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Literary Links

SOME OBSERVATIONS FROM LIBRARY TOURISM

Jen Sherman declares “public libraries should be a tourist destination the way museums are.” And she knows whereof she speaks:

I started doing a PhD about public libraries in 2012, and in the past eight years, I have visited 112 libraries in six different countries (primarily USA and Australia). I have been to libraries in the heart of bustling global cities, in quiet suburbia, in small country towns. I have seen some very old libraries, and some very new ones.

She’s seen some fascinating things in public libraries in recent years that you might be interested in reading about.

Have we gotten any happier over 200 years? Researchers analyzed millions of books to find out.

In this era of Big Data, there have been lots of ideas on how to apply computer analysis to literature. Here’s one:

Starting from the premise that what we write reveals a lot about our underlying feelings, they [researchers] analyzed millions of books published between 1820 and 2009 and used the words in them to measure changes in subjective well-being in four countries: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy. They chose that time period and those countries because we’ve got sufficiently rich data for them.

Read how researchers conducted this study and what they learned from it.

WHEN YOU HATE THE CLASSICS, BUT YOU’RE AN ENGLISH TEACHER

I initially thought this piece was probably written tongue in cheek, but apparently it’s not. Lily Dunn doesn’t like a lot of the classics of the English literature canon and feels that her students have the right not to like them, either. Here’s the conclusion of the article:

I happen to think there is value in learning how to interact with things you don’t like. In a world that seems full of baseless hate and judgment, teaching students how to engage with things they don’t agree with or just plain don’t like might be the greatest gift I can give them. I want my students to know that they can hate the Classics too, as long as they are willing to use their brains and to engage.

That’s great, but I would argue that this philosophy serves no purpose if students don’t actually READ THE BOOKS. As in book groups, I don’t mind if people don’t like the book, but they should have read it (or at least most of it) so that they can explain WHY they don’t like it. If they can’t point to specific passages and explain what they don’t like about them, I can’t learn anything from their criticism.

Dunn doesn’t specify in the article whether her classes read the books so they can discuss what they don’t like about them or whether she just thinks she shouldn’t have to teach any classic works she herself doesn’t like. I’d really like to know.

Spoiler alert: spoilers make you enjoy stories more

This article is from 2016. I’ve seen it (and other similar pieces) before, but I include it here because the question about knowing what happens recently came up in an online discussion about rereading books. There’s interesting information here both about how research on the questioned was designed and about what the results of such studies were.

AN IMITATION OF IMPERFECTION: A HISTORY OF DECKLE EDGES

Here’s a history of papermaking that explains why some books have ragged edges on their pages.

© 2019 by Mary Daniels Brown

2 thoughts on “Literary Links”

  1. I read the “Hate the Classics” piece, which I found troubling. Studying literature isn’t the same as scrolling through your Twitter feed to find something to “like.” The whole point of studying literature in school is to gain a greater understanding of the creative expression of other people, the social and historical context in which they wrote, and your own experience of reading that particular work.

    1. Mary Daniels Brown

      I also found the whole piece troubling, Liz. I felt it was unfinished. I get the impression that the author just feels that she shouldn’t have to teach books she herself doesn’t like. But, as you say, being a teacher isn’t all about her. It also involves an obligation to teach “a greater understanding of the creative expression of other people, the social and historical context in which they wrote, and your own experience of reading that particular work,” as you so aptly say. I sympathize with the author’s desire to express her personal love of particular works of literature, but she also needs to teach other works as well. If nothing else, students should learn how to criticize a book constructively, and for that they need to read the books. Thanks for commenting.

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