- How Librarians Can Counter Lies from Book Banners
- 5 Messy Characters You Can’t Help But Love
- Joan Didion Remembered at St. John the Divine
- These high school ‘classics’ have been taught for generations – could they be on their way out?
- The Last Days of Sigmund Freud
- How to nurture a personal library
- How to Keep Your Book Club From Becoming a Wine Club
- Why Do Kids Love Thrillers?
- What Makes a Good Book Club Question?
How Librarians Can Counter Lies from Book Banners
This problem isn’t going to go away any time soon, so we need to stay informed.
Categories: Censorship, Libraries
5 Messy Characters You Can’t Help But Love
My favorite phrase for describing humans is “deliciously messy.” So I immediately zoomed in on this list by Zeniya Cooley:
These five women make questionable and controversial decisions, yes, but they’re also navigating a strange world that doesn’t always welcome them with open arms. On their quests for meaningful lives, they stumble and stagger. But that’s the beauty of this human experience: we’re lurching forward in life and learning as we go, so mistakes are inevitable.
Surprisingly, I haven’t read any of these books, though I do have Queenie on my TBR shelf.
Categories: Fiction, Life Stories in Literature, Literature & Psychology
Joan Didion Remembered at St. John the Divine
Publisher’s Weekly reports on the recent memorial service in New York City “to celebrate the life and work of writer Joan Didion, who died on December 23, 2021.” Sponsored by her publisher, Knopf, the service was long postponed because of the pandemic.
Category: Author News
These high school ‘classics’ have been taught for generations – could they be on their way out?
Andrew Newman, a professor at Stony Brook University (The State University of New York), takes a look at “the high school canon” of literature, which he says has “never represented America’s diverse student body.” He concludes, “if literature is going to continue to be an important part of American education, it is important to talk not only about what books to teach, but the reasons why.”
Category: Literary History
The Last Days of Sigmund Freud
“Danger surrounded Freud in Nazi-occupied Austria. Why did it take him so long to see it?”
Patrick Blanchfield declares, “we live in a world fundamentally shaped by his [Freud’s] legacy.” In this discussion of the new book Saving Freud: The Rescuers Who Brought Him to Freedom by Andrew Nagorski, Blanchfield looks at a couple of the central questions the book explores: “Why had Freud allowed himself to be trapped in this extremely perilous situation? Why had he failed to leave Vienna earlier when it would have been relatively easy for him to do so?”
Category: Literature & Psychology
How to nurture a personal library
“What distinguishes a library from a random pile of books is the considered process of curation,” writes Freya Howarth. Here she discusses how to curate a personal library “to shape your personal identity and intellectual pathways, changing and growing with you.”
Category: Reading
How to Keep Your Book Club From Becoming a Wine Club
“Librarians, professors, and literary professionals offer their best advice on how to run a successful group.”
Category: Book Groups
Why Do Kids Love Thrillers?
This blog post from The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) examines the popularity of thrillers in YA and middle-grade publishing and explains why the genre is so popular among young readers.
Category: Reading
What Makes a Good Book Club Question?
Book club veteran Jesse Doogan shares a list of characteristics of a good book group question that will “[keep] the conversation going.”
Category: Book Groups
© 2022 by Mary Daniels Brown
Thank you so much for sharing my article on messy characters!