LibWorm.com provides a librarian RSS filtering service. Over 1500 RSS librarian sources are combined and output via different filters. This feed contains the latest headlines from journals and sites in the Biographies interest group. http://www.libworm.com/rss/librarianqueries.php Thu, 11 Mar 2010 02:52:28 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.2 http://wplbookclub.blogspot.com/2016/04/louis-riel-comic-strip-biography-by.html In 1869, the Red River Settlement area, home to the French-speaking Metis, is sold to the Canadian government. Louis Riel, the de facto leader of the Red River Settlement, demands that they be granted the right to govern themselves. Not suprisingly, the government refuses this. This story relates Riel's resistance to the Canadian government's mistreatment of the Metis community.Louis Riel - Wikipediahttps://owa.fibrehost.net/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_RielLouis Riel - rethinking Riel (CBC Archives)Louis Riel - Trivial Pursuit (CBC Archives) Place a hold on a WPL copy of the book here. (Source: WPLBOOKCLUB) Wed, 20 Apr 2016 04:00:00 +0100 377637 http://hhsmedia.blogspot.com/2010/02/celebrate-black-history-month.html February is Black History Month. Test your knowledge of Civil Rights heroes by taking this interactive quiz.To learn more about the contributions of African Americans in history, try these great websites:African VoicesThis Smithsonian online exhibit celebrates Africa's diversity and long history.African American WorldSponsored by PBS, this website features a large collection of classroom resources for teachers and students.Black HistoryHere you can find an interactive timeline, biographies, and a collection of video clips. (Source: Huntingtown High School Library Media Center) Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:00:00 +0100 819509 http://hhsmedia.blogspot.com/2010/02/celebrate-black-history-month.html February is Black History Month. Test your knowledge of Civil Rights heroes by taking this interactive quiz.To learn more about the contributions of African Americans in history, try these great websites:African VoicesThis Smithsonian online exhibit celebrates Africa's diversity and long history.African American WorldSponsored by PBS, this website features a large collection of classroom resources for teachers and students.Black HistoryHere you can find an interactive timeline, biographies, and a collection of video clips. (Source: Huntingtown High School Library Media Center) Wed, 02 Feb 2011 05:00:00 +0100 815254 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/XD6WXsjPxEs/frederic-raphael-talkative-novels From Petronius to John Steinbeck and Evelyn Waugh, the novelist considers books that have mastered the art of dialogue, ensuring that 'they always speak to us, not least between the lines'Born in Chicago but educated in England, Frederic Raphael is probably best known as the author of Glittering Prizes, and its sequel Fame and Fortune, both of which he adapted into acclaimed TV and radio series starring Tom Conti as writer Adam Morris. This month, he publishes a third volume in this series, Final Demands, which finds Morris contending with middle age and its discontents and which he has also adapted for BBC Radio 4.Raphael is also a prolific author of some 20 other novels, as well as history books, biographies and film screenplays. Last year he completed a strikingly contemporary translation of Petronius's Satyrica, (published by Carcanet, priced £12.99). Buy Frederic Raphael books at the Guardian bookshop"Dialogue brings a novel to life. It is possible to compose fiction without it, just as Georges Perec was able to write an entire book without using the vowel "e", but one had better be a genius to affect such forms of composition. And once is quite enough. It may also be possible to contrive great blocks of prose, in which landscapes are described and psychological states analysed as never before. But a writer who cannot make characters talk, and have their conversations require us to listen to them, is locked into airless formality. "Dialogue tells us what people say and it hints at what they do not. It encourages readers to bring a book to life by enticing their participation in it. They then supply their own reading of how loudly or softly, truly or falsely, words are exchanged. When a writer allows his characters to talk among themselves, he grants them their freedom. If only because the subconscious can then chime in, his premeditated scheme never wholly dictates what someone will say. ... Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:19:28 +0100 825231 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/qe4W9oYxGRE/labour-art-culture-michael-foot If the party is to reconnect with its soul, it needs to revive the passion for culture that seems to have ended with Michael FootMichael Foot was a name I knew long before I was old enough to vote Labour. My dad's fading paperback copy of the first volume of Foot's biography of Aneurin Bevan was one of the familiar volumes on the bookshelves at home. I don't think I knew he was a politician, but I did know he was a writer. Much later on, as a sixth-former, I read his collection of essays Debts of Honour – well-written and sensitive homages; model essays. Foot was the real thing: a cultured radical. But how many of those are left in the Labour Party?I hate to be a party pooper. If Gordon Brown's political renaissance continues and he holds the line at the general election, I will be ready with the champagne. I've never voted for any other party and never will. But what happened, please, to the culture and learning that once flourished on the British Left? Where is the Labour passion for poetry and language that Foot epitomised?Correct me if I am wrong, but I can't think of a single convincing book or article on an artistic, literary, musical or architectural theme that a leading and current Labour politician has published since 1997. I can't picture anyone in the cabinet who has a prominent passion for Keats – or even Bob Dylan, for that matter. They all seem completely cultureless. There may be a lot of economic learning in New Labour, but a zeal for the arts (as opposed to a desire to be associated with fashionable art) is nowhere to be found.I'm not accusing them of lacking taste. I'm accusing them of lacking soul. Art, in the end, is the vehicle of feeling: Foot had deep feelings that he could perhaps express better by writing history and criticism than he could by leading the party. And surely the philistinism of the Blair and Brown years has been a reaction against what might have seemed the impotent intellect of old Labour. ... Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:57:35 +0100 824848 http://lisnews.org/buy_one_get_one_free_and_help_these_california_libraries The used-book store, at the Carlsbad (CA) Public Library’s Dove Lane branch, is a treasure trove for bibliophiles looking for bargains. Shelves are lined with donated books that include classics, recent best-sellers, romance novels, mysteries, biographies, cookbooks and guides to self-improvement. All the money from sales goes toward funding children’s programs and new acquisitions at the library and the annual Carlsbad Reads Together program. The store makes $100,000 to $120,000 a year, said manager Taffy Cannon. Sign on San Diego also has reports from the Friends of the Escondido Library and the Vista Library. Each of the three FOLs has a bookstore. Does your library have an active FOL or a bookstore? (Source: LISNews.org) Tue, 09 Mar 2010 12:56:38 +0100 824916 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/LE7w5uPm_qU/sir-kenneth-dover-obituary Distinguished classical scholar and academic who broke new ground with his book Greek HomosexualitySir Kenneth Dover, who has died aged 89, was a towering figure in the study of ancient Greek language, literature and thought. Very few could approach the range and quality of his scholarship, especially his synthesis of philological, historical and cultural acumen. His name became known to a wider public partly for his groundbreaking 1978 book, Greek Homosexuality, and partly for the publication of his controversial autobiography, Marginal Comment, in 1994.Greek Homosexuality treated the topic with unprecedented openness and nuanced definition. The work drew together the evidence of literature (not least a prosecution speech in a sensational Athenian court case); visual art (Dover inspected hundreds of sexually explicit vase-paintings, often in the basements of museums); and history, mythology and philosophy. The result was a compelling picture of the complex web of sexual and social practices that constituted the phenomena now grouped together under the label of Greek homosexuality.The book proved a turning-point in the modern study of ancient sexual cultures, leading to the growth of this field in the 1980s (and not just among specialists – Michel Foucault was among those influenced by it). Later in life, Dover was sometimes impatient that the subject had become an academic industry and that Greek Homosexuality had become the best known of his works, partly occluding what he felt to be his own central achievement as a historian of the Greek language. But the book is deservedly admired for harnessing scholarly sophistication to a shrewd and broad-minded historical imagination. If parts of Dover's argument have been challenged in relation to the kind of weight given to different sorts of evidence, the book remains an indispensable resource.Dover was born in London and educated at St Paul's school and Balliol College, Oxford, where he read classics. ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:45:54 +0100 824701 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/wiVOkW6wwd0/poem-of-the-week-william-carlos-williams-red-wheelbarrow This time, an unforgettable image that is also a manifesto for modern poetryThis week's poem, "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams, was untitled when it first appeared as number xxi in his 1923 collection, Spring and All. Titled or untitled, it's surely one of the most memorable poems ever written. But do we remember it in the way we usually remember poems? If you're familiar with "The Red Wheelbarrow", shut your eyes now and see what happens when you try to recall it. The poem probably appears in front of you, more or less intact. It's the visual memory that it appeals to: once seen, its overall shape and inner patterns, as well as its key images, seem printed on the brain. The visual arts had a profound effect on Williams's poetic development, beginning with the new work he encountered in the epochal 1913 Armory Show. The moving spirit behind this exhibition was the photographer Alfred Stieglitz. His avant-garde Gallery 291 became another hub of creative activity for the new American artists, and Williams was a regular visitor. As his Autobiography reveals, Williams was interested in Cubism, Futurism, photographic art, and the "readymades" of Marcel Duchamp. He talks particularly about the significance of Paul Cézanne and his successors, approving their concept of "sheer paint: a picture a matter of pigments upon a piece of cloth stretched on a frame."The four stanzas here are rather like that "piece of cloth, stretched on a frame". The structural tension gives every word its space and focus. The dominant nouns are like objects painted vividly onto a neutral ground. Williams emphasises the colours rather than the shapes – the shape, after all, appears in our minds as soon as we see a word like "wheelbarrow" or "chickens". ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:32:58 +0100 824512 http://santafelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/03/lets-quaff-few-root-beers-and-tell-war.html One of New Mexico’s favorite sons is being honored this month by the U.S. postal service. Bill Mauldin, a cartoonist who inspired leagues of enlisted men during World War Two, will have a stamp bearing his likeness alongside his two most popular characters, Willie and Joe.Mauldin was born in Mountain Park, New Mexico, and won the Pulitzer Prize twice for his brilliant cartooning. He wrote several books, which you can find on our shelves if you want to read more. Some are autobiographies, some are his actual cartoons. We also have Todd DePastino’s 2008 biography.I didn’t know who Bill Mauldin was when his daughter became my best friend, but when I mentioned offhand to my father that my friend’s dad was a cartoonist and had he heard of Bill Mauldin, he nearly went through the roof. He couldn’t believe I was hanging out with the offspring of the man who had so inspired a generation! So I for one am going to buy a ton of those stamps as soon as they come out, and the first thing I plan to do is use one to write a thank you to my dad for his service in World War Two.by AA @Main (Source: ICARUS... the Santa Fe Public Library Blog) Mon, 08 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 824592 http://vivabibliotecaviva.blogspot.com/2010/03/estudos-sobre-mulher-na-ciencia-da.html Adjabeng, A.,  "Las bibliotecas como recurso para Acrecentar y Apoyar el Desarrollo Económico para la Mujer".  IFLA Council and General Conference, No. 70, 2004. http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/papers/037s_trans-Adjabeng.pdfDescriptores: Mujeres/Bibliotecas/Aspecto económico/Aspecto social/Discriminaión socialResumen: Los asuntos que se centran en la mujer han asumido una dimensión más profunda. Muchas actividades se han llevado a cabo para alarmar a los gobiernos, a organizaciones gubernamentales y no gubernamentales, instituciones políticas, sociales y económicas sobre los problemas de la mujer en general. Una de dichas actividades la Década para la Mujer de las Naciones Unidas 1975-1985, un periodo creado por las Naciones Unidas para crear una amplia conciencia en todo el mundo sobre los asuntos centrados en la mujer. Adjabeng, A.,  "Libraries as a source of relevant information to support and enhance economic development for women".  IFLA Council and General Conference, No. 70, 2004. http://www.ifla.org/IV/ifla70/papers/037e-Adjabeng.pdfDescriptores: Mujeres/Bibliotecas/Aspecto económico/Aspecto social/Discriminaión socialResumen: Issues concerning women have assumed a wider dimension. Many activities have been carried out to alert governments, governmental and non-governmental organizations, political, social and economic and academic institutions about the problems of women in general. One of such activities was The United Nations Decade for Women 1975-1985, a period set aside by the United Nations to create a widespread awareness in the whole world on issues concerning women. Alfaya Lamas, E., Fernández Mariño, P., and Villaverde Solar, D.,  "Análisis de datos mediante observación documental en las noticias de prensa sobre misoginia".  Jornadas Españolas de Documentación, No. 11, 2009, pp. 298-301 . http://www.fesabid. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 825058 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Vhe3SxLE54g/pattern-in-carpet-margaret-drabble The pieces of Margaret Drabble's memoir don't all fit together, but they paint a compelling picture of family lifeThis book's subtitle suggests it is about puzzles and the author's fondness for them,, and it is true that Drabble tells the story of jigsaws diligently. We learn they were invented in London, in the 1760s, by engraver and cartographer John Spilsbury, and that they do well in times of economic depression. But in another sense jigsaws are a red herring. Drabble suffers from depression, and jigsaw puzzles are one of her strategies for dealing with this melancholy. They are a problem that can always be solved, an escape from words. She did them as a child when her depression first surfaced and more recently when her husband, Michael Holroyd, was ill. Jigsaws are the (often tenuous) connection between things she wants to think about; they give her licence to wander. The result is a disordered book and some readers will dislike it for that reason. But but I enjoyed it, perhaps because I used to do jigsaws myself and so knew how to approach it. Just as the dedicated puzzler always holds some pieces back, to be slotted in at the last moment, so I guiltlessly put certain sections to one side and focused instead on the family stuff, where the narrative springs to life.Margaret DrabbleBiographyRachel Cookeguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:08:42 +0100 824115 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/xciQqyy647U/apathy-for-devil-book-review Nick Kent was the leather-clad rock journalist of his age. But, says his NME colleague Julie Burchill, his memory for events is as bad as his prose. As for his personal hygiene…If someone picks up the memoir of a past acquaintance without turning first to the index to check if he (or she) is in it, then he (or she) is either a saint, a liar or Stevie Wonder. I am none of these, and was rewarded by promised appearances on pages 297-8 and 334 of this memoir by a man who was a colleague at the dear old New Musical Express in the years 1976-79. Sadly, in a literary twist on the old saw "Listeners hear no good of themselves", I am featured in one cameo as an "opportunistic firestarter" and in another as "a strange teenaged girl with a pronounced West Country twang, sullen eyes and a vibe about her that could best be described as 'Myra Hindleyesque'".As Kent was so off his bonce due to various medications of both a street and legal kind that he regularly apologised to the NME office hat stand when he bumped into it during this time, one hardly expects 20/20 recall. However, I did take particular exception to the passage: "I liked the idea of Julie Burchill coming aboard – she certainly knew how to shake things up – but the reality was often hard to stomach, particularly when one found oneself in close physical proximity to the young woman."I have many faults, but smelling is not one of them. On the contrary, it was Kent who was the stinker – literally and metaphorically – to the extent that he could single-handedly clear out a crowded lift in the King's Reach Tower where the NME had its offices. This accidental talent, so far as I could see, was surely the only reason that anyone ever sought out his skanky company.At least he comes clean (a first for him, to my knowledge) right there in para one, page one: "When you get right down to it, the human memory is a deceitful organ to have to rely on. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:08:31 +0100 824116 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/v0FarPRCvqk/why-not-me-book-review This angry memoir by the widow of BBC presenter Nick Clarke leaves you in no doubt as to the depth of her sufferingBarbara Want is studying a snapshot of her late husband, the broadcaster Nick Clarke – presenter of The World at One – and their three-year-old twin sons. It is an ordinary but affecting way of leading us into her memoir of the man she has loved and lost. Except that, just as one is starting to feel regret on her behalf, her tone changes and with sudden violence – as if ripping the holiday snap in two – she says she wants to "stop the fun, end the day, quell the laughter and scream at Nick, 'You've got cancer. This is all going to stop. You're going to die."'The cancer was diagnosed at the end of 2005 – a sarcoma in the buttock that left the doctors with no choice but to amputate Nick's leg (an ordeal recounted in Nick and Barbara's prize-winning audio diary for Radio 4). But the cancer spread. And by the end of 2006, Nick Clarke was dead. Anger – grief's other half– has been Barbara's continuing element. And while she does her best to laugh at herself (in a distraught moment, she accidentally orders 28 bottles of Tesco bubble bath online), she remains the least merry of widows.Read impersonally, this book is a case study of what bereft anger is and does. It is as much about grievance as grief – a reproof to people who have failed her in her years of need. Though not endearing, this has its own furious integrity. What emerges is that there was little chance for her maladroit friends to get it right (with a handful of honourable exceptions, such as the consistently sympathetic Eddie Mair). About the mourners at Nick's funeral, she is restlessly critical – she complains of having been kissed by too many people ("I started to feel grubby") and yet, at the same time, her unforgiving eye is fixed on those who held back. ... Sun, 07 Mar 2010 00:06:28 +0100 824119 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/DSDmaP4wvxk/ From Resource Shelf: This new compilation of resources includes: + Open Access Digital Collections + Select General Resources (Individual Websites Include URLs When Available Including: ++ Biography ++ French Telephone Directory ++ French Dissertation indexes + French Newspapers, Periodicals and Government Documents ++ Newspaper Indexes ++ Newspapers ++ Full-Text Online ++ Periodical Indexes and Bibliographic Databases ++ Government Documents + French Archives and Manuscripts + Select French Materials from the LC Special Collections Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:00:53 +0100 824042 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Y6maNOlC-YA/loaded-guns-emily-dickinson-gordon Elaine Showalter enjoys a boldly original view of 'the poet next door'Any writer brave enough to undertake a biography of Emily Dickinson has to grapple with a century's burden of cultural baggage – numerous biographical mysteries, extreme and conflicting interpretations of her work, and her sacerdotal role as muse for other American poets.Dickinson's life story is both alarmingly uneventful and heavily weighed down with the legends of the recluse, the wraith and the virginal spinster in a white dress. Was she the victim of a secret unrequited love, revealed in her ecstatically submissive letters to an unknown, married "Master"? Was she the unhappy woman genius confined by her sex and class, "starving of passion" in "her father's garden", as William Carlos Williams wrote? Was she the lesbian who adored her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert Dickinson, and unconsciously revealed her longings in "clitoral imagery"? Was her social withdrawal after the mid-1850s neurotic, or a strategic choice for her art? Why did she refuse to publish during her lifetime all but seven of her 1,789 poems?In the 20th century, Dickinson became the inspiration and muse for a generation of American women writers. Adrienne Rich wrote about her as "Vesuvius at Home". The novelists Carol Shields, in Mary Swann, and Joyce Carol Oates, in Mysteries of Winterthurn, both channelled Dickinson's voice through invented women poets. For male American poets, Dickinson has appeared as a more challenging and threatening muse, one to be conquered and seduced. Billy Collins describes the experience of entering into her poetic world as "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes": "I could plainly hear her inhale / when I undid the very top / hook-and-eye fastener of her corset / and I could her hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:06:50 +0100 823796 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/vFBriwVFK0s/hanif-kureishi-collected-stories-tayler A sense of urgency makes up for a lack of range in Hanif Kureishi's stories, says Christopher TaylerDuring the 1980s and early 90s, Hanif Kureishi's screenplays, novels and plays made him not only a famous writer but a talismanic figure to young Asian Britons and metropolitan liberals of anti-Thatcherite stamp. Like Philip Roth, with whom he was friendly, he served as a glamorously provocative pin-up to second and third-generation immigrants brought up to be unassuming and well behaved. In his screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) and his novel The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), pop music, sex and cultural self-invention were lined up against Tory England and suburban self-denial, with little doubt about which side Kureishi favoured.His novel The Black Album (1995) and the story "My Son the Fanatic", which he adapted into a movie, also tackled the confluence of Islam and identity politics. By the late 90s, though, ageing, divorce and disillusionment were increasingly becoming his stock in trade. Patrice Chéreau's film Intimacy (2001), adapted from Kureishi's writings, distils some of the key ingredients of the later, sadder work: forlorn drug-taking, affectless extra-marital sex, grimy London locations.The pieces gathered in Kureishi's enormous Collected Stories date exclusively from the later part of his career. The book reprints the collections Love in a Blue Time (1997), Midnight All Day (1999) and The Body (2002), adding only a slim volume's worth of new material. In consequence, it has a hung-over feel; in spite of the sexual charge to many of the stories, Kureishi's past as a greedy celebrant of urban transgression is mostly a rueful memory.Again and again, the characters look back on their 70s radicalism and 80s prosperity with a mixture of nostalgia, bewilderment and regret. ... Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:06:45 +0100 823798 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/seealso/~3/LRozMNM0FUc/can_i_just_say_a_whole_bunch.html Room 31 of the Main Stacks Originally uploaded by Klara Kim About a month ago, I had a fight with my friend and co-worker, Jessy (that would be Library Shenanigans and the History and Future of the Book Jessy). It was a rather polite, librarianly fight over the importance of academic library collection size. At our small private liberal arts college library, when we give tours someone inevitably asks how many books we have. In the last seven years that I have worked at the library, our usual answer was “about five hundred thousand.” At a meeting last month, one of Jessy’s and my colleagues said that she’d done a little investigating in the catalog, and the number she came up with was closer to eight hundred thousand. She didn’t have all the information in front of her, though, so it was hard for her to answer our questions. 800K what? Item records? Non-serials item records? Did that include electronic books? Websites in the catalog? It wasn’t entirely clear. I was in a bit of a Mood that morning, so I came out with something like “we should just say ‘a lot’ and refuse to answer that question. I feel like I could say ‘fifty thousand’ or ‘five million’ and get the same reaction from most people. If it has the books you want, a tiny collection is fine. If it doesn’t have the books you want, an enormous collection is inadequate.” Jessy disagreed strongly. She pointed out that if you are researching a literary figure on the edge of the canon, you will be lucky if our library has a single critical biography, while a large research library might have several published over the last fifty years. She made the case that while sharing and ILL is great, even greater is being able to go to the stacks in your own library to get the books that you need. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:58:12 +0100 825168 http://lawlib.lclark.edu/podcast/?p=3058 Law School Event Alter Wiener: Honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day January 28, 2010 Event Announcement Alter Wiener is one of only a few Holocaust survivors living in the Portland area and will share with us his amazing life story and uplifting philosophies. Alter was only eighteen years old when he was liberated from his fifth Nazi forced labor and concentration camp. He lost his entire family and almost all of his extended family in the Holocaust and suffered unspeakable horrors during his imprisonment. Alter Wiener’s father was brutally murdered on September 11, 1939 by the German invaders of Poland. Still, Alter teaches us about the power of tolerance, forgiveness and much, much more. He is an incredible lecturer, mentor and author, including his 2007 autobiography, From a Name to a Number: A Holocaust Survivor’s Autobiography. The program was held at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon on January 28, 2010. View presentation here (Source: Lewis) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 22:13:02 +0100 824614 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/gQJQtMoY07w/friday-brain-teaser-from-credo.html The Friday Brain-teaser from Credo Reference - this week: Biographies. "A biography is a description of someone's life. If it is written by the person himself or herself, it is called an autobiography. See if you can answer these questions about people's life stories" Answers here.1. James Boswell is best known for his "Life" of which person?2. "The Greatest" was the 1975 autobiography of which world-champion boxer?3. Virginia Woolf's "Flush" was a biography of what sort of animal owned by Elizabeth Barrett Browning?4. Complete this verse by Edmund Clerihew Bentley:The Art of BiographyIs different from Geography.Geography is about MapsBut Biography is about...5. Who wrote biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien, W. H. Auden and Benjamin Britten, as well as books called "The Inklings" and "Geniuses Together"?6. "Brother Ray" is the autobiography of which American singer, written with David Ritz?7. How did Lytton Strachey describe four Victorians in the title of his 1918 book of short biographies of them?8. Who wrote the autobiographical novel "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", extracted from a work called "Stephen Hero"?9. Charles Laughton starred in a 1933 film about "The Private Life" of which English king?10. Anne Stevenson's "Bitter Fame" is a notoriously controversial biography of which of her close contemporaries? (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:46:02 +0100 823594 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/QUbaN9y1B3c/sarah-palin-publish-book-american-virtues Following the runaway success of her memoir Going Rogue, Palin will bring her 'mom's eye' to selections of readings that have inspired herWith two million-plus copies of her memoir Going Rogue sold, Sarah Palin is set to make her second assault on the world of books with a new title which will celebrate "American virtues and strengths".The as-yet-untitled book by the former Republican vice-presidential candidate was announced yesterday in a statement from her publisher, HarperCollins. The publisher told American press that the new book would "include selections from classic and contemporary readings that have inspired [Palin], as well as portraits of some of the extraordinary men and women she admires and who embody her love of country, faith, and family"."Palin will reflect on the key values – both national and spiritual – that have been such a profound part of her life and which continue to inform her vision of the future," said HarperCollins. "She will also draw from her personal experience to amplify these timely – and timeless – themes."Palin's autobiography Going Rogue – "a rare, mom's-eye view of high-stakes national politics, from patriots dedicated to 'Country First' to slick politicos bent on winning at any cost" – sold 300,000 copies in its first day on sale and has now topped 2.2m in sales. Whether Tony Blair, who yesterday revealed that his own autobiography, The Journey, would be published in September, will reach these heights remains to be seen.PublishingSarah PalinUnited StatesAlison Floodguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds (Source: Guardian Unlimited Books) Fri, 05 Mar 2010 11:07:16 +0100 823573 http://hplbookhunt.blogspot.com/2010/03/our-patrons-are-traveling-world-of.html Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queenby Susan Gregg GilmoreThrough the ups, downs and everything in between, the only constant in Catherine Grace's life has been the Saturday afternoons spent at the Dairy Queen eating Dilly Bars. After endless hours of daydreaming about leaving her little southern hometown, she heads out for the big city life in Atlanta; but is it everything that she ever wanted?- Suzie M.Pride and Prejudiceby Jane AustenI found this book not an easy read as the language I guess, is old English, a bit stiff and formal.The story takes place in England, not far from London. The family consists of the parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bennet and five daughters. Jane and Elizabeth are the eldest. Charlotte Lucas is Elizabeth’s close friend living next door. The purpose of parents of comfortable and well to do families is to marry off their daughters. The property near the Bennet’s is bought by young Mr. Bingsley. He arrives with his sisters, a brother in law and friend Mr. Darcy. Dances are held by different families so that the young people can socialize, leading to marriage. Mr. Bingsley is attracted to Jane and Mr. Darcy seems to be stiff and self absorbed. Mr. Collins, a young clergy man, a bore and long winded speaker, a cousin of Mr. Bennet and who will inherit Bennet’s estate as estate’s go to male relatives and not to daughters. He comes to visit the Bennet’s and proposes to Elizabeth. She refuses and he then turns to Charlotte who accepts. Mr. Collins’ benefactress in his vicarage is Mr. Darcy’s Aunt Catherine, a strong domineering woman with a sickly daughter who she wishes to see married to Mr. Darcy. Mr. Darcy starts to fall for Elizabeth and Bingsley’s sister is jealous as she adores Darcy, Elizabeth tells Darcy off as he told Bingsley he thought Jane didn’t care for him. Meanwhile, the third sister, Lydia runs away with Darcy’s soldier cousin. Darcy and Elizabeth’s uncle find them and get them married. ... Fri, 05 Mar 2010 05:00:00 +0100 823695 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/04/new-french-resources-at-the-library-of-congress/ This New Compilation of Resources Includes: + Open Access Digital Collections + Select General Resources (Individual Websites Include URLs When Available Including: ++ Biography ++ French Telephone Directory ++ French Dissertation indexes + French Newspapers, Periodicals and Government Documents ++ Newspaper Indexes ++ Newspapers ++ Full-Text Online ++ Periodical Indexes and Bibliographic Databases ++ Government Documents + French Archives and Manuscripts + Select French Materials from the LC Special Collections See Also: French Collections at the Library of Congress. An Overview See Also: France Portal Links to websites covering aspects of France and French studies, maintained by the European Division. Access the Compilation Source: European Division, Library of Congress (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:41:07 +0100 823505 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/GzNPiv1G53Y/barbara-bray-obituary Translator, critic, script editor and partner to Samuel BeckettBarbara Bray, who has died aged 85, was one of the most significant links between British and French literature in the 20th century. She was the principal translator and an early champion of Marguerite Duras, who was her close friend, and also translated the work of Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Anouilh and Alain Robbe-Grillet. As a young and influential script editor at the BBC in the 1950s, she fostered the work of many writers including Harold Pinter and, perhaps most importantly, Samuel Beckett, who became her personal and intellectual partner for more than 30 years.An identical twin, she was born into a lower-middle-class family in Maida Hill, west London, and raised in Harrow. She attended Preston Manor county grammar school, in Brent, and went to Girton College, Cambridge, where she took a first in English. She married John Bray, an Australian-born RAF pilot, after they both graduated from Cambridge. She spent three years with him teaching English in Cairo and Alexandria before returning to London and landing a job, in 1953, as script editor in the drama department of the new BBC Third Programme, one of a handful of women then in positions of responsibility there.Working under Val Gielgud, Donald McWhinnie and John Morris, she was at the spearhead of a risky enterprise to introduce the postwar British public to avant-garde 20th-century drama. She was involved in recommending, commissioning and translating work by Duras, Robert Pinget, Ugo Betti and Luigi Pirandello. Bray supported Pinter in particular, assuring him a steady flow of commissions after the failure of his London theatre debut, The Birthday Party. Pinter wrote A Slight Ache, A Night Out and The Dwarfs initially as radio commissions for her, and remained grateful to her throughout his life for this crucial early support. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:01:59 +0100 823399 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/aYyvu3eGia4/ryszard-kapuscinski-angola Ryszard Kapuściński's work may drift into fiction – but adherence to fact in war reporting can start to feel impossible and pointlessWere he neither dead nor the author at issue, Ryszard Kapuściński could have written beautifully about the battle that continues to rage over his work. He might even have quoted himself: "The war these parties waged among themselves was sloppy, dogged, and cruel."So begins the second paragraph of Another Day of Life, a brilliant, hell-bent account of the Angolan civil war on the eve of the country's independence in 1975. I read the book 23 years later in Angola, where I had been posted as the BBC correspondent. The parties had barely stopped warring during the two decades that followed Kapuściński's visit. His observations, made in that same paragraph, remained as relevant: "Everyone was everyone's enemy, and no one was sure who would meet death. At whose hands, when, and where. And why."A friend, an Angolan journalist, advised me, "Of course you don't want to believe a word of it – he made half of it up – but you won't read a more accurate account of the Angolan war and the flight of the Portuguese. Not even from the pen of an Angolan."When Kapuściński died, those who distrusted the Polish reporter's accounts came out in force. Michela Wrong, an outstanding investigative journalist, wrote that "he was shockingly silent on, or paid only lip service to, many of the forces that have shaped African history: apartheid, Aids, the IMF and the World Bank, for example". Six years earlier, in the Times Literary Supplement, John Ryle had noted that the writer was "regarded less favourably, by readers in Africa itself, and by Africanist scholars and reporters who have come to doubt his adherence to fact". One of the most vocal doubters of Kapuściński's greatness has been the courageous and entertaining writer Binyavanga Wainaina. In 2005, he described him as "a fraud. ... Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:00:01 +0100 823402 http://engagedpatrons.org/Blogs.cfm?SiteID=4725&BlogID=61&BlogPostID=6506 "Do something every day that scares you." This picture book biography of Eleanor Roosevelt is chock-full of important information about the woman who would become First Lady. Eleanor grew up in a wealthy but unloving household as a shy and unhappy girl, but her world was turned upside-down when she was sent to England to study with a teacher who encouraged her to think for herself. Her marriage to Franklin Roosevelt was a happy one, and it was at the time that she began her own political activities - teaching history and government, giving public speeches, and encouraging women to vote and participate in politics. Her activities increased as First Lady - visiting unemployed workers during the Great Depression, speaking out against segregation, and visiting soldiers fighting in WWII. She was an humanitarian with strong beliefs that others were not always happy to hear. But she never stayed quiet. After her husband died, she went on to work at the United Nations and continued to speak out on subjects in which she believed. It's a strong testament to the achievements of women in politics and introduces a wonderful role-model to young children. The sparse text makes this easy-to-read, although the vocabulary reaches a fourth-grade level. The accompanying illustrations by Gary Kelley show everything the text does not, and each of Eleanor's quotes added on each 2-page spread perfectly complement the topic being discussed. A timeline is included at the end of the book along with additional sources and web sites for further study. Highly recommended for Women's History Month, biography reports, and anyone looking for a strong female role-model. (Source: Children's Books from Wright Memorial Public Library) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 19:20:02 +0100 823014 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/IEKp3kfgJRk/2009-2010-edition-of-congressional.html The Congressional Directory is the official directory of the U.S. Congress, prepared by the Joint Committee on Printing. It presents:* Short biographies of each member of the Senate and House, listed by state or district.* Committee memberships, terms of service, administrative assistants and/or secretaries, and room and telephone numbers for Members of Congress.* Lists officials of the courts, military establishments, and other Federal departments and agencies, including D.C. government officials, governors of states and territories, foreign diplomats, and members of the press, radio, and television galleries (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Wed, 03 Mar 2010 11:26:09 +0100 823076 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/3T72Sf0zcMg/shakespeare-and-company-bookshop Long after Hemingway and the Beats, the Shakespeare and Company bookshop is still encouraging Paris to read and writeI've been to Paris many times. But, while I invariably wind up at La Belle Hortense for a browse over a glass of red, I'd yet to sample the charms of legendary English bookshop Shakespeare and Company. The first Shakespeare and Company, run by Sylvia Beach at rue de l'Odéon, was the base for Hemingway, Fitzgerald and the gang, but closed in the second world war. In 1951 George Whitman opened his own shop, Le Mistral, in a former 17th-century monastery overlooking Notre Dame. It became the base for Beat generation writers such as Burroughs and Ginsberg. He changed the name after Beach's death in 1962.I stand outside. Its Seine-side location is idyllic, even on a freezing February morning, with workmen on ladders outside its bottle-green facade, mending the electricals, and a skeletal tree wreathed in a string of bulbs. Summer must be wonderful here: there are empty garden chairs strewn between trays of hardy books. 28-year-old Sylvia Whitman, George's daughter, has agreed to show me round. Signs at the entrance marked "Beat" and "Lost" are a reminder of both stores' heavyweight associations. A wishing well, around which a handful of customers shuffle, glistens with pennies.Her father, Sylvia says, hoped to work until he was 100 but, forced to retire at 93, now lives on the second floor. He no longer gives interviews. We wander past shelves devoted to fiction, biography, art and French interest. "It's more organised that it looks," she says, with a laugh. Paperbacks line red wooden steps leading upstairs to what Sylvia calls the "non-commercial" floor: a library in which you could lose yourself, with one rule: books mustn't leave the premises. Here, as on the ground floor, single mattresses lurk between the shelves, and, in the children's section, a bunk bed. It's on these that young authors sleep each night. ... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:30:01 +0100 823034 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/subjectobject/~3/YQI37wKu2ak/ The New York Review of Books The Walrus Harpers The Atlantic Monthly The Times Literary Supplement … plus stacks of Philosophy, Sociology, short stories, essay collections, collected reporting, poetry, works of religion, biographies and autobiographies… All of these things adorn my desk, dresser, bedside table, floor, coffee table, kitchen table, radiator, and any other relatively flat surface. I’d have my cat balance them on her head if she wasn’t so grumpy about it. And, the extreme anxiety of leaving the house without something adorned with print. From as far back as I can remember I have been surrounded by the word.  True computers were there too, but they seemed something which fascinated me in a negative way.  I was always interested in the fact that people were sharing their lives through the computer. But the computer has never been something sublime to me. It is easy. The word is difficult. I’ve been trying to find a profession which would allow me to work with books and words on a full-time basis. I thought scholarship was it, but I wasn’t ready to compromise my polymathy for a life behind a magnifying glass. Librarians–of course they deal with books. What could be more elementary, the word “book” is contained in their name. But it only seems that my younger colleagues are trying to run away from books as fast as possible. The perfect sentence is something which gives me the most profound joy. I sometimes think about trying to create them myself. The greatest compliment I can give to a writer–and I will give this to Pasha Malla whose The Withdrawal Method is moving me in profound ways right now–is that they make you want to be a writer. But that is going to take another 5 years (giving myself 5 years for my 7 years of university writing. Even though it is bad I feel like I came out a better writer then my peers). ... Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:43:26 +0100 824067 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/DNRPGGopRYU/ryszard-kapuscinski-accused-fiction-biography New book claims journalist repeatedly crossed boundary between reportage and fiction-writingHe has been voted the greatest journalist of the 20th century. In an unparalleled career, Ryszard Kapuscinski transformed the humble job of reporting into a literary art, chronicling the wars, coups and bloody revolutions that shook Africa and Latin America in the 1960s and 70s.But a new book claims that the legendary Polish journalist, who died three years ago aged 74, repeatedly crossed the boundary between reportage and fiction-writing – or, to put it less politely, made stuff up.In a 600-page biography of the writer published in Poland yesterday, Artur Domoslawski says Kapuscinski often strayed from the strict rules of "Anglo-Saxon journalism". He was often inaccurate with details, claiming to have witnessed events he was not present at. On other occasions, Kapuscinski invented images to suit his story, departing from reality in the interests of a superior aesthetic truth, Domoslawski claims.Domoslawski told the Guardian: "Sometimes the literary idea conquered him. In one passage, for example, he writes that the fish in Lake Victoria in Uganda had grown big from feasting on people killed by Idi Amin. It's a colourful and terrifying metaphor. In fact, the fish got larger after eating smaller fish from the Nile."He added: "Kapuscinski was experimenting in journalism. He wasn't aware he had crossed the line between journalism and literature. I still think his books are wonderful and precious. But ultimately, they belong to fiction."On another occasion, the writer reported vividly on a massacre in Mexico in 1968. Although he was travelling in Latin America at the time, Kapuscinski did not witness it, despite asserting "I was there", Domoslawski alleges.The biographer, a correspondent with Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's largest paper, said he did not want to debunk Kapuscinski, whom he described as "my mentor". ... Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:05:09 +0100 822542 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/03/01/web-resources-womens-history-month-begins-today-in-the-u-s/ Here are a few resources that might be value to you for Women’s History Month that begins today in the U.S. We hope to add more to this compilation. 1. Fast Facts: A Collection of Stats about Women in the United States Compiled by the U.S. Census. Here are a few examples of What You’ll Find: + 155.8 million, The number of females in the United States as of Oct. 1, 2009. The number of males was 151.8 million. + 29.4 Number of women 25 and older with a bachelor’s degree or more education in 2008, higher than the corresponding number for men (28.4 million). Women had a larger share of high school diplomas, as well as associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees. More men than women had a professional or doctoral degree. + 197,900 Total number of active duty women in the military, as of Sept. 30, 2008. Of that total, 34,300 women were officers, and 163,600 were enlisted. + 178,084 Number of women who participated in a National Collegiate Athletic Association sport in 2007-08. 2. Women’s History Month Compilation (via Library of Congress) Online Exhibits Include: + Amelia Earhart + Women of Our Time: Twentieth Century Photographs from the National Portrait Gallery + The Women of Four Wars + Women Breaking Musical Barriers (Listen Online) ++ Many More Exhibits and Collections Here ++ Audio: Lectures, Book Talks, etc. See Also: Resources for Educators Content from: + LC + NARA + NEH + National Gallery of Art + National Park Service + Resources for Kids Much More on the Women’s History Month Home Page (via LC) Other Sites and Resources: + National Women’s History Project + Women’s History Month Resources (via InfoPlease Almanac) Reference Resources Include: + Timeline: U.S. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 18:27:03 +0100 822474 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/EVTdh4gi1Y0/ This is part 4 of a 5 part interview with  84 year old Ohio author Jack Matthews. See also: Part 1 ,Part 2 , Part 3. Also: Jack Matthews (an introduction),  Jack Matthews: The Art and Sport of Book Collecting and On Choosing the Right Name for a story character by Jack Matthews. I just finished HANGER STOUT, AWAKE  (which you published in 1967, to some acclaim). This simple naive voice plus the subject matter (cars, girls, and an unusual contest) makes me wonder if the ideal reader should be an 8th grade boy. Did you write this with the intention of attracting a younger audience? In a way, an 8th grader could respond to it. Years ago I bought the plates from Harcourt and paid to have 3000 copies printed, which I sold out easily. Most of them sold to colleges and high schools, and I remember doing a phone interview with students at a high school in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. In another sense, however, I think someone like Hanger (i.e., any young person) would be far less privileged in understanding the novel. The distance of age is required to understand much of his innocence and brave integrity (cf. McLuhan’s "I don’t know who discovered the ocean, but I know it wasn’t a fish.’) It’s all a matter of perspective. I regard Hanger as more character-driven than plot-driven. But as I read, I had no idea what details were important or what was going to happen next! You finished Hanger at an interesting place — with many things left unresolved. Were you tempted to ratchet up the melodrama or continue the novel past where it ends? Good. I toyed with the idea of doing a sequel, but decided against it. In my privately printed edition, published a decade or so after the novel came out, I wrote that I didn’t know what Hanger was then doing or how he was getting along, but I figured he’d be all right. In short, he is a survivor, to use the fashionable term. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:55:54 +0100 822456 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/pJ0r4OQdYMg/sharon-osbourne-politics-literature-ozzy She doesn't want to be Charles Dickens, so she's modelling herself on Barbara CartlandSharon Osbourne will be two hours late for her interview. A photo shoot is overrunning says her marvellously named assistant, Silvana Arena. As we enter the Osbourne mansion in Hidden Hills, a gated estate off Interstate 101 above Los Angeles, there is a fight going on unchecked in the hall. Two leettle dourgues from Osbourne's vast collection of over-groomed life forms are doing snarly battle, possibly for mastery of the pile of poo that lies mid-floor.In the living room the world's largest television is pumping out the All-American Shouting Channel. Ozzy Osbourne is in residence, sprawled on a vast sofa like a negligent emperor with that benign-but-bewildered look that impressionist Jon Culshaw nailed so well.Silvana parks me on a sofa in her office and swivels back to work at her desk. Which local sushi takeout joint, she asks down the phone, is the one that Sharon hates and which is the one she loves? Tough gig.While I wait, the Osbournes' staff are at my disposal. A nice Geordie assistant brings his compatriot a proper pot of tea and a plate of biscuits. Silvana sweetly supplies bowls of low-fat cheese puffs called Pirate Booty. I start to nod off.Yapping wakes me up. Sharon Osbourne has sidled on to the neighbouring sofa and the leettle dourgues are paying obeisance. Maybe she's been talking for a while, because we seem to be mid-conversation. "The grinning twat – he needs to be tarred and feathered that motherfucker. And she's a fucking motherfucker too," she says. Osbourne proves so implacably foul-mouthed and so gamely broad-ranging in her hatreds during the interview that she could be talking about anybody – Brangelina, Bennifer, SuBo or Simon Cowell. But no, she's talking about Tony Blair and, quite probably, Cherie Booth.She's been watching Blair give evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry. ... Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:05:00 +0100 822247 http://www.readersclub.org/reviews/tresults.asp?id=6886 by Sullenberger, Captain ChesleyCaptain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger became a national hero on January 15, 2009 when he landed US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River and all aboard the aircraft survived. Written with Jeffrey Zaslow, Captain Sullenberger’s autobiography, Highest duty : my search for what really matters, is interesting and engaging. It combines Sullenberger’s account of the water landing, including actual dialogue from the cockpit voice recorder, with his life experiences and values. In an easy to read style, this inspirational account also provides an insider look at the airline industry, Sullenberger’s commitment to aircraft safety, and his devotion to family.- reviewed by Linda, University City Regional, PLCMC (Source: Reader's Club's Latest) Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0100 822902 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/5NWALL9EkUg/arthur-koestler-joshua-ferris-reviews Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual by Michael Scammell, The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris and Philip Ball's The Music Instinct"Michael Scammell has laboured a quarter of a century to get the full picture," John Sutherland observed in the Times, reviewing Koestler: The Indispensable Intellectual. "In the long interval another scholar, David Cesarani [wrote] Arthur Koestler: The Homeless Mind (2000). Cesarani's Koestler is a multiple rapist, intellectual opportunist, bad Jew and 'wife-batterer'. Scammell offers a more favourable verdict. Which of them is right? Scammell, any fair-minded reader must say. But mud sticks, and Koestler's image will never now be clean of it." Cesarani emphasised "Koestler's taste for sexual violence", Geoffrey Wheatcroft noted in the New Statesman. "And yet, as often happens, the more objective and even-handed biography is the more damaging. One may admire Koestler as a writer, but it is hard to like him as a man after reading Scammell's book." "Although Scammell does his best to stick up for Koestler, he was clearly a misogynistic bully on a pathological scale," Dominic Sandbrook wrote in the Daily Telegraph. "Scammell admits that Koestler 'did behave extremely badly', but claims that this was merely typical male behaviour of the time – a case, it seems to me, of stretching his biographical sympathy too far."Tim, the protagonist of Joshua Ferris's The Unnamed, is prone to episodic, compulsive bouts of walking. "Tim's predicament is front and central – and if it is to take up that position, surely it needs to have meaning, to tell us something about the modern condition?" Robert Epstein objected in the Independent on Sunday. "But searching for that meaning is as fruitless as Tim's attempts to comprehend his problem. ... Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:11:36 +0100 821878 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/BUUC7SoxaUs/epistolary-fueds-martin-amis-anna-ford Literary history is littered with old friends like Anna Ford and Martin Amis feuding by letterYou have only to take a quick look at the epic history of literary epistolary feuds to realise that the "literary" bit is nearly always a fig leaf to cover deeper and more tender hurts. Certainly that's the case with the current Anna Ford v Martin Amis spat. In her opening salvo, published a week ago in this newspaper, Ford didn't even pretend that she had an urgent desire to share her thoughts on Amis's handling of metaphor or his narrative voice. No, what Anna really wanted to do was tell the world that Mart is a sod.Even if you're a saint – literally – that same base desire to rubbish the other person's person, rather than his writing, is always there. In the 5th century Saint Jerome conducted epistolary ding-dongs with virtually anyone who could hold a quill, including other saints such as Augustine.While Jerome's usual modus operandi was to pick a fight over something knotty like the Pelagian dispute, iIt soon became clear that this was merely an excuse for expressing his ever-bubbling personal venom. In the end the bad-tempered holy man found himself briefly excommunicated for being pointlessly rude – the medieval Christian version of time out on the naughty step.Still, for an epistolary feud to have real heat it needs to be stoked by the smouldering fires of former friendship. In the 1760s, those two princes of the Enlightenment, David Hume and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, struck up a relationship built on such intense mutual admiration that you could almost guarantee it would go wrong. Hume helped Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose recent publication of the revolutionary Social Contract had made him persona non grata on the continent, find safe haven in Britain. So he was naturally horrified when Rousseau turned like a snarling bear and accused his saviour of plotting against him. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:30:00 +0100 821711 http://wiredforbooks.org/mp3/JackMatthews1984.mp3 (See also: Jack Matthews Interview  Part One. (Parts 2 and 3 will appear in the next week). My introduction to short story writer Jack Matthews could not be more accidental. Between 2007 and 2008, I had been downloading and listening to a series of author interviews conducted by Don Swaim during the 1970s and 80s. Don Swaim did a series of 3 minute interviews with CBS Radio Services called Book Beat, presumably when authors showed up in NYC for a book tour.  Swaim shot the breeze with authors for an hour, talking about random things, and later found enough material for the three minute segment that actually aired.  But he saved the audio from the full interviews, digitalized them and put them online. The Wired for Books  interviews themselves are unpredictable, unrehearsed, meandering, sometimes dull and sometimes overly focused on topical irrelevancies (See Note below). Unlike the erudite interviews of  the KCRW Bookworm podcast, (which Michael Silverblatt conducts like a graduate student eager to show off his profound understanding of an  author’s oeuvre),  the exigencies of a radio schedule gave Swaim little time to do real preparation.  Over the decades  Swaim interviewed a number of literary greats (both recognized and unrecognized). At the same time, he interviewed a lot of popular authors, biographers, historians  and celebrities who had no business writing books. Sometime in 2008, I was listening to a random mp3 while doing housework.  It was a fascinating interview with a man who collected rare books and had recently published a book about book collecting. Midway through the interview, I realized I had already heard the same interview while driving from San Antonio to Houston. I remember making  a mental note to look the author up, but never did. His name was Jack Matthews, and the interview was done  in 1984. (Listen to the mp3). ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:49:44 +0100 821800 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/7RneF3ii6IM/new-yorker-editor-publish-obama-biography David Remnick's book, based on hundreds of interviews with the president and close associates, will be published in the US in April, and in the UK in MayPulitzer prize-winning author and New Yorker editor David Remnick's biography of Barack Obama has been snapped up for UK publication just days after it was announced in the US.Picador will publish Remnick's The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama on 28 May in the UK, over a month after its US publication date of 6 April. The book, which will include Obama's own correspondence, published for the first time, along with letters by his mother Stanley Ann Dunham, will be "the fullest narrative possible of a sitting President", providing "a sweeping and deeply reported" look at both Obama's life and the "complex saga of race in America" that led to his election, Picador said.Remnick has conducted hundreds of on-the-record interviews with "family, friends, teachers, professors, mentors, donors, and rivals of Barack Obama", as well as with the president himself, for the book. Remnick, who won a Pulitzer prize for his book about the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lenin's Tomb, also talked to members of Obama's team as well as figures including Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson and Bill Ayers.The book opens with Obama's visit to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where in 1965 civil rights protesters led by John Lewis were assaulted by troopers as they marched for African American voting rights, in an attack which became known as "Bloody Sunday". "Barack Obama is what comes at the end of that bridge in Selma," Lewis told Remnick.Remnick has previously written a 12,000-word article about race and Obama's campaign for the presidency for the New Yorker, but he assured the New York Times that his new biography would not simply be a "pumped up" version of the 2008 piece. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 12:43:17 +0100 821712 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infoisland/~3/K2F0kS5Gx74/ The Sci-fi & Fantasy Portal hosts its February Meet the Author event: Goncalo Coelho (RL) = Prospero Milan (SL) is a published author who lives in Portugal. He’s written novels, plus articles for the Portuguese Press and Brazilian magazines. The novel he’s presenting is THE MIRACLE OF YOUSEF “. It’s the biography of an Arab extremist who has amnesia in the middle of a radical activity. Extensive research weaves together the historical events that have changed the world these past few decades and shows the Muslim point of view. Underlying the historical perspective of the novel is the staggering question of how does someone adjust to waking up unable to remember any of his/her past life. So much of what we do pretty much automatically every day is based upon our past experiences. We’re holding this event inside the Portal building on Info Island. The following landmark will place you on Portal grounds near the wedge with a picture of the Portal on it and the title “Teleportal”. Click on that wedge, then click Teleport to reach the landing at the entry door. Walk in. We’ll gather at the back toward the right. Click on a cushion and it will seat you. http://slurl.com/secondlife.com/Info%20Island/210/94/33 Atrial Fibrillation A presentation and Q/A session led by MedSci Ellisson (SL) / Dr. Margaret Lloyd (RL), cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic. Thursday, Feb/25/2010 2:30-3:30 pm SLT The Sojourner Auditorium, Virtual Ability Island http://slurl.com/secondlife/Virtual%20Ability/56/169/23 * Atrial Fibrillation (sometimes abbreviated as A-Fib) is the most common abnormal heart rhythm. It occurs in the top two chambers of the heart due to disorganized electrial impulses in the heart muscle. Dr. Margaret Lloyd is an Assistant Profesor of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic with an appointment in cardiac diseases. Her bio is available at http://mayoresearch.mayo.edu/staff/lloyd_ma. ... Fri, 26 Feb 2010 02:48:51 +0100 822529 http://engagedpatrons.org/Blogs.cfm?SiteID=4725&BlogID=61&BlogPostID=6493 This biography just won the 2010 Coretta Scott King Award which goes to an African American author for a distinguished book about the African American experience.  Although born a slave, Bass Reaves became the first Deputy U.S. Marshal west of the Mississippi River and gained a reputation as a brave and respected lawman during his 30 years of catching outlaws in the Indian Territories. He was feared by outlaws because he always found a way to capture the ones on his list. He was clever (often using disguises), he was a sharp-shooter, and he couldn't be bribed. And although he captured over 3000 men and women during his career, he only killed fourteen men, while never getting wounded himself. Though this is in picture book format with only 32 pages, sparse text, and illustrations by Coretta Scott King Honoree R. Gregory Christie, this book is full of interesting information and high vocabulary suitable for readers through grade 6. This is also a good choice for reluctant readers. Highly recommended as a read-aloud during Black History month as well as for supplemental information for biography reports. Additional information provided at the back includes Western words, websites and books for further reading, and a timeline for Bass Reaves. (Source: Children's Books from Wright Memorial Public Library) Thu, 25 Feb 2010 20:40:02 +0100 821343 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/onQP6jrimtA/mervyn-jones-obituary Journalist, novelist and biographer of Michael FootPerhaps the most poignant aspect of the career of Mervyn Jones, who has died aged 87, was that he became far better known as a fine journalist, and the biographer of Michael Foot, than the talented novelist he always craved to be. From an early age, he yearned to write the great novel, possibly the epic poem. He looked upon WH Auden as his distant jewel, and in 1939, when he and his mother moved to New York, Mervyn attended Auden's lectures on poetry with a conscious ambition to follow in the great man's footprints.Alas, the two crafts of journalism and novel-writing often seemed at war within Mervyn. His closest friends and admirers recognised this only too well. We grew to know that a bad-tempered Mervyn in journalist mode signalled that a new novel was in the works.As a chronicler of his times, Mervyn was hard to match. He was a brilliant descriptive reporter on almost any subject, from the condition of the Sami society in northern Finland (the Lapps of Lapland), Paris around the time of the events of 1968 and the problems of the South Wales coal industry. He reported across the spectrum, working for the New Statesman and Tribune (his only staff jobs as a journalist), and as a freelancer for the Guardian.Offers of full-time jobs came with regular frequency from a range of papers including the Daily Express and the Observer, but he resisted the temptation in case it trapped him and damaged the search for that holy grail, the great novel.After writing his first novel, No Time to Be Young, in 1952, he joined Tribune and, from 1956 to 1960, wrote mostly about contemporary politics. He was brought into the fold by Foot, its then editor, and also served under Dick Clements. He continued to write for Tribune as a freelance drama critic until 1967. ... Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:43:50 +0100 821335 http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_bradleys_weblog/2010/02/peoplebrowsr-for-twitter-search.html I recently stumbled across PeopleBrowsr or pb.ly as they like to style themselves. It's a flexible site, since it is designed for searchers to hunt for data in tweets, biography, 'authority' (whatever that is), links, sentiment and lists. There's an Advanced search function which is basically just search.twitter.com rebadged, so it allows location search and date search as extras.It looks nice, seems to work well - it picked up tweets that I sent a few minutes prior, and the layout of results is nice: I couldn't get the 'live trending' option to work unfortunately, but otherwise I liked it. The lists function I particularly liked. If you're looking for a good general allround Twitter search engine, with an emphasis on people, this is worth trying out. (Source: Phil Bradley) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 821112 http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/02/elvis-1956-by-alfred-wertheimer.html When RCA Records hired Alfred Wertheimer to photograph their newly-signed recording star Elvis Presley (1935-1977) performing on the Dorsey Brothers' Stage Show, the photographer had never heard of the twenty-one year old singer, but Wertheimer quickly recognized Presley as a great photographic subject. Within four months he shot hundreds of candid photos of the young Presley on stage, backstage, in hotels, on the street, on trains, and at home. These black-and-white photos have now been collected in Elvis 1956.In his essay, Wertheimer claims that Presley was very accommodating and seemed oblivious to the photographer trailing him away from the stage. I can accept this for most of the photos, but Presley must have known Wertheimer was taking photos while kissing his "girl for the day" in a stairwell in Richmond, Virginia. How could Wertheimer have squeezed past the couple to get shots from both above and below?Presley looks very young and unblemished in these evocative photos that seem from the distant past. The singer wears a lot of expensive looking jewelry. My favorite photo may be Presley in a diner with signs that read "grilled cheese 20¢" and "chicken salad 30¢." I also really like the shot of Presley singing "Hound Dog" to a basset hound on the Steve Allen Show.Elvis 1956 is an attractive volume that may be consumed easily in a single sitting. It is a worthwhile addition to a library biography collection.Wertheimer, Alfred. Elvis 1956. 2009. Welcome Books. 127p. ISBN 9781599620732. (Source: ricklibrarian) Wed, 24 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 821045 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/02/23/la-times-announces-2009-book-prize-finalists/ And the finalists are: Biography The Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and His Moral Conscience, by Kirstin Downey    Dorothea Lange: A Life Beyond Limits, by Linda Gordon   Koestler: The Literary and Political Odyssey of a Twentieth Century Skeptic, by Michael Scammell   Louis D. Brandeis: A Life, by Melvin Urofsky   The Uncrowned King: The Sensational Rise of William Randolph Hearst, by Kenneth Whyte Current Interest Columbine, by Dave Cullen   Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers   The Strength in What Remains, by Tracy Kidder  Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, by Nicholas D. Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn   The Healing of America: The Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Healthcare, by T.R. Reid Fiction Heroic Measures, by Jill Ciment   The Man in the Wooden Hat, by Jane Gardam   Blame, by Michelle Huneven    A Short History of Women, by Kate Walbert   A Happy Marriage, by Rafael Yglesias Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction An Elegy for Easterly, by Petina Gappah    Tinkers, by Paul Harding   American Rust, by Philipp Meyer   In Other Rooms, Other Wonders, by Daniyal Mueenuddin   Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, by Wells Tower Graphic Novel Luba, by Gilbert Hernandez   GoGo Monster, by Taiyo Matsumoto   Asterios Polyp, by David Mazzucchelli   Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 5: Scott Pilgrim vs. the Universe, by Bryan Lee O’Malley   Footnotes in Gaza, by Joe Sacco History Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science, by Richard Holmes   Passing Strange: A Gilded Age Tale of Love and Deception Across the Color Line, by Martha A.Sandweiss  Golden Dreams: California in an Age of Abundance 1950 – 1963, by Kevin Starr   Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890-1940, by Amy Louise Wood   Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic 1789 – 1815, by Gordon S. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 21:44:59 +0100 821498 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/D07Dhj9KGl4/patrick-o-connor-obituary A wide-ranging critic and author, he had an exceptional ear for vocal performancePatrick O'Connor, who has died aged 60 of a heart attack, was a critic, author, collector and broadcaster of unusually wide-ranging expertise. While his interests lay principally in vocal music, opera and musical theatre, they also extended to cinema, ballet, painting and the graphic arts, literature and gastronomy.His passionate interest in singers and performers began very early in childhood. His sister Patricia remembers him aged eight, travelling alone on a bus all the way across London to visit the elderly music-hall performer Ida Barr: "Patrick was a baby, and then at once he was a man; he was never a child."From an early age he frequented the Baldur bookshop on Richmond Hill, Surrey, where he would spend his pocket money on postcards of his favourite performers. With his unfailing charm, he developed a long friendship with the gruff owner of the shop, Eric Barton, who later declared himself shocked to find Patrick writing reviews for the Times Literary Supplement: "He never went to school, you know – he spent all his time in my shop buying photographs of old actresses."Patrick was born in London to Armand and Peggy O'Connor; his father, widely known as Paddy, was a publisher of medical magazines, including Medical Digest and Dental Technician. Patrick's early years were spent at Paddington Green, conveniently close to a cinema where he and Patricia would regularly attend the children's Saturday matinees, afterwards dressing up and re-enacting everything they had seen. They also went to the Old Metropolitan music hall, Edgware Road, where Patrick saw the great comedian Max Miller. There his passion for both cinema and the music hall began: his writing about the theatre and its performers culminated in a long essay on the subject that he contributed to the catalogue of the exhibition of paintings by Walter Sickert at the Royal Academy in 1992. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 18:02:31 +0100 820877 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/23/getting-the-most-from-worldcat-in-2010-subject-searching-ideas-concepts-strategies/ An excellent post to share with searchers! Here’s a Portion of a WorldCat Blog Post: This post graciously comes to us from Gary Perlman, a Consulting Research Scientist at OCLC who works on WorldCat searching, improving user interfaces and analyzing the overall user experience for WorldCat.org, among other sites. It’s 2010, and thousands of books have already been published: fiction for kids, fiction for adults, biography, nonfiction for kids, nonfiction for adults, as well as new music, and DVDs. The links above are for generic types not on particular subjects. Tens of thousands of WorldCat catalogers have added subject headings to millions of records, primarily using the Library of Congress Subject Headings. These are the hotlinked subject headings you see under “More Like This” and “Related Subjects”. They are chosen from a controlled vocabulary by cataloging experts and ensure that items with the same focus use the same terminology. Unlike the general keyword index, which matches terms anywhere in records, the subject headings index is much more precise, while at the same time, less forgiving. The remainder of this post discusses: + Using Subject Hotlinks to Initially Find Subject Headings + Liming Your Search to One or More of the Many Limits (format, language, etc.) + Nine Example Searches to See these Capabilities in Action + Searching for Fiction (With Examples) + Refining Your Search By Using the Options in the Panel on the Left Side of a Results Page Again, this is a very useful document that can not only be shared with searchers but also used as a quick refresher for those who have been using WorldCat for years. Plus, it was written by a person who is an expert in how to use WorldCat. Kudos to Gary Perlman for putting it together. Source: WorldCat Blog (OCLC) (Source: ResourceShelf) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 16:43:01 +0100 820820 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/nC3y7kqChF4/anne-boleyn-guilty-adultery-biography-claims Charges for which she was executed, long thought to have been cooked up, are likely to have been true, says historian George BernardA new biography of Anne Boleyn is set to claim that, far from being framed for adultery, Henry VIII's second queen may not have been innocent of the affairs for which she was sentenced to death.The widely held view among contemporary historians is that the charges brought against Anne – that she committed adultery with five lovers, including her brother – are too preposterous to be true, and were either trumped up by one political faction to do down another, or invented by Henry as a result of his desire to marry Jane Seymour, after Anne had failed to give him a son. But George Bernard, professor of early modern history at Southampton University and editor of the English Historical Review, believes that the queen could well have been guilty of some of the charges laid against her – or at the very least that her behaviour was such that it was reasonable for Henry to assume she had committed adultery.Examining a 1545 poem by Lancelot de Carles, who was then serving the French ambassador to Henry's court, Bernard concludes that the poem, entitled "A letter containing the criminal charges laid against Queen Anne Boleyn of England," offers strong evidence that Anne did, in fact, commit adultery. She was accused of "despising her marriage" and "entertaining malice against the king", with her indictment claiming that "by base conversations and kisses, touchings, gifts, and other infamous incitations" she seduced men including the musician Mark Smeaton, chief gentleman of the privy chamber Henry Norris and her brother George, Viscount Rochford, "alluring him with her tongue in his mouth and his in hers". All five men, and Anne, were executed. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 15:53:54 +0100 820706 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Uh9QRI1HnCY/rose-tremain-rules-for-writers We asked some of the most esteemed contemporary authors for any golden rules they bring to their writing practice. Here are Rose Tremain's1 Forget the boring old dictum "write about what you know". Instead, seek out an unknown yet knowable area of experience that's going to enhance your understanding of the world and write about that.2 Nevertheless, remember that in the particularity of your own life lies the seedcorn that will feed your imaginative work. So don't throw it all away on autobiography. (There are quite enough writers' memoirs out there already.)3 Never be satisfied with a first draft. In fact, never be satisfied with your own stuff at all, until you're certain it's as good as your finite powers can ­enable it to be.4 Listen to the criticisms and preferences of your trusted "first readers".5 When an idea comes, spend silent time with it. Remember Keats's idea of Negative Capability and Kipling's advice to "drift, wait and obey". Along with your gathering of hard data, allow yourself also to dream your idea into being.6 In the planning stage of a book, don't plan the ending. It has to be earned by all that will go before it.7 Respect the way characters may change once they've got 50 pages of life in them. Revisit your plan at this stage and see whether certain things have to be altered to take account of these changes.8 If you're writing historical fiction, don't have well-known real characters as your main protagonists. This will only create biographical unease in the readers and send them back to the history books. If you must write about real people, then do something post-modern and playful with them.9 Learn from cinema. Be economic with descriptions. Sort out the telling detail from the lifeless one. Write dialogue that people would actually speak.10 Never begin the book when you feel you want to begin it, but hold off a while longer.FictionRose Tremainguardian.co. ... Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:52:18 +0100 820712 http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/02/obesity-challenge.html Today I was watching a very interesting program on the cable channel Biography about George Lucas. A lot of it was old footage of the development of his early films like American Graffiti (1973) and Star Wars (1977). Lots of fun to watch. However, the old clips of 37 years ago showed how thin he was in his 20s, a beanpole really . . . and how heavy he is now. Not obese by Columbus standards, but certain chunky. Plump. Chubby. I wonder what the government can do about this. Michelle, the CDC, hundreds of foundations and non-profits, all sorts of government grant money are being thrown at this problem. And he's not poor. Not a minority. He's rich, got health care. Gosh. Won't that skew the stats? JAMA is reporting that the government is so impressed by what it's been able to do with taxing cigarettes (although since it's been taxing tobacco for 360 years I'm not sure it's all that successful and hurts primarily the poor), that it wants to use the same methods for fighting obesity that it has used for fighting nicotine. I guess you won't be able to eat with anyone else in the room. Second hand calories, you know. (Source: Collecting my Thoughts) Tue, 23 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 821726 http://www.powells.com/partner/18/review/2010_02_22.html?utm_source=overview&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss_overview&utm_content=Why%20This%20World%3A%20A%20Biography%20of%20Clarice%20Lispector Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector by Benjamin Moser, a review from Rain Taxi by Charisse Gendron. (Source: Powell's Books: Review-A-Day) Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:00:08 +0100 820393 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/EDftCDkymus/writer-at-war-iris-murdoch The great writer is ill-served by the publication of a dull diary written when she was a teenager, writes Adam Mars-JonesThis is a strange volume, poorly conceived as well as thoroughly self-sabotaged. Peter Conradi has written Iris Murdoch's biography and also acted as consultant on the 2001 film Iris. A literary consultant on a film about a writer has roughly the status of a physicist attached to a science fiction epic, but it seems to have come as a surprise to Conradi that the film had so little interest in Murdoch as a writer, and that neither Judi Dench nor Kate Winslet had actually read her novels.So Murdoch, "in life so august, remote and intensely private", has been posthumously reduced to caricature, "bonking (young Iris) or bonkers (elderly Iris)". But why would an august, remote, intensely private novelist be any better served by the publication of a diary written when she was a teenager, and of two more or less romantic correspondences?The diary, chronicling the Cotswolds tour of a student theatre group in the summer of 1939, is certainly a makeweight. There is little here which couldn't have been written by anyone of the period sufficiently bright and smug, enjoying being woken by a maid in a big house (though of course making sure of the soundness of her hostess's politics), disparaging as a good party member the "unnecessary fuss" caused by the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact.The wartime correspondence with Frank Thompson (who was killed in 1944) is more lively, though it's only in her letters to David Hicks, a much less wholesome love-object, that Murdoch comes alive. One letter, from November 1945, gives a flavour of her involuted but piercing moral thought: "I don't see why you should imagine that you are the only one who can behave how you don't feel. ... Sun, 21 Feb 2010 00:09:16 +0100 820063 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/_gFePVAMNzc/ Mike Masnick at TechDirt links to a Wired story by Paige Wiliams. Williams is a journalist who published a lengthy article using the “Radiohead model”—placing it on her website and inviting donations—after the New York Times decided it did not want to publish the article itself. The Wired story suggests that it may be possible to self-publish articles and earn back the expenses that went into writing them, if you properly leverage social networks to call them to enough peoples’ attention—but the thing that really interested me was the self-published article the Wired story was about. That article is a fascinating biography of a home-schooled woman (pictured above) who wrote a book called Possum Living: How to Live Well Without a Job and With (Almost) No Money at the age of 18 under the pseudonym of Dolly Freed, then went on to become a rocket scientist and help investigate the Challenger disaster. (The book is available on Kindle for $9.32, and as a PDF e-book at A1Books.com for $9.11.) The article talks about how Dolly and her father grew up to be frugal, and she wrote the book on their techniques thinking they might help people who wanted to live on little money. Later, she went to college at Drexel, participating in a NASA co-op program. “By then I had learned not to say too much about my possum living days,” she says. “Starting a conversation with things like ‘Have you ever watched a flock of geese sleep at night?’ or ‘You know how when you go spearfishing for spawning suckers … ’ or ‘Even though I’ve had road-killed dog and it was very good, I wouldn’t kill a dog just to eat it’ just makes people stare at you,” she says. “Don’t try these openers yourself—trust me it’s a mistake.” After graduating, she worked for NASA in materials testing, and she helped investigate the causes of the Challenger explosion in 1986. ... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 13:00:00 +0100 819971 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/19/publishing-the-revolutionary-future-by-jason-epstein/ Mr. Epstein’s bio is at the bottom of this post. It’s also accessible here. Blurbs From the Article: The transition within the book publishing industry from physical inventory stored in a warehouse and trucked to retailers to digital files stored in cyberspace and delivered almost anywhere on earth as quickly and cheaply as e-mail is now underway and irreversible. This historic shift will radically transform worldwide book publishing, the cultures it affects and on which it depends. [Snip] Though Gutenberg’s invention made possible our modern world with all its wonders and woes, no one, much less Gutenberg himself, could have foreseen that his press would have this effect. And no one today can foresee except in broad and sketchy outline the far greater impact that digitization will have on our own future. [Snip] The unprecedented ability of this technology to offer a vast new multilingual marketplace a practically limitless choice of titles will displace the Gutenberg system with or without the cooperation of its current executives. [Snip] That the contents of the world’s libraries will eventually be accessed practically anywhere at the click of a mouse is not an unmixed blessing. Another click might obliterate these same contents and bring civilization to an end: an overwhelming argument, if one is needed, for physical books in the digital age. [Snip] Titles will also be posted on authors’ and publishers’ own Web sites and on reliable Web sites of special interest where biographies of Napoleon or manuals of dog training will be evaluated by competent critics and downloaded directly from author or publisher to end user while software distributes the purchase price appropriately, bypassing traditional formulas. [Snip] Much other reference material that is usually time-sensitive and for that reason need never be printed and bound is already sold by renewable subscription. ... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:10:22 +0100 819834 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/7HGEglNkuF8/reality-hunger-david-shields-review Blake Morrison stands up for the continuing relevance of the novelMost readers will know the feeling. You've been through an experience so consuming that you've no room in your head for made-up stories – or the recent choices at your book club have been dire. Either way, novels seem pointless. Why devote precious time to contrived plots and imagined scenarios? Why waste energy on invented characters? Only the real excites you: life writing, memoir, confessional poetry, witness statements from the front line.There's a name for this condition: fiction fatigue. Readers who've experienced it will also know that it usually passes: time heals, the world opens up again and your faith in the novel is restored. David Shields hasn't been cured. He doesn't want to be cured. He thinks of "reality hunger" not as a sickness but as the defining spirit of our age, with its yearning for the music of what happens. His book is a spirited polemic on behalf of non-fiction – a manifesto in 618 soundbites.The book comes laden with praise. Jonathan Lethem, Geoff Dyer, Fred­erick Barthelme, Rick Moody and Jonathan Raban are among the 20-plus authors whose endorsements dominate the cover and end-pages (though intriguingly JM Coetzee's name, prominent on the proof copy, has disappeared). Some of the acclaim comes from writers whose work Shields cites to support his argument. Still, they're right to call Reality Hunger an important book. The fiction vs non-fiction debate has become intense in recent years, and Shields cranks it up a notch.Every artistic movement is a bid to get closer to reality, he argues, and it's in lyric essays, prose poems and collage novels (as well as performance art, stand-up comedy, documentary film, hip-hop, rap and graffiti) that such impetus is to be found today. Key components include randomness, spontaneity, emotional urgency, literalism, rawness and self-reflexivity. A loosely defined genre, then: in fact, a genre committed to genre-busting. ... Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:10:13 +0100 819783 http://blog.booklistonline.com/2010/02/19/weeklings-expensive-e-books-and-unapologetic-plagiarism/ While agents and authors cheer Macmillan’s stand against Amazon, some e-book aficionados are angry at authors. In an anecdote-rich but fact-impoverished article in the New York Times, Motoko Rich and Brad Stone quote a bunch of people who are willing to pay a few hundred books for a gizmo — but balk at a few more bucks for a book (”E-Book Price Increase May Stir Readers’ Passions“). “They’re just books,” said Mr. Wagoner, who left an angry one-star review on the Amazon page for Mr. Preston’s novel. “I do other things other than reading.” If we in the embattled book-reviewing biz need any more ammunition for our own defense, consider the concept of amateur reviewers who review a book based on price — PRICE! — rather than a subjective analysis of the author’s ability to achieve what he or she set out to accomplish. Frankly, the best reponse to this article was written by Michael Cader on Publishers Lunch. But also, among the large group of people who do not intend to buy an ereading device, 80 percent cited the price of the device as the biggest obstacle to ownership. Why is the conversation about a few dollars on ebook prices, instead of hundreds of dollars for a device? That’s what most people “can’t afford.” Of course, now Rich has reported that “Apple’s Prices for E-Books May Be Lower Than Expected” (NYT). Sounds like some people have some Amazon reviews to rewrite! While many people lament e-readers’ lack of colorful book covers, Charlie Brooker celebrates the same thing (”Why I’m an E-book Convert,” Guardian). The lack of a cover immediately alters your purchasing habits. ... Fri, 19 Feb 2010 16:10:55 +0100 819773 http://lawlib.lclark.edu/podcast/?p=2852 Oregon Trial Lawyers Association Speaker Series Neil Netanel: Making Sense of Fair Use February 16, 2010 Intellectual Property Law | Biography of Neil Netanel Every year, we host a distinguished intellectual property visitor at our Law School for one week. Through multiple meetings with the faculty and students, the visitor has opportunities to enrich the intellectual life of our campus by engaging with students, faculty, and practitioners in the field. The highlight of the week is an evening lecture open to students, faculty, and the public. This year we welcome Professor Neil Netanel of the University of California at Los Angeles School of Law. He is introduced by Professor Lydia Loren. Neil Netanel teaches and writes in the areas of copyright, free speech, international intellectual property, and telecommunications law and policy. His recent writings include Copyright’s Paradox (Oxford University Press, 2008); The Development Agenda: Global Intellectual Property and Developing Countries (Neil Weinstock Netanel ed., Oxford University Press, 2008); and From Maimonides to Microsoft: The Jewish Law of Copyright Since the Birth of Print (Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010) (with David Nimmer). The Distinguished Intellectual Property Visitor Series is made possible through a generous grant from Kay Kitagawa and Andy Johnson-Laird, Johnson-Laird, Inc. The program was held at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon on February 16, 2010. View Presentation Here (Source: Lewis) Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:30:39 +0100 819452 http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/02/great-music-blog.html Music isn't one of my hobbies or strengths, but I still enjoy reading David Meyers' blog about the local Columbus music scene. Columbus is a musical crossroads (also the title of one of his books), and David is a meticulous researcher and entertaining storyteller. His recent reminiscences about Earl Wild formerly of Columbus and Ohio State who died January 23 at age 94, and Pat Wilson and her autobiography Yesterday's Mashed Potatoes which you can look through on Google, are a great read. (Source: Collecting my Thoughts) Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 819313 http://www.madisonpubliclibrary.org/madreads/index.php/2010/02/17/un-editing-the-family-tree/ Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret by Steve Luxenberg is an intriguing book about the uncovering of family secrets.  His mother, Beth, often spoke about how she grew up as an only child.  After her death, he discovers that she had a sister who was institutionalized at the age of 19; his mother was 21 at the time. Beth had grown up with a sister named Annie who was born with a deformed leg and mental challenges. But no one in Steve’s immediate family knew that Annie had existed. Tracking down information about Annie proves very difficult.  Slowly, he manages to locate court records that hint at the decades of struggle his mother’s family went through.  In telling Annie’s story, Luxenberg also delves into the history of America’s mental institutions and psychiatric care.  At times, these digressions seem a bit long, but they highlight the point that Annie’s tragic story, and the silence surrounding it, are far from unique.  A poignant aspect of Annie’s story is that the photo on the book’s cover was chosen by the publisher; Luxenberg scoured photo albums saved by relatives, and the families that lived his grandparent’s neighborhood, but no photo of Annie exists. Luxenberg also pieces together not only Annie’s story, but the story of his mother’s deception. When did Beth start claiming to be an only child? Did she mention Annie to anyone later in life? Ultimately, he struggles to reconcile his memories of a loving mother who taught her children the value of honesty with a woman who turned her back on her sister and lived a lie. The book also interested me as a story of genealogy research. Perhaps a lot of your family’s records are handwritten, like mine.  After reading this book, you might look at those lists of names and wonder - is anyone missing? (Source: MADreads) Wed, 17 Feb 2010 22:44:39 +0100 819229 http://www2.cincinnatilibrary.org/blog/entries/spring-training-and-the-casey-award "Pitchers and catchers report" - one of the simplest and most wonderful phrases in the English language.  It signals that the sun will shine again, the grass will grow green, and baseball will once again be part of the daily conversation for those who are inclined to talk of such things.  Today, February 18, pitchers and catchers of the Cincinnati Reds will report to a new facility in Goodyear, Arizona to begin spring training.  The position players will check in on February 23.  With 13 Cactus League teams holding spring training in the Phoenix area, it is a mecca for those who are yearning for baseball and sun.Locally, the Casey Award for the past year's best baseball writing will be presented here in Cincinnati by the editors of Spitball: The Literary Baseball Magazine. Author Larry Tye's biography, Satchel, has been selected as the best baseball book of 2009, from a list of twelve nominated titles.  Mr. Tye is scheduled to attend the award banquet, to the held on Sunday March 7.  Tickets will be available at the door for $10.  More information can be found at the Spitball website.   (Source: Turning the Page...[Combined Feed]) Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:29:56 +0100 819465 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/BPLDNews/~3/M_rX2AfrBDw/christiane-salts-local-author-will-give.html Local author, Christiane Salts, will be giving an author talk at the Buena Park Library on Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 6:30 pm in the 2nd floor Board Room. She is the author of a book on a Buena Park icon, Mrs. Knott. Her book is an entertaining and informative biography called Cordelia Knott: Pioneering Business Woman. The book tells the story of Cordelia and how she developed a world-class food business and helped her family not only survive, but thrive during the worst of times.Mrs. Salts will be talking about her book and also about how she came to write and publish it. She will be an inspiration to budding authors when she talks about why she thinks that everyone should not be shy about writing down their memoirs for their children and grandchildren to enjoy. Her talk called “Capturing History – How I Came to Write the Biography of an Unsung Buena Park Heroine: Cordelia Knott” will be enjoyable to Buena Park history buffs and those wanting to write their own book.Light refreshments will be served. Books will be available for purchase after the presentation. (Source: Buena Park Library District News) Wed, 17 Feb 2010 14:00:05 +0100 819567 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/z6kawQAWCwQ/africa-writers-series-penguin-heinemann None of the first five books in Penguin's new African Writers Series is less than 15 years old. The publishing house surely means well, but where are the voices of today?Perhaps I'm hard to please, but I can't help feeling a little underwhelmed by Penguin's new African Writers Series, launched last month and published by its Modern Classics imprint. It's not that I think the series is a bad thing, far from it, but by modelling itself upon the iconic Heinemann imprint of the same name, the impulse to compare the two is irresistible. And, to judge from the first five books published, I fear that Penguin won't come out of this looking very good.First, a bit of context. The original AWS was inaugurated by Heinemann in 1962, the brainchild of publishing executive Alan Hill. Hill, whom Chinua Achebe describes in his book of autobiographical essays Home and Exile as "an adventurer with all the right instincts", recognised that the nascent post-colonial publishing industry was not supporting the growth of original African literature. Domestic markets at the time were dominated by foreign publishing houses, and were considered primarily a territory for selling books written and published abroad. Not much was happening to encourage and promote new writing from within. Achebe was chosen as the founding editor for the series. Over two decades, the AWS published more than 200 volumes of fiction, poetry and biography. With editorial representation in Nigeria, Zambia and Kenya, the AWS genuinely had its finger on the pulse of modern African life. The writing published in the AWS – work by Nadine Gordimer, Ayi Kwei Armah, Nuruddin Farah and Sembène Ousmane amongst others – was remarkably diverse, but what held the series together was its capacity to present an authentic, contemporary representation of life across the continent. By consciously taking up the legacy of Heinemann's defunct series, Penguin have set themselves a very high standard. ... Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:00:00 +0100 819016 http://northmetrotechlibraryatacworth.blogspot.com/2010/02/black-new-yorkers.html The Black New Yorkers : The Schomburg Illustrated Chronology, 400 years of African American History [F 128.9 .N4 D63 2000] written by Howard Dodson, Christopher Moore, and Roberta Yancy offers a chronological history of African Americans in New York.There are two lists with brief biographies of African Americans - Early Black New York leaders (pg 425) and The New York Black 100 (pg 426). Both offer just a bit of information - birth year, death year, and their accomplishments. If you're looking for Black History tidbits- this book offers you a plethora of opportunities to explore not only New York but America's Black History.Amazon.com offers a peak inside the book as well as reviews.-klsView from the Library maintained by The Librarian at Chattahoochee Technical College, North Metro Campus c2010 (Source: View from the library) Wed, 17 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 819266 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/2qpep5bvHYo/ The Kindle Reader says: Once you’ve purchased an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, the wonderful world of public domain, Creative Commons and free e-book promotions opens up to you. This regular Kindle Reader feature points you to a few of the most interesting new free (or very cheap) e-books available for download from the web. Jan 27 Free e-book selections for this week include a fan fiction treat for Harry Potter fans, a Jules Verne adventure tale, two classic mysteries, science fiction by Philip José Farmer and Michael Graeme, a novel of time travel back to 1940s Britain and – for history buffs – Lytton Strachey’s biography of a queen who gave her name to an era and reigned for more than 63 years. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news. (Source: TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home) Tue, 16 Feb 2010 19:00:32 +0100 818903 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Fy5pNHfddnQ/roman-polanski-the-ghost-writer Roman Polanski's new film The Ghost Writer uses a long tradition of referencing political events – namely a former British PM who took the country to war, but will it stand the test of time?As many readers will know, Roman Polanski's new film, The Ghost Writer, based on the Robert Harris novel, involves an unrepentant former British prime minister who took Britain into the war in Iraq. There are thinly disguised portraits of Cherie Blair and Robin Cook, and a coincidental allusion to Polanski himself in that the former PM is held under quasi house arrest in Cape Cod and is afraid to leave the USA in case he is arrested for war crimes. All this caused some giggles of recognition among the audience at the Berlinale.There is a long tradition of works of art that reference current events, as any reading of the footnotes to the Greek tragedies and Shakespeare's plays reveal. But today they don't necessarily rely on the audience's knowledge of events, which are sometimes largely forgotten. Sergei Eisenstein's masterful Ivan the Terrible (1944) had coded, and not-so-coded, references to Stalin, but it continues to be a great film without knowledge of the eponymous hero's surrogacy.The piquant pleasure and eerie effect of The Ghost Writer is derived almost entirely from the contemporary parallels. So how will the film stand up in years to come when the events and personalities will have become less and less important or completely forgotten? Stripped of this topical context, The Ghost Writer will remain a well-made, fast-moving but extremely contrived Hitchcockian thriller with an over-insistent Bernard Herrmannesque score.The sad fact is that Polanski has not made a really "personal" film, in the auteurist sense, since The Tenant more than 30 years ago. (This year's Berlinale has also seen evidence of the sharp decline of formerly respected auteurs such as Martin Scorsese with Shutter Island and Zhang Yimou with A Woman a Gun and a Noodle Shop. ... Tue, 16 Feb 2010 17:24:17 +0100 818853 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/uzMeqNEQ4mw/russians-world-s-hardest-writers It's not the only way to judge writers, but the fact that Dickens wouldn't stand a chance head to head against Tolstoy does tell you something importantMany years ago a friend made one of the most perceptive comments I have ever heard about Russian writers. "Yeah," he said, "they're profound and all that. But they're also incredibly hard. I mean, there's Pushkin: died in a duel. Lermontov: died in a duel. Tolstoy: fought in the Caucasus. Dostoevsky: sentenced to death, exiled to a Siberian prison camp. Solzhenitsyn: fought in the second world war, sent to the Gulag, survived cancer, defied the USSR …""Don't forget Griboyedov," I added. "Torn to pieces by angry Persians after he tried to save an Armenian eunuch. And Varlam Shalamov: Seventeen years in the Gulag.""Yeah – and what have English authors done? Dickens? Who did he fight?"I still think this assessment stands. And recently I discovered possibly the hardest Russian of them all: Avvakum the Archpriest, author of both the first classic autobiography in Russian literature and the first eyewitness account of Siberia and its peoples.Allow me to explain. In Russia in 1666-67 there was a schism in the church which arose from a dispute over aspects of ritual, such as how many fingers to use when crossing oneself. Avvakum led the Old Believers who insisted on using two (traditional for Russia) instead of three (a Greek custom enforced by a reformist church hierarchy). For his pains, he was flogged, exiled to Siberia, imprisoned for 14 years in a hole in the ground in the Arctic Circle and finally burnt at the stake. And yet Avvakum never recanted his beliefs. His faith was that strong. He was that hard. Of course, there's more to him than that. He was also a fantastic writer: visceral, funny, moving, colourful and joyously obscene. Consider the following passages cited in Ivan the Fool, Andrei Sinyavsky's excellent history of Russian folk belief. ... Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:00:00 +0100 818638 http://teenbrooks.blogspot.com/2010/02/top-teen-ya-books-2009.html Top Ten Best Books for Young Adults Selected by ALA young adult division called YALSA. Click here for the full list of 90 titles. Some of these titles are located in the Children's room or Adult collection. Brennan, Sarah Rees. Demon's Lexicon. Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing/Margaret K. McElderry. 2009. (YA BRE) Griffin, Paul. The Orange Houses. Penguin/Dial Books. 2009. Herlong, M.H. The Great Wide Sea. Penguin/Viking. 2008. (YA HER) Jinks, Catherine. The Reformed Vampire Support Group. Harcourt/ Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2009. (YA JIN) Napoli, Donna Jo. Alligator Bayou. Random House / Knopf. 2009. Small, David. Stitches: A Memoir. W.W. Norton & Co. 2009. (Biography SMALL) Stead, Rebecca. When You Reach Me. Random House / Wendy Lamb Books. 2009. (J STE) Stork, Francisco X. Marcelo in the Real World. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine Books. 2009. Taylor, Laini. Lips Touch: Three Times. Scholastic/Arthur A. Levine. 2009. (YA TAY) Walker, Sally M. Written in Bone: Buried Lives of Jamestown and Colonial Maryland. Lerner/Carolrhoda Books. 2009. (On Order) (Source: Teen Blog@Brooks) Tue, 16 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 819668 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/YRD9H0ZYPzI/dick-francis-books-thrillers There was something utterly compelling about Dick Francis's thrillers – and at the age of 14 I was hookedTorquay and the Channel ­Islands. Hardly the places I had in mind for summer holidays, but when you're 14 you don't get a lot of say in the matter. So I went, and remained almost entirely monosyllabic, a condition brought on by a combination of puberty and Dick Francis, as for two successive family summer holidays I did little but read his thrillers.I'm not quite sure how I first came across Francis, who died on ­Sunday, aged 89. I suspect it was because I'd read all the Biggles and Sherlock Holmes books and was at a loose end and someone – I think it was my Granny – used to give my Dad the new Dick Francis in hardback every Christmas. So I picked one up and started reading. And didn't stop, working my way through his entire back catalogue – even his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, which I bought by mistake – with the ­couple of quid I was given before each holiday to get ­myself something to read.It wasn't that I was interested in horse racing. I'm still not. But there was something utterly ­compelling about the books and for the five or six hours it took to read one I was hooked into the world of muddy steeplechase courses, usually Cheltenham or Plumpton, bent bookies, dodgy jockeys and sado-­masochistic owners.The writing was formulaic; even I could see that. The hero – my favourite was Sid Halley – was always a rough diamond, the love interest was always a bit posher than the hero, rather like Dick's wife Mary, and fell for his charm and moral purpose, and the ­villains always got caught. But Francis did it so well. John Francome and Jenny Pitman thought they could cash in on his stardust and their thrillers never got out of the ­starting stalls. ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 19:00:01 +0100 818515 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/u6grXygWSwo/salinger-letters-new-york Letters to go on display for the first time in New York show that JD Salinger wrote regularly for years after he stopped publishingLetters written by JD Salinger to the designer of The Catcher in the Rye's jacket, which are to go on display at a New York museum, show that the author was still writing regularly long after he stopped publishing in 1965.The 11 letters, written between 1951 and 1993, were sent to his friend of more than 40 years E Michael Mitchell, who at one point Salinger addresses, Holden Caulfield-style, as "Buddyroo". They show that he would start work every morning at six, or seven at the latest, refusing to be interrupted "unless absolutely necessary or convenient", according to a report in the New York Times, which revealed that the letters were to be made public at the Morgan Library and Museum in Manhattan.A 1966 letter points to "ten, 12 years' work [which includes] two particular scripts – books really – that I've been hoarding at and picking at for years," the New York Times reported, while in 1951, the author refers to a trip to London just before The Catcher in the Rye was published, during which he visited the home of Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh for cocktails. "Naturally, some gin went up my nose. I damn near left by the window," Salinger wrote.Salinger died aged 91 at the end of January after years spent avoiding the public eye. The letters show him apologising for his solitary ways, telling Mitchell that he can't answer the telephone "without unconsciously gritting my teeth", and revealing his anger at a planned biography in 1983. "I'll weep if they bother you and Bet," he wrote, referring to Mitchell's ex-wife.The letters were donated to the museum in 1998 but kept under wraps until the author's death. They are now being prepared for an exhibition.JD SalingerAlison Floodguardian.co. ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:57:51 +0100 818511 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/XwB2zxnKc3o/arthur-koestler-biography A new biography shows how this strangely marginal and rootless writer had a knack for being ahead of his timeArthur Koestler is back in the news – or at least back on the books pages. The reason for this is the publication of Michael Scammell's excellent, long-awaited biography, which I've been reading in preparation for this event tomorrow, where I'll be interviewing Scammell.A lot of discussion, inevitably, has focused on Koestler's bullying, sexually predatory side, which became news more than 10 years ago when it was first uncovered in all its grimness by David Cesarani in an earlier biography.This is a bit of a pity, not because the way someone behaves towards women doesn't matter – of course it does. But because it deflects attention from everything else worth thinking about. And in Koestler's case, there really is a lot to think about.His life, for a start, was extraordinary, both in its eventfulness and in the way it took in so many of the 20th century's major currents. He was at various points both a Zionist and a communist and, after becoming disillusioned with communism, a leading critic of the Soviet Union (in which he travelled around in the 1930s). He was imprisoned by Franco in 1937 and only narrowly escaped the Nazis during the second world war. He was there when Israel was created; he hung out with the existentialists in Paris; he played a leading role in launching the west's postwar propaganda offensive against the Soviet Union and, later, in the campaign to end the death penalty in Britain. In the 60s, he even took LSD with Timothy Leary.As Scamell rightly stresses, he had a knack for being ahead of his time: he saw the dangers of communism earlier and much more clearly than many on the left; he was an early advocate of nuclear disarmament, of European integration, and of the need to assist persecuted writers. ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:06:17 +0100 818516 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/lY_hlHGcqyQ/writer-biopic-leo-tolstoy Literary biopics cater not to the boring truth, but to the illusion that writers are drunk, mad, sex-obsessed geniuses"Why does the writing make us chase the writer? Why can't we leave well enough alone? Why aren't the books enough?" Julian Barnes poses these questions in Flaubert's Parrot, his fictional biography of Gustave Flaubert. Perhaps, as readers, we enjoy the amateur detective work that literary biographies offer. We like to excavate the lives of famous authors and uncover the experiences that might have shaped their stories.The problem is, writers' lives don't always make for great cinema. If writers are any good, it's usually because they spend weeks alone, in a room, with a computer (or paper if they're old-school). Literary biopics usually cater to the fantasy that writers are drunk, mad, sex-obsessed geniuses inspired by the holy spirit (50% proof). Think Henry Miller (Henry and June), William Burrows (Naked Lunch), Hunter S Thompson (Where the Buffalo Roam, Fear and Loathing) the Marquis de Sade (Quills) and Charles Bukowski (Bar Fly, Factotum). But these writers have reputations that relate to their lifestyles as much as their writing styles. Thompson, for instance, was better-known for being the face of 70s counter-culture than he ever was for his books. Historically, films about fictional writers fare better, because the drama is not restricted by any extant facts. In The Shining, Jack Nicholson plays an author suffering serious writer's block while holed up in an empty hotel during the winter. Barton Fink, the Coen brothers' take on the Hollywood dream factory, is another great fictional film about writing (although the drunk, washed-up novelist WP Mayhew probably takes after F Scott Fitzgerald). The television series Californication, about the writer Hank Moody, has been a worldwide hit. We never see Hank writing. His life is a sequence of sex-and-drugs adventures, offering far more entertainment than his alleged writing could. ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:30:00 +0100 818362 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/e-yj0UtuGbo/thrilling-dick-francis 'Chick lit for men' they may have been, but Francis's novels provided me with an exhilarating glimpse of another worldEvery Christmas, without fail, there'd be a bit of a kerfuffle betweenmy siblings and me over who would get to buy our father a Dick Francisnovel as his present. Like most dads, he was difficult to buy for, butwe knew he liked Francis so the latest paperback was the easiest andbest option. So, over the years, our family accrued quite a collection– a long line of the old, white-jacketed books he'd got himself,tipping over into the colourful 80s and 90s titles we'd buy for him.I think I was about 12 when I started to get into them myself, andalthough I haven't read one for years, Francis's death yesterday reminded me just how much I used to love them. The thrill, theglamour, the sheer difference of the racing world to my own appealedimmensely to me, as did the "lonely hero up against a host of morepowerful enemies" theme which seemed to be part of them all.Two of his books made a particularly powerful impression on me: Nerve,and Longshot. Nerve tells the story of the jockey Rob Finn, who's onan inexplicable losing streak. Has he lost his nerve, or is somethingmore sinister going on to make his horses feel so sluggish? Whileadmittedly there's some weird shenanigans with his first cousin Joanna– even as a 12-year-old I thought it was a bit odd to be in love withyour cousin – it contains the most fabulous escape scene andsubsequent comeback, which I remember in vivid detail today so itshows the impression it must have made.Rob's been kidnapped by the baddie, and strung up by his hands to aharness hook ("a gadget something like a three-pronged anchor") in anabandoned tack room. It's freezing, and to add insult to injury thebaddie's chucked a couple of buckets of cold water over him andblindfolded and gagged him with sticking plaster. They don't intendhim to survive the night. ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 12:05:58 +0100 818363 http://hunterlibrarynews.blogspot.com/2010/02/beginning-february-15-2010-western.html Beginning February 15, 2010, Hunter Library offers patrons access to a newly-acquired collection of 750 downloadable audio books. These books have been made available through NC LIVE, North Carolina’s statewide online library, with a Library Services and Technology Act grant from the State Library of North Carolina.These audio books are compatible most MP3 devices, including iPods; and book subject areas focus primarily on classic literature, history, biography, and language learning. The books are available to patrons both within Hunter Library and outside the library via an Internet connection. Hunter Library patrons have free, online access to the collection through the library’s website (WCU login will be required for off-campus users).As a participant in the NC LIVE Audio Book pilot program, Hunter Library is one of the first libraries in North Carolina to have access to this collection of audio books. Later this spring, NC LIVE will extend the program and make the collection available to all libraries across the state. NC LIVE purchased the audio books through Ingram Digital and is making them available through the MyiLibrary® Audio Books platform. MyiLibrary® is the Ingram Content Group’s industry-leading e-content aggregation platform for public, academic and professional libraries around the world.Members of the Hunter Library staff are excited to offer the new content to their patrons, and are interested in hearing what patrons have to say about the collection. Feedback and questions can be directed to Metadata Librarian Anna Craft. (Source: Hunter Library News) Mon, 15 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 818432 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/XmdTmjyQpU4/charlie-brooker-ebook-convert A Kindle or ebook won't have that 'new book smell' – but no one's going to judge you by its coverFollowing my blithering about the iPad the other week, I found myself thinking about ebooks. That's my life for you. A rollercoaster. Until recently, I was an ebook sceptic, see; one of those people who harrumphs about the "physical pleasure of turning actual pages" and how ebook will "never replace the real thing". Then I was given a Kindle as a present. That shut me up. Stock complaints about the inherent pleasure of ye olde format are bandied about whenever some new upstart invention comes along. Each moan is nothing more than a little foetus of nostalgia jerking in your gut. First they said CDs were no match for vinyl. Then they said MP3s were no match for CDs. Now they say streaming music services are no match for MP3s. They're only happy looking in the rear-view mirror.Crackly warm vinyl sounds wonderful, but you can't listen to it on the bus, or squish it into a machine the size of a raisin. And unless your MP3s are encoded at such a low rate that it sounds as though the band's playing woollen instruments in a water tank, and provided you're listening to some halfway decent music in the first place, your brain quickly cancels out any concerns about "lossiness" and gets on with enjoying the music. I've never quite understood the psychological makeup of the self-professed audiophile – the sort of person who spends £500 on a gold-plated lead and can't listen to a three-minute pop song without instinctively carrying out a painstaking forensic audit of the sound quality. That's not a music fan. That's a noise- processing unit.Just as it was easy to dismiss MP3s until you'd test-driven an iPod, so the advantages of an ebook really become apparent only when you use one. ... Mon, 15 Feb 2010 00:05:22 +0100 818361 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/aHVTqY5xE70/dick-francis-thrillers-author-jockey • Writer always regretted Grand National loss• Wife collaborated on bestselling novelsDick Francis, the jockey who turned to writing best-selling thrillers set in the world of horse racing – and produced one annually for more than 30 years – has died at his Caribbean home on Grand Cayman at the age of 89, his sons saidtoday .The thrillers were hugely successful, with a copy of his latest novel always sent to the Queen Mother, who had also been his patron on the track. Buckingham Palace said the Queen, who does not usually comment on the deaths of thriller writers, would be saddened to hear the news.Before he was a writer, Francis had been a distinguished jump jockey, riding 345 winners in a nine-year career, though his most famous ride ended in disaster when, in 1956, his horse Devon Loch collapsed on the verge of winning the Grand National.The novels' success – there were more than 40 of them, selling more than 60m copies – was scarcely dented by controversy 11 years ago when his biographer, Graham Lord, claimed the books had largely been written by Francis's wife, Mary.Lord, a former colleague of Francis's on the Sunday Express – Francis was racing correspondent, he was literary editor – claimed Mary told him the "masculine" books might lose their credibility if they had a woman as joint author. Francis himself said at the time: "It is not the case that Mary writes the books. I do all the stories. I write them out in longhand. She then reads and edits them because she can manage my handwriting and I put them into the computer."Nevertheless, after she died in 2000, Francis, by then nearing his 80s, did not produce another book for six years before three more finally tripped out of the starting gates, co-written with his son Felix. A final novel is due for publication later this year. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 20:26:36 +0100 818191 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/o70Z9_SATX8/dick-francis-dies-horse-novels Dick Francis, former champion jockey who sold more than 60m books, dies in the Cayman IslandsThe bestselling thriller writer Dick Francis, has died at the age of 89, his family said today.Francis, a former champion jockey from Oxfordshire, sold more than 60m books and was awarded a CBE in the Queen's birthday honours list in 2000.He died early today in the Cayman Islands, where he spent his later years, his family said.His son Felix, who co-wrote last year's Even Money with his father, said: "My brother, Merrick, and I are, of course, devastated by the loss of our father, but we rejoice in having been the sons of such an extraordinary man. We share in the joy that he brought to so many over such a long life."Francis was one of the most successful post-war National Hunt jockeys, winning 345 races in a career spanning nine years and receiving the title of champion jockey for jump racing in 1953/4. He was famously leading the 1956 Grand National on Devon Loch, owned by the Queen Mother, when its legs inexplicably buckled under it, having cleared the final fence.He retired from racing in 1957 and took up writing, first for the Sunday Express. He published his autobiography, The Sport of Queens, the year he retired before embarking five years later on what would be a prolific career as a thriller writer with his first novel, Dead Cert.Francis wrote more than 40 bestsellers, translated into more than 20 languages. He also penned a volume of short stories and the biography of Lester Piggott. He won a number of awards, including the Edgar Allen Poe award in 1970 and 1980, the Gold Dagger award in 1980 and the Cartier Diamond Dagger award in 1989, all for best crime novel of the year.He also had a distinguished military career, serving in the RAF in 1940, initially stationed in the Egyptian desert before he was commissioned as a pilot in 1943. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:54:00 +0100 818189 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/Pq-Vn9geix8/dick-francis-obituary Champion jockey who became a bestselling thriller writerDick Francis, who has died aged 89, was a unique figure, a champion steeplechase jockey who, without any previous apparent literary bent, became an international bestselling writer, the author of 42 crime novels, selling more than 60m copies in 35 languages. Right from the start, with Dead Cert in 1962, the Dick Francis thriller showed a mastery of lean, witty genre prose reminiscent – sometimes to the point of comic parody – of Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett. It was an American style that many clever people in England had attempted to reproduce without much success, and it was a wonder how a barely educated former jump jockey was able to do the trick with such effortless ease. People said his highly educated wife wrote the books for him. It was a mystery that was never satisfactorily solved.The most dramatic incident in his racing career was also a mystery. In the Grand National at Aintree in 1956, his mount Devon Loch, the Queen Mother's horse trained by Peter Cazalet, had jumped all the fences and, well ahead, only 50 yards from the finish, without another horse near him, suddenly collapsed and was unable to continue.Some said the horse had attempted to jump an imaginary fence; another theory, put up years later by Bill Braddon, Cazalet's head lad, was that the girth was too tight and the horse suddenly let loose an enormous fart. Braddon said he had tightened the girth just before the off, "one notch up and another for luck", without realising that Cazalet had already done it in the saddling enclosure.There was no question of Francis, like a crooked jockey out of one of his own books, having pulled the horse. It had been his great dream since he was a lad of eight in 1928 and listened to the Grand National on the radio as Tipperary Tim won at 100-1, to be a steeplechase jockey and win that ultimate prize. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:53:43 +0100 818193 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/blogspot/iRcS/~3/UWsBdd8iZE0/youngminds-calls-for-submissions-for.html "YoungMinds are asking publishers, librarians, and young people to put forward submissions for this year's YoungMinds book award. Books must be works of fiction or biography for young people aged 12+ published between 1 June 2009 and 31 May 2010, which encourage self-steem and help them to cope with the stresses and challenges of growing up. Nominations are open until 24 April 2010. 10 books will then be chosen for the longlist. Young people, children's authors and mental health professionals will then take part in the judging between May and October to choose the winner. The GBP2,000 prize, which is sponsored by the national reading charity Booktrust, will be presented at an awards ceremony in November 2010" (Source: Peter Scott's Library Blog) Sun, 14 Feb 2010 16:28:29 +0100 818210 http://inseasonchristianlibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/02/valentines-day-im-sitting-at-reference.html Valentine's DayI'm sitting at the reference desk this Valentine's day with little action because we're at the start of our Winter Break.  I was just musing about the low number of days which we still recognize in honor of a Christian Saint, no matter how far they've gone astray.I also don't think there is a popular biography of Saint Valentines--any of the three--in the way that Saint Patrick whose biography is in a children's book form.  I take that back.  Here is one.  Given that three Valentines could have been the original Saint, we'll never know on this side of Heaven. Too bad 24 hour news wasn't available at those times. (Source: The In Season Christian Librarian) Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 819153 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/kbS4Z4M3kgQ/eva-braun-adolf-hitler A new biography tells why the serious side to the Führer's 'dumb blonde' was hidden to historyFor decades she has been seen as a decorative companion to Adolf Hitler, an apolitical "dumb blonde" whose attentions served as an occasional diversion for the Führer. But the first academic biography of Eva Braun draws a different picture of the dictator's long-standing girlfriend, claiming historians have hugely underestimated the role she played in his life.Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker reveals her as a politically committed woman who won ­Hitler's affections, enjoyed a healthy sex life with him, sympathised with Nazi politics and gave him psychological support. Görtemaker spent three years researching her book, Eva Braun: Life With Hitler, due out this month from the prestigious CH Beck publishing house. She was able to draw on previously unseen or little-known documents, letters, diary entries and photographs."Eva Braun features in films, plays, novels and historical memoirs," Görtemaker told the Observer, "but is always portrayed as the dumb blonde who had the misfortune to fall in love with a devil, and this is an image that needs to be ­corrected. She was capricious, an uncompromising advocate of unconditional loyalty towards the dictator who went so far as to die with him, and he adored her."According to Görtemaker's account, Braun was fully aware of the twists and turns of Nazi policy-making and made no attempt to speak out against the Holocaust. "She was in the loop and knew what was going on. She was no mere bystander," said the historian.Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, noted in his diary that Braun was a "bright girl who meant a great deal to the Führer". Görtemaker has evidence that she was present at meetings between Hitler and high-ranking Nazis. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:07:26 +0100 818050 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/B4E-Y_YCLbI/arthur-koestler-appreciation Arthur Koestler's personal failings should not wholly detract from our appreciation of his achievementsArthur Koestler was a man of prodigious appetites. These he applied to everything he did, whether seducing women, writing about politics, or advocating crackpot scientific theories. He once described himself as the "Casanova of causes" and it's true that he embraced a staggering array of beliefs and crusades, ranging from the impressively enlightened (campaigning for euthanasia and against the death penalty) to the downright potty (believing, say, in the benefits of levitation).Born in Hungary in 1905 to fitfully prosperous Jewish parents, Koestler was educated in Budapest and Vienna. Aged 20, he became a passionate Zionist and a few years later embraced communism, working undercover as an agent throughout the 1930s. He travelled frenetically and lived at one time or another in 13 countries. Captured by Franco's forces while reporting the Spanish civil war in 1937, he narrowly avoided being executed.When the second world war broke out he was living in France. It was something of a miracle that he avoided Hitler's clutches, and he eventually escaped to Britain in 1940, where he established himself as an intellectual celebrity. He rubbed shoulders with everyone from George Orwell and Cyril Connolly to Jean-Paul Sartre and Timothy Leary, and he had a remarkably active sex life – his several hundred conquests included Simone de Beauvoir.Koestler didn't just lead an interesting life. He was also a hugely important writer. As with everything else about him, there was a certain inconsistency to his literary efforts. His oeuvre features works of communist propaganda as well as a couple of sex manuals. But at his best he was a masterful, clear-eyed chronicler of the world, someone who combined astonishing learning with a knack for simple, accessible exposition. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:07:12 +0100 818051 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/SvDMPD5wZMg/arthur-kostler-biography-scammell-extract From the right to life, to the right to die: an extract from Michael Scammell's biography of one of the most influential figures of the 20th century'I don't believe in humanity, I believe in the individual'During his long life Arthur Koestler investigated a multitude of political movements, religions and scientific disciplines, from Zionism to Catholicism and even Buddhism, from anti-fascism to communism and anti-communism, from astronomy and evolution to neurobiology and parapsychology. His literary and political odyssey spawned more than 30 books, among them six novels, four autobiographies, four scientific treatises, four volumes of essays, three non-fiction investigations, and innumerable newspaper articles. Among all the different causes he espoused, the one for which he is perhaps best remembered is his campaign against the death penalty in Britain. His opposition to capital punishment was of long standing, stemming from the time when he was imprisoned in Seville after being captured while reporting undercover on the Spanish civil war. Koestler spent months under threat of death and witnessed the executions of many fellow prisoners, which deeply affected him. By the mid-50s Koestler's opposition to the death penalty was beginning to be shared by many others in Britain after some notorious miscarriages of justice.In 1953 a mentally retarded youth called Derek Bentley was executed for a murder in which he had been a barely witting accomplice. In 1955 Timothy Evans was wrongfully hanged on the evidence of a neighbour who turned out to be the multiple murderer being sought. Most controversial of all was the death sentence imposed on Ruth Ellis, a young mother who had shot her abusive and unfaithful lover in a fit of jealousy.After an article on the Ellis case by Raymond Chandler and a follow-up letter by the publisher Victor Gollancz appeared in London's Evening Standard in July 1955, Koestler impulsively rang Gollancz to propose a national campaign. ... Sun, 14 Feb 2010 00:06:01 +0100 818048 http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/02/harrys-reids-definition-of-real-world.html He has accused judges of the Supreme Court and the American Bar Association of not living in the real world--you know--the one he experienced! James Taranto in Best of the Web [Feb. 12] takes a look at his resume.Here is a list of the jobs Harry Reid has held, according to his congressional biography: U.S. Capitol police officer (1961-64); city attorney of Henderson, Nev. (1964-66); state assemblyman (1969-70); lieutenant governor (1970-74); Nevada Gaming Commission chairman (1977-81); U.S. representative (1983-87); U.S. senator (1987-present).By our count, Reid's 50-year career spans some 33 years in elected office, 8 in appointed office (city attorney and the gambling commission), and 3 in a patronage position (the Capitol police). That leaves only about six years during which he might have been in the private sector, most recently in 1982, though during part of that time he must have been busy campaigning for his seats in the Assembly and the House.Didn't his mother ever teach him that parable about stones and glass houses? (Source: Collecting my Thoughts) Sat, 13 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 818250 http://collectingmythoughts.blogspot.com/2010/02/harrys-reids-definition-of-real-world.html He has accused judges of the Supreme Court and the American Bar Association of not living in the real world--you know--the one he experienced! James Taranto in Best of the Web [Feb. 12] takes a look at his resume.Here is a list of the jobs Harry Reid has held, according to his congressional biography: U.S. Capitol police officer (1961-64); city attorney of Henderson, Nev. (1964-66); state assemblyman (1969-70); lieutenant governor (1970-74); Nevada Gaming Commission chairman (1977-81); U.S. representative (1983-87); U.S. senator (1987-present).By our count, Reid's 50-year career spans some 33 years in elected office, 8 in appointed office (city attorney and the gambling commission), and 3 in a patronage position (the Capitol police). That leaves only about six years during which he might have been in the private sector, most recently in 1982, though during part of that time he must have been busy campaigning for his seats in the Assembly and the House.Didn't his mother ever teach him that parable about stones and glass houses? (Source: Collecting my Thoughts) Sat, 13 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 817948 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/pR63HSyFBoU/library-chart-most-borrowed-2009 John Dugdale checks out the nation's favouritesAt first glance, the list of the books most borrowed from libraries in 2008-09, released by Public Lending Right (PLR) yes­terday, is hard to tell apart from a recent annual best­sellers chart. There's the same mix of romance, crime and thrillers; the presence of authors who were given a turbo-boost by being selected by ­Richard and Judy; and such top-half fixtures as Maeve Binchy, Patricia ­Cornwell, Josephine Cox, John Grisham, Ian Rankin and Danielle Steel.If you put Nielsen's 2009 bestsellers chart and the PLR library rankings side by side, however, you'd notice a spectacular stripping away in the latter, which features no non-fiction at all. Delia Smith's How to Cheat at Cooking was the most borrowed non-fiction ­title overall, and though books by ­Richard Dawkins, Max Hastings, Carol Klein, Paul O'Grady and Marcus Trescothick were No 1s in their respective genres, none of them was taken out enough to make the top 100.Why is fiction borrowed so much more than non-fiction? Turnover could be a key factor: a thriller can be read in a day or less whereas history or science books and non-celeb biographies can't generally be finished so fast, and other genres are liable to be retained for ­extended periods while the borrower tries out recipes, swots for an exam or copes with a new baby. This need to spend more time with non-fiction also makes it more likely that such titles will be bought than borrowed.Almost as remarkable is the invisibility of all three of the novelists who dominated bestseller charts in 2009, with only the absence of Dan Brown (whose The Lost Symbol was published in September) explained by the PLR chart's time-frame, from July 2008 to June 2009. Stieg Larsson and Stephenie Meyer both had top-selling titles available before July, yet they too failed to make the cut. ... Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:08:12 +0100 817817 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/xxrcvtpT5wE/just-kids-patti-smith-biography Edmund White on a memoir that captures all the elements that made New York in the 1970s so excitingPatti Smith has a mythic imagination. As a young, desperately poor poet from southern New Jersey, she headed to New York to seek her fortune, nothing in her purse. Her mother had assumed she would follow her into waitressing. But Patti, though practical and a survivor, had her sights set not on slinging hash but on searching for immortality and beauty and magic. She already recognised a divine succession of poets – Blake, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Genet and the Beats – and she wanted to join them. She was creative and liked to write, read and draw. Eventually, she became the renaissance woman of the punks, a great rock singer and composer – but before that she had to fashion her look, her personality and her verse.And survive. She had no real friends when she arrived in New York, just a few names, and no job prospects. But it was July 1967, she was not yet 21, and other drifters and hippies helped her find food and shelter. Eventually, she got a job working in a bookshop, she met Robert Mapplethorpe, who was the same age and just as poor, and they took a Brooklyn apartment together. They each collected little ­talismanic objects and set great store by the way they dressed; both had an ­innate and highly original sense of ­personal style. And he was fiercely ­ambitious and coveted artistic success.In her careful, sometimes painful self-sculpting, Smith had found an inspired and equally determined collaborator in Mapplethorpe. As she says in this memoir, which is so full of memorable sentences: "We were both praying for Robert's soul, he to sell it and I to save it." (Robert's theme song was the Stones' "Sympathy for the Devil".)Patti and Robert were both born in 1946 and both were raised by poor parents, she in Germantown, Pennsylvania and then New Jersey, he by a Catholic family on Long Island. ... Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:05:42 +0100 817811 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/oy2IWtt8C6k/new-left-review-stefan-collini 'Can a left intellectual project hope to thrive in the absence of a political movement? That remains to be seen'New Left Review at 50: no balloons, of course, and definitely no party games. The very idea of "celebration" smacks of consumerist pseudo-optimism. Mere chronology is, after all, an untheorised concept. We should see it as not so much an ­anniversary, more an over-determined conjuncture.It is hard not to be intimidated by New Left Review. At times, the journal can seem like an elaborate contrivance for making us feel inadequate. One's relation to it conjugates as an irregular verb: I wish I knew more about industrialisation in China; you ought to have a better grasp of Brenner's analysis of global turbulence; he, she, or it needs to understand the significance of community-based activism in Latin America. For many Guardian readers (and others), the journal functions like a kind of older brother whom we look up to – more serious, better informed, better travelled, stronger, irreplaceable. Well, maybe a tiny bit solemn at times (we could draw lots for who gets the job of telling Perry Anderson to lighten up), and perhaps when we were out of touch for longish stretches, life seemed a bit easier. But then we meet up and it's a case of respect at first sight, all over again.It hasn't always been like this: even older brothers had rocky periods in their youth – misguided enthusiasms, failed relationships, moody withdrawals. Some readers may remember times when NLR seemed hell-bent on sectarian purism, theoretical slavishness and a wilful opacity. It has been through several changes of identity in the past 50 years, and memories of some of these earlier phases may hamper the efforts that it has made recently to reach out to a more diverse readership. But there is a lot in that history to be proud of. ... Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:05:37 +0100 817809 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/17NpkWJ5yLY/emily-dickinson-lyndall-gordon Beneath the still surface of the poet's life lay a fiercely passionate nature and a closely guarded secret, argues her lastest biographerEmily Dickinson was a great poet whose life has remained a mystery. The time has come to dispel the myth of a quaint and helpless creature, disappointed in love, who gave up on life. I think she was unafraid of her own passions and talent; that her brother's sexual betrayal and subsequent family feud had a profound effect on the Dickinson legend that has come down to us; and perhaps most significantly, I believe that Emily had an illness – a secret that explains much.It was Emily herself who helped to devise the blueprint for her legend, starting at the age of 23 when she declined an invitation from a friend: "I'm so old-fashioned, Darling, that all your friends would stare." In place of the tart young woman she was, she adopted this retiring posture. Born in 1830 into the leading family of Amherst, a college town in Massachusetts, she never left what she always called "my father's house". Townsfolk spoke of her as "the Myth".On the face of it, the life of this New England poet seems uneventful and largely invisible, but there's a forceful, even overwhelming character belied by her still surface. She called it a "still – Volcano – Life", and that volcano rumbles beneath the domestic surface of her poetry and a thousand letters. Stillness was not a retreat from life (as legend would have it) but her form of control. Far from the helplessness she played up at times, she was uncompromising; until the explosion in her family, she lived on her own terms.Her widely spaced eyes were too keen for the passivity admired in women of her time. It's the sensitive face of a person who (as her brother put it) "saw things directly and just as they were". ... Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:05:36 +0100 817805 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/hVEeeMMAZgQ/jg-ballard-exhibition-iain-sinclair Shortly before JG Ballard's death last year, Iain Sinclair made a pilgrimage to the author's Shepperton semi, a shrine to his surreal tastes and happy family life. A new exhibition of his favourite paintings and of art work he has inspired honours this distinctive visionComing away from the official path, on a walk from the mouth of the Thames to Oxford in October 2008, I diverted through Shepperton. Light rain misted my spectacles. An uncertain detour was blocked by a two-tonne Jaguar saloon, white and racing green: XJ MOTOR SERVICES. The upstream settlement has evident 21st-century loot, as well as Edwardian weekend villas and chalets. There is a blue plaque to the literary giant they choose to commemorate: THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK LIVED HERE, 1823-1866. Modernist white cubes with big windows are attracted by reflections of light on water. Natural metaphors for unnatural liquidity in a time of recession.I head for the station. That's where JG Ballard met me when I visited him. I never saw the inside of his house. We drove to a riverside pub and sat under whirring fans. I wondered why, after his great success with Empire of the Sun, he didn't relocate to one of those balconied, sharp-angled properties that were so attractive to the convalescing architects and blocked advertising men who populate his books. Foolish thought. Ballard was a working writer, first and last; the where of it was not to be disturbed. Fixed routines served him well; so many hours, so many words. Breakfast. Times crossword. Desk overlooking a natural ­garden. Stroll to the shops to observe the erotic rhythms of consumerism. Lunch standing up with The World at One on the radio. Back to the study. Forty-minute constitutional down to the river. TV chill-out meditation: ­Hawaii Five-O and The Rockford Files rather than Kenneth Clark.The interior landscape of the suburban semi was a mirage. ... Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:05:24 +0100 817810 http://www.resourceshelf.com/2010/02/11/baker-taylor-ebsco-to-make-rich-book-and-multimedia-data-available-for-ebsco-discovery-service-users/ From the Announcement: [A] new partnership will make rich book and multimedia data from Baker & Taylor available as part of EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS). EBSCO’s discovery solution is designed to provide a single entry point and fast access to a library’s entire collection—including local loading of the OPAC. [Snip] Baker & Taylor provides information on books, e-books, A/V materials and more, including more than 10 million data elements representing an ever-expanding resource for libraries. The following data elements from Baker & Taylor will be available to any customers using EBSCO Discovery Service: Book record & entertainment record information, including: o book jackets with full-color images o publisher annotations o family keys o display of selected subject headings Additionally, EBSCO Discovery Service conducts real-time availability checks, so that patrons have up-to-the-minute status and availability of catalog items. Customers who wish to further enhance applicable records within the EDS experience can elect to include additional data from Baker & Taylor, including: * subject descriptors * professionally-written summaries * book excerpts (first chapters) * author biographies * awards information * review citations * additional bibliographies * options for a results limiting to include Baker & Taylor data * ability to include patron-driven wish lists/purchase options (if desired by library) Source: EBSCO (Source: ResourceShelf) Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:17:38 +0100 817370 http://libraryjuicepress.com/blog/?p=2002 As a small publisher in the library field I take inspiration from the history of Scarecrow Press, which I first learned about in Ken Kister’s biography of Eric Moon (Eric Moon: The Life and Library Times, McFarland Publishers, 2002). I’ve just dug up a 1985 article about the history of Scarecrow Press, written by Moon (who joined the press as its President when it was bought by Grolier) and published in Libraries Unlimited’s Library Science Annual. I am sharing an excerpt here so that you will understand why I feel that Library Juice Press is part of a tradition, and to share a bit of information about a hero of mine in library history. The Scarecrow Press crept quietly onto the publishing scene over three decades ago [article copyright 1985 -RL], its first book emerging in 1950 from the basement of the founder’s home. That first book, appropriately, was Hessel’s History of Libraries, translated by Reuben Peiss. It was appropriate because the founder and first president of the Press was himself a major figure in the history of libraries: Ralph R. Shaw, a brilliant, contentious dynamo of a man, “a sometimes iconoclast,” and an original thinker who left his imprint on libraries, library education and theory, the profession, and publishing so indelibly that there are few, before or since, who could be said to have matched his contributions. Shaw started Scarecrow as a hobby, but also, as was the case with many of his ventures, to prove a point. One only had to describe something as impossible to launch Shaw into action. In an RQ article in 1966 he said: “If there is a single thing upon which the publishing fraternity is in agreement it is that the scholarly book of limited distribution cannot be published without subsidy.” Scarecrow was his way of proving, once again, that the impossible could be accomplished. Robert C. ... Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:43:54 +0100 817456 http://mcpldteens.blogspot.com/2010/02/book-reviews.html Wicked History: Grigory Rasputin, Holy Man or Mad Monk?by Enid A. Goldberg and Norman ItzkowitzThe teen section at the library has recently acquired a set of biographies called Wicked History. They are really short and fun to read. I chose to read about Grigory Rasputin, who was a holy man in Russia during the late 1800's and early 1900's. He was known for being friends and advising the royal family, but not always in a positive manner. His reputation in history is that of a power hungry con artist. This book is great because it gives you a timeline, pictures, maps, and a chart of his relationships. I think this series is really great for teens who just need a basic understanding of these historic characters. Check out this biography and the others in the Wicked History Collection.Other Bigraphies include:-Napoleon I: Emperor and Conquerer-Alexander the Great: Master of the Ancient World-Vlad the Impaler: the Real Count Dracula-Attila the Hun: Leader of Barbarian Hordes -Francisco Pizarro: Destroyer of the Inca Empire-Ivan the Terrible: Tsar of Death-Henry VIII: Royal Beheader-Hannibal: Rome's Worst Nightmare-Cixi: Evil Empress of China?-Leopold II: Butcher of the Congo-Ghengis Khan: 13th Century Mongolian TyrantThe Dust of 100 Dogsby A. S. KingI loved this book! I am not even sure I can adequately describe its greatness, but I will try. It is about a teen girl, Emer, who leads a life of piracy during the 1700s. Just when she is reunited with the love of her life, Emer is killed and cursed by an old enemy. The curse is that she will live the lives of a hundred dogs - a.k.a. the dust of a 100 dogs. After living years and years as a dog, she is reborn (present day) as a girl named Saffron, but with the memory of all her past lives. Basically, Saffron's parents think she is a genius because of her world knowledge. ... Wed, 10 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 819412 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/brA5P9Xev_8/bernard-henri-levy-hoaxes A French philosopher has been caught out by a literary prank. But it's nothing on the tale of the forgotten artist Nat TateLa Rive Gauche rigole. Bernard-Henri Levy, France's loudest voice of the 1970s school of nouveaux philosophes, who rarely appears on TV with his shirt buttoned beyond the waist, has been had. In his latest book, On War In Philosophy, BHL, as he is generally known, had a pop at Immanuel Kant, calling him "raving mad'" , saying that the little-known French philosopher, Jean-Baptiste Botul, had proved that once and for " . . . in his series of lectures to the neo-Kantians of Paraguay, that their hero was an abstract fake, a pure spirit of pure appearance".Only it was Botul who was the fake, the invention of a French journalist Frederic Pages. There were clues. Botul's supposed great work was The Sex Life of Immanuel Kant and his school of thought, Botulism. Not to mention a Wikipedia entry describing Botul as a fictional French philosopher. But BHL managed to miss all this and now he has been caught out, he has pulled the philosophical two-step of claiming, "Hats off for this invented-but-more-real-than-real Kant, whose portrait, whether signed Botul, Pages or John Smith, seems to be in harmony with my idea of a Kant who was tormented by demons that were less theoretical than it seemed". But no one's falling for this one.Literature is fertile ground for hoaxers and people wanting to try it on. The temptation for writers to merge fact and fiction is seemingly irresistible. And there are any number of possible motivations. Levy, it seems, was an unintended – if serendipitous – victim; Pages' aim had been merely to make mischief in academia. ... Wed, 10 Feb 2010 00:05:19 +0100 816715 http://www.sla.org.uk/blg-youngminds-calls-for-submissions-for.php YoungMinds are asking publishers, librarians, and young people to put forward submissions for this year's YoungMinds book award.  Books must be works of fiction or biography for young people aged 12+ published between 1 June 2009 and 31 May 2010, which encourage self-esteem and help them to cope with the stresses and challenges of growing up. Nominations are open until 24th April 2010. 10 books will then be chosen for the longlist.  Young people, children's authors and mental health professionals will then take part in the judging between May and October to choose the winner. The £2,000 prize which is, sponsored by the national reading charity Booktrust, will be presented at an awards ceremony in November 2010. YoungMinds Chief Executive Sarah Brennan said: "This special award highlights the vital role books play in promoting the mental and emotional well being of young people. Books can really help to break the isolation experienced by young people and demonstrate that their feelings and problems are not unique."Booktrust's Chief Executive Viv Bird said: ‘Booktrust is delighted to be returning for the second year as the sponsor of the YoungMinds Book Award, which recognises the immense value that books add to the emotional well-being of young people.' Last years winner Chris Higgins said:" I was absolutely thrilled to win the YoungMinds Book Award for 'A Perfect Ten'. I set out to explore the issue of bullying from the perspective of the bully. Following her sister's death, Eve has to deal with survivor's guilt, anorexia and a grieving mother. I hope that 'A Perfect Ten' will provide insight and understanding into both bullies and their victims, and show that these two apparently contradictory roles have more in common than we think."Please contact hannah.smith@youngminds.org. ... Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:57:09 +0100 818145 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/CbhM68znhvY/homeless-literature Writing in a warm room is hard enough, let alone when you've no food or money. No wonder there is so little authentic literature of the homelessI used to see a homeless man perched on a curb out the back of Safeway in Camberwell. Although it looked as if he hadn't had a bath or a square meal in a while, I'm ashamed to say the thing that always elicited the most sympathy from me was that he was a passionate reader. His head was always buried in a book. Any book. Horror, science fiction, romance – he was always reading.Writing while homeless, however, may be tougher to sustain. Doing it at a desk in a warm room can be hard enough: literature is surely the last thing on your mind when you've no food or money.According to his book, The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, WH Davies managed it. You'd think that the predicament of homelessness would vary little from epoch to epoch – food and shelter being timeless basic human needs – but The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp, published more than 100 years ago, reminds us that today's homeless have a whole extra set of problems, including the stigma of being one of society's displaced. Davies – a wandering poet who railroaded his way across the US and Canada (where he lost a leg) and tramped around the UK for six years – paints a comparatively upbeat view of an England in which a tramp could depend on food and drink from generous strangers, and in which many doss houses offered bed and board indefinitely. Hardly luxurious, of course – but in Davies' world, the tramp was not the scourge of society but a decent chap down on his luck; a vagabond, rather than a smackhead.As it happens, though, Davies actually chose to make himself homeless, preferring to pay for the printing of his poems rather than his rent. When you discover that he had access to a minuscule but vital allowance, his plight appears in a slightly different light. The same problem lies at the heart of George Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London. ... Tue, 09 Feb 2010 14:09:35 +0100 816720 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/UqGe-gssp5A/radical-reading-israeli-arab-book-club A groundbreaking new literary event offers new paths to understanding in what often seems an intractable conflictThe Middle East generates huge amounts of news coverage, but as the New Yorker pointed out last month, only recently has literature documenting people's daily lives in the region started winning western readers. In the case of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while some writers (Amos Oz and David Grossman spring to mind) are closely associated with it, many more authors don't make it onto the radar. A new public book club recently took some small but heroic steps towards addressing this by promoting writing by Israeli and Palestinian writers that focuses on the conflict. Its opening night attracted around 20 people who met above a north London pub, their interest piqued by the chance to encounter different perspectives within this complex debate. The discussion was led by writer and lecturer Ariel Kahn and Palestinian novelist Samir El-youssef, who set up the book club in collaboration with the Jewish Community Centre in London. The club is intended to help people "listen deeply to other voices" in the Israel-Palestine conflict, as Kahn explained. While media coverage of Israel and Palestine often provides simplified narratives, novels insist on complexity, demanding that we consider individual characters and stories. Crucially, in a debate where so many have a vested interest in not listening to the other side, literature opens up a space where we can encounter multiple perspectives. (El-youssef has experience here, having collaborated on the short story collection Gaza Blues with Israeli author Etgar Keret, which was written to show that dialogue was still possible after the second intifada of 2000.) The night was a roaring success; the room fizzed with energy as we discussed Arabesques by Anton Shammas. ... Tue, 09 Feb 2010 08:00:01 +0100 816557 http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/books/rss/~3/YFGWUSEudes/writing-for-older-authors A new scheme aims to boost learning among older people by persuading them to write their memoirsAfter a lifetime of writing for pleasure, Kate Kinsella knows the trick to getting started. "It's really very easy," says the 87-year-old former nurse. "Get some paper, take the pen in your hand and start at the beginning. It's no use looking round and saying, 'I can't do it'. You have got to make an effort. There's nothing difficult about it because the words come into your head as you write."Kinsella, from London, took a computer course at her local Open Age centre to make it easier for her to pursue her hobby, and two years ago, at the age of 85, the autobiography she had written for her family was made into a book.The independent reading charity Booktrust is hoping that Kate and other older writers like her will prove an inspiration to the over-60s, who are the target for a major new literature project.Bookbite, which is launched this week by Booktrust, aims to encourage older people to become more involved in writing and reading, for the sheer pleasure of it and for the social and health benefits of learning. The scheme, funded by £400,000 from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, is also designed to encourage older people to make use of the internet to access support and resources.Participation in adult learning is in decline. Last year, a study by the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education (Niace) found that the number of adult learners had dropped to its lowest level since Labour came to power. The older people were, the less likely they were to be involved in learning. For 20- to 24-year-olds, 61% said they were currently learning, compared with 18% for the 65-74s. And last week colleges learned of a £200m cut to funding for adult students. ... Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:05:30 +0100 816367 http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/teleread/KHnj/~3/nxei-tJF2rg/ In thinking about ebooks and the future of publishers, I, as have most commentators, have reflected the thinking of publishers that the solution is singular in the sense that one solution will fit all parts of a publishing business. The reality is quite to the contrary; because publishing is a pluralistic endeavor, the solutions must be as well. Publishing has it great divides, like fiction, nonfiction, and academic, but there are even finer divides. For example, nonfiction can be biography, self-help, technical, cooking, current history, 20th century history, and on and on. When commenters talk about pricing and value, there is little discussion about the particular division under discussion. Most discussions, however, seem to be centered on fiction — the straight text novel. Admittedly, a new Nora Robb novel is significantly different than a new Tony Judt history of post-WWII events. Certainly, it is the rare novel that is footnoted. So perhaps a different schema is required for the Robb novel than for the Judt history. In pbooks the schemata are the same, thus publishers are not currently thinking in smaller divides for ebooks. I can buy the argument that the price for fiction is too high; I see a significant difference between what is for me a read-once book (novel) and a keep-for-further/future-reference book (history). But I also recognize that a best-selling novel has sales that dwarf by a thousandfold, if not more, sales of a best-selling history, and that it is the novel’s sales that subsidize the publishing of the history book. It’s a quandary. The easiest solution, of course, is to “let the marketplace” decide. If history books don’t sell enough to make a profit, then stop publishing them. I think, however, that very few readers would want to adopt this approach. ... Mon, 08 Feb 2010 14:31:54 +0100 816245 http://drakelibrary.blogspot.com/2010/02/before-superbowl.html Before the Superbowl, before the '60s, there were players like Art "Fatso" Donovan. He played for some teams that no longer exist, like the Dallas Texans, and ended his career with Baltimore, playing with the likes of Johnny Unitas. We have his autobiography, Fatso: football when men were really men. A great read on sports history - we have lots more in our catalog! (Source: Drake Memorial Library) Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 816542 http://ricklibrarian.blogspot.com/2010/02/sisters-of-sinai-how-two-lady.html When wealthy Scottish lawyer John Smith died in 1866, his twin nineteen year old daughters Agnes and Margaret surprised their neighbors by wasting no time in mourning; instead, they used a bit of their large inheritance to take a boat tour of the Egyptian Nile. The adventure proved to be just a prelude to the subsequent travels of Agnes Smith Lewis (1843-1926) and Margaret Dunlap Gibson (1843-1920), learned Presbyterian sisters who spoke numerous modern and ancient languages. Biblical scholar Janet Soskice recounts the lives of two remarkable women in The Sisters of the Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels.Bible research was a male-dominated field at the point the sisters tried their hand at the acquiring the oldest surviving Biblical texts, found only in remote monasteries in countries along the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. When not on expeditions, they spent their time in Cambridge, England, where they made friends and enemies of leading Biblical scholars at a time of religious uncertainty. There were some religious leaders who wanted research stopped because finding variations in old texts might cause some people to doubt the absolute truth of scriptures. The sisters saw old texts as no threat to their faith and dedicated themselves to finding, translating, and publishing the texts for all scholars to study.The sisters built a large home outside the campus of Cambridge University, endowed library collections, and founded Westminster College at Cambridge, a college for Presbyterians where there had only been Anglicans until the 1880s.In Sisters of the Sinai, readers learn much about the hazards of nineteenth century travel and the jealousies of ambitious academic authors. An entertaining dual biography.Soskice, Janet. The Sisters of the Sinai: How Two Lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels. Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. ISBN 9781400041336. (Source: ricklibrarian) Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:00:00 +0100 816388 http://engagedpatrons.org/Blogs.cfm?SiteID=4725&BlogID=41&BlogPostID=6377 This is an autobiography in graphic novel form by children's Caldecott award-winning illustrator and author David Small. In just over 300 pages of illustrations and sparse text, the reader feels the pain of a small boy growing up in a dysfunctional family whose medical father is rarely home and mother silently rages. David is diagnosed with a "growth" on his neck at age 11, but is not treated until 3-1/2 years later with what he thinks will be minor surgery. When he finally emerges two days later, David learns he is missing half his vocal chords, his thyroid, and has no voice. To top it off, he discovers quite by accident that he in fact had cancer and his parents had kept it a secret. David's anger and resentment send him on a quick spiral downward leading him to skip school, drive without a license and being sent to jail, move to a boys home, run away from the boys home and finally receive badly needed therapy, which ironically feels to David like the first caring and concern he has ever experienced. The illustrations seamlessly express David's emotions as he struggles to understand his situation and it's relation to his seemingly uncaring family. It is revealed that David's father was probably the cause of his cancer due to the excessive number of x-rays David was given as a child for his breathing problems, and that his mother was also dealing as best she could with identity issues of her own. This is a quick read, good for reluctant readers and those interested in biographies or graphic novels, ages 12 and up. It is debatable whether a traditional biography would have been as successful expressing all the emotion throughout this story as this one was in graphic form. The ending is hopeful, and as it turns out, David has had much success with his books, including the awards he has won for this book. ... Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:00:02 +0100 816131 http://liszen.com/trends/story.php?title=Warren_Beatty_Biography_Star Sounds like a good beach/vacation read. Vanessa Grigoriadis reviews Peter Biskind's biography of Warren Beatty-- "Star; How Warren Beatty Sedu (Source: pligg - all) Sat, 06 Feb 2010 08:00:10 +0100 815791