This month we start with “a (frightening) short story,” “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. This is probably the story Jackson is best known for. It appeared in The New Yorker in 1948. What I love about Shirley Jackson’s work is the way she gradually makes the reader realize that things are not always what they […]
6 Degrees of Separation: Deranged Minds Read More »
For my final post about Banned Books Week, here are two more infographics from the American Library Association.
Banned Books Week Finale Read More »
I don’t routinely do end-of-month roundups, but I’m feeling particularly optimistic and inspired right now at turning the calendar page to a new month. For two reasons: The greatest legacy my mother left me is a love of baseball. She was a dedicated Red Sox fan, so that’s how I started out. Then we spent
Goodbye to September! Read More »
In celebration of Banned Books Week, here are some articles about censorship. Banned Books Week Fights Censorship by People in Power “This op-ed argues that those who ban or burn books are seeking to destroy history, ideas, and narratives that challenge the authority of those in power.” Jameelah Nasheed provides a succinct history of censorship,
Stand Against Censorship! Read More »
“We think of the writer as being the person who writes the book and the book as an object, solid and unchanging. But the book is a mutable object. I can write a book and you can read it, and in doing that, we’ve engaged in a process of cocreation. The book that you read
Quotation: Ruth Ozeki on Reading Read More »
It’s that time of year: it’s ALA’s annual Banned Books Week. This year’s event is themed “Books Unite Us, Censorship Divides Us” and is set to run from September 26 through October 2. And it comes at a time, ALA officials said this week, when LGBTQIA+ books and books that focus on racism and racial
ALA Kicks Off Banned Books Week 2021 Read More »
Luckily, in our third news story about this, we have better news! After continuing protests by students and parents, national media coverage, and authors speaking out, the board has finally reversed the ban. Source: Central York School District (Finally) Overturns Ban On Antiracist Books Since I had carried the earlier news about this incident,
Central York School District (Finally) Overturns Ban On Antiracist Books Read More »
“But reading is actually the opposite of escape. No story can live without the reader’s emotional participation. The writer’s words are but directions to a place within the reader where sadness and joy and grief and curiosity and boredom and hope and despair reside. The words alone are a skeleton; the reader’s felt responses to
Quotation: “Life Matters” Read More »
An Innocent Abroad: Joan Didion’s Midlife Crisis Novelist, short story writer, critic and retired English professor Scott Bradfield grew up in California but had difficulty “[l]earning how to write fictions set in California”: California is filled with so many vivid pleasures, smells, textures, and absurdities of human character that it feels difficult, or even impossible,
This issue of our newsletter is devoted to the Library of Congress National Book Festival, which begins in less than an hour! It all kicks off at 11 a.m. with Michael J. Fox talking about his new memoir, “No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality,” and then U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo will
Book Club: Clear your schedule — the National Book Festival starts NOW Read More »
