Blog Post
Master of magical realism
by Maxine
Today, March 6, is the birthday of Colombian author and Nobel Prize winner, Gabriel Garcia Marquez who was born in Aracataca, Colombia in 1928. Most widely known for his masterpiece, One Hundred Years of Solitude, Garcia Marquez drew from his colorful life to create his stories. The oldest of twelve children, he was primarily raised by his grandparents. His grandmother was a weaver of tales full of ghosts, omens, and the supernatural. His grandfather was a leftist colonel who fought in two civil wars. Garcia Marquez became a journalist and had no thoughts of writing fiction until driving one day between Mexico City and Acapulco, the whole first chapter of One Hundred Years... came to him. His wife had to pawn household goods, sell their car, and apply for loans to support him while he wrote. To date, that book has sold about 30 million copies.
Garcia Marquez said: "Ultimately, literature is nothing but carpentry."
Blog Post
Literary rock star coming to U-M
by annevm
Reginald Gibbons is coming to the University of Michigan in the Zell Visiting Writers Series. Catch him Monday, March 9, at his poetry reading at 5 p.m. in Rackham Amphitheater, 915 E. Washington St., or on Thursday, March 12, at a lecture at 5 p.m., again in Rackham Amphitheater. Gibbons' lecture is "Five Ideas About Writing: Traumas of Revision; Aftermath; Unconscious Deliberateness; Earlier is Other; Self Within Self." To read about Gibbons' life and work, click on our database Literature Resource Center.
Blog Post
Ann Arbor Film Festival Website Now Up
by Caser
The official website for the 47th annual Ann Arbor Film Festival is now up and teeming with information about the March 24-29 event. On the site, you can preview stills, descriptions, and times of the films that will be screened and judged throughout the week, making it easier to decide which days you want to attend. A couple of films sure to garner their fill of attention are Secret Machine, a short about a woman whose resistance to pain is measured by an antagonistic scientist, and Afterville, the apocalyptic tale of a few lives at the end of days in Turin, Italy. Also see the full schedule of events to find out what's going on each day of the festival. Want to know more about film criticism before diving into the experimental films? Check out Stanley Kauffmann's book, Regarding Film: Criticism and Comment from the AADL before you go.
Blog Post
Smashed
by ErinDurrett
Recently, my friend literally tossed this book in my lap. Smashed is a very interesting take on the excessive drinking of middle class girls in America and how it affects their lives and futures. In this memoir, Koren Zailckas delves into the reasons and motivations behind her excessive drinking which she believes is the reason so many girls decide to drink...unhappiness. Zailckas talks about how at whatever age you start drinking, that is the age you act when you emerge from the disillusionment of drinking. When Zailckas quit drinking she felt wholly unprepared to take on the role of responsible adult because alcohol had allowed her to stay at the maturity of the 14 year old who started the habit. She also explains that while kids are taught that drugs are always dangerous, alcohol is perceived as an acceptable rite of passage. Her book reveals the dangerous truths of excessive/binge drinking and the effect it has on girls today.
If you like this book, other recommendations are Dry: A Memoir by Augusten Burroughs, author of Running with Scissors and also Drinking: A Love Story by Caroline Knapp.
Blog Post
The Complete Tightwad Gazette
by cecile
Maybe you have been obsessing about saving money like I have and now need to calm down a bit (the sky is not falling I keep telling myself even though the Dow appears to be heading to hell in a handcart). Then I remembered one of my favorite books--The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn, a.k.a. The Frugal Zealot. A compilation of a publication that ran for years and years, Tightwad could use an internet update but it still has thousands of ideas to save money using good old Yankee ingenuity. The ideas were gathered over the years by Amy Dacyczyn and her subscribers with lots of ways to save money on food, cooking, gardening, clothing, furniture and even Halloween costumes. It is funny and wise. Check out the inexpensive dog biscuit recipe on page 246—I’ve been making them for years with a cookie cutter shaped like a dog bone made from an old tuna can and I’ve never met a dog yet that didn’t love them. What good ideas do you have to save money?
Blog Post
Celebrate Women's History Month
by Maxine
March is Women's History Month. In honor of the tremendous achievements of women worldwide, Gale Publishing Group which offers numerous databases and other resources to libraries, has put together some great free resources. Based on the theme, "Get to Know the Women Who've Changed Our World," you can access activities, quizzes, biographies, a timeline and more at their special website. A great resource for teachers, activities by topic include history, geography music, science and literature. You can also download bookmarks, a calendar and screensaver. Biographies of famous women up to and including Hilary Clinton and Michelle Obama are available.
You can also check out the Library's rich collection of books and dvds on women's history including a new book, Ad Women by Juliann Sivulka on the history of women in advertising and how they influence consumer habits.
Blog Post
Today is Read Across America Day!!
by manz
Hooray, hoorah! The NEA’s
Read Across America Day is a nationwide celebration that takes place on or around March 2, which is Dr. Seuss’s birthday. Across the country, schools, libraries, and communities bring children and books together to celebrate the art of reading and to get kids motivated to read. Some schools turn it into a huge party with green eggs and ham for lunch, some principals may dress up as Thing 1 or Thing 2, but no matter what is done or not done, a blast is had by all, and reading is the center of attention. Is your school doing something fun? Are you getting Seussical? Tell us about it!
Blog Post
Mo Willems' Naked Mole Rat!
by Liberry Shortstack
Mo Willems, famous for Knuffle Bunny, Knuffle Bunny Too, Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog, Pigeon Wants a Puppy, and other books for young readers has a new book, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. This is very exciting for me because naked mole rats are the cutest little ugly things ever! Willems' book is delightful, entertaining for both children and the adults reading to them. Maybe you didn't enjoy the Pigeon books, but what's not to love about a naked mole rat?
Blog Post
Amazon's New Kindle E-Reader
by Liberry Shortstack
Perhaps you've seen one of the first-generation Kindle e-readers from Amazon, one of those rare little creatures that everyone seems to have heard about but no one has actually seen. As someone who's heard quite a bit about the first version of Kindle but never met one, I was interested to hear that Amazon is now releasing a second-generation product, touted as Kindle 2. The changes appear to be minor, and by all accounts, seem to have improved what was already a good piece of technology. The new Kindle comes with more memory space, holding up to 1,500 titles, a battery that lasts 25 percent longer than before, better text definition, and a sleeker design. The Kindle 2 also has automated audio-read voices; you can choose from a male or female voice and plug your headphones in for a listen.
Bestselling books can be downloaded for about $10, and older titles range from about $3-$6, which is cheaper than the printed retail price these titles fetch in bookstores. Is the Kindle more economical than print books? Well, if you can afford the $359 sticker price, maybe. But you can always use your library for free--even if you have to wait for a popular new title to make its way down the hold list. You can also download e-books and e-audio books with your library card.
The Kindle allows you to download an e-book in seconds, but you can't share books with another Kindle user. Your downloads are YOUR downloads, your friend Sammy's downloads are HIS downloads. With print books, you could always lend a favorite book to a friend.
One of the other arguments in favor of the Kindle is that it's environmentally conscious, it saves trees, books get thrown out all the time, yadda yadda yadda. But what about the processes used to manufacture the Kindle? I can bet it's not as non-toxic as baking soda and vinegar. Can you recycle the Kindle when it becomes obsolete? You can recycle print books, that's for sure. Take that, Kindle!
Lest I be taken as a technophobe, let me just say that I'm excited about the Kindle. Anything that gets people excited about reading is a good thing in my book. But I doubt I'll ever buy one, and not just because I can't afford one. There are a couple of reasons for this: I like the feel and smell of paper and book-binding glue, I like to write in my books (not the library's books, of course!), I enjoy the physical act of going to the library and browsing the shelves, and I don't like the idea of having my personal library held captive in an electronic device. But probably most of all, this thing is small--Kindle 2 weighs 10.2 ounces. It's 8" by about 5.3" and it's about as wide as a ball-point pen. I once ran my Apple iShuffle through the washing machine, having forgot it in my pocket. More than likely, I would accidentally destroy the new Kindle. I am not to be trusted with new technology.
Blog Post
What were they reading?
by Stewart
In his book Fugitive Days, Bill Ayers lists the authors popular with the Weather Underground.
"The bookshelf was an immediate giveaway--every Weatherman
read Malcolm X, the poetry of Ho Chi Minh, Amilcar Cabral, and Mari
Sandoz's marvelous biography of Crazy Horse. Harry Haywood was on
our reading list, and so was Amiri Baraka, C.L.R. James, and James
and Grace Lee Boggs. And somewhere, usually the bedroom, was a
modest, framed black-and-white photo of Che." page 262