December 4, 2009
Try this odd fact out as a conversation starter. Back in the 1950’s, poet Marianne Moore, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award, was asked by the head of Ford’s marketing department to submit possible names for their “e” or “experimental” car due to be released in 1958. One of Ms. Moore’s […]
December 4, 2009
The Red Couch: A Portrait of America by Kevin Clarke & Horst Wackerbarth When most people decide to take to the highways and road trip across the country, the idea is generally to travel fast and light and leave all excess baggage behind you in your asphalt wake. Taking an 8-foot red-velvet couch along for the ride […]
December 1, 2009
Every year during the holiday season, the Morgan Library and Museum in New York exhibits one page of Charles Dickens’s handwritten manuscript of A Christmas Carol. The page is displayed under glass in what was once the library of John Pierpont Morgan. Now, for the first time, the Morgan has allowed The New York Times to […]
November 22, 2009
It’s that time of the year again when the Best of the Year lists covering a motley array of topics are sprinkled throughout the web. Publishers Weekly created quite a stir when its top ten books of the year list was released with an absence of female authors. In response, Women in Letter and Literary […]
November 21, 2009
Best of the National Book Awards Fiction: The Complete Stories, by Flannery O’Connor In celebration of “60 years of honoring great American books,” the National Book Foundation featured 77 fiction winners from 1950 to 2008 on their website. From this prestigious collection, 140 writers chose six finalists. The public was then invited to take part in an online poll […]
November 20, 2009
Once again the Recent Arrivals section on the 2nd floor East is teeming with books so interesting you’ll wish there were more hours in the day in which to stick your face in a book. Stop on in and step on up and be sure to look for the pink Recent Arrivals stickers to let […]
November 17, 2009
On NPR last week, I listened to a story about Cushing Academy, a private prep school about 90 minutes outside Boston, that got rid of all the books in their library. [!!] Here’s the news story from the Boston Globe: Say Goodbye to the Books. I found the comments thread especially illuminating. Many, many […]
November 15, 2009
Word nerds of the world rejoice: the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary is here! After 44 years of work, 4,000 pages, and 800,000 meanings the first ever historical thesaurus is ready to answer everything you ever wanted to know about the history of our language. The book chronologically and thematically arranges all the […]
November 3, 2009
“There is scarcely one letter by Van Gogh which I, who am certainly no expert, do not find fascinating.” – W. H. Auden Fifteen years in the making, the Van Gogh Museum and the Huygens Institute in The Hague have just released a comprehensive, annotated edition of Vincent van Gogh’s letters, which serve as a […]
October 30, 2009
It’s that time of year again. Time to slap on a multicolored wig, a pair of fangs, and maybe a poorly ventilated rubber mask and head on out into the night with the rest of the world’s sugar hungry ghouls for an evening of spooktacular candy retrieval. And when you’re done binging on your loot and through gouging […]
