Now there is an historic site honoring him in Dresden, Ontario, open to the public.

We can't even get away from it in academia...

Wal-Mart invades academia! Now, even Wal-Mart has its own conference in the academic world -- held for the first time this past April at UC Santa Barbara. "The range of subjects covered in the conference papers to be published early next year testifies to Wal-Mart's impact both on the transfer of goods from third-world sweatshops to suburban shopping malls in the US and on local communities where its stores are located". Isn't this what I've been saying for three years now? One of the conference papers is entitled Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart and talks about how Wal-Mart's ridiculously low wages force some to go on welfare. Told you so...

...and in today's book review...

Nick Hornby's newest book is a mouthful! The Polysyllabic Spree: A Hilarious and True Account of One Man’s Struggle With the Monthly Tide of the Books He’s Bought and the Books He’s Been Meaning to Read represents a feeling many of us booklovers MUST have encountered at some point in our reading careers...

Its a Book Thang...

Baltimore's revolutionary answer to a Salvation Army for book-aholics is a bookstore where all the books are free. Or, in other words, a library where you never have to return the books!

Powell's Review of the Day

Powell's Books in Seattle has an email book review-of-the day which they will send directly to your inbox. Its generally a mixture of literary fiction and general nonfiction. Most of the reviews come from popular magazines or newspapers, such as The Christian Science Monitor or Esquire.

Year of Wonders

Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks

Set in the year 1666, Brooks' first novel is a surpisingly engaging fictional account of a town quarantined by the Plague in rural England. Fans of well written historical fiction would do well to check this story out. Young Anna Frith, widow and mother of two young boys, is a housemaid in the rectory of one Reverend Mompellion and his wife, Elinor, when the Plague strikes her household. Eventually the Plague spreads throughout the village, and the Reverend decides to quarantine the village to stop the spread elsewhere. The consequences of his decision will touch all of the main characters, especially Anna. What makes the novel work are the complex relationships the novelist explores between characters, especially Anna and the reverend's wife, Elinor. Deeply loving, kind, and generous, Elinor is a former aristocrat, who has, on the surface, come down in the world to marry Reverend Mompellion. How do people, under enormous stress and strain, interact and coexist with one another? What makes one society thrive and another fall apart? Brooks examines these questions and, in the process, writes a moving and absorbing historical novel.