Catablogs…nope nothing feline about them… i had visited a couple and added an RSS feed to my list but i hadn’t given them much thought until now. The special collections librarian one city over has started blogging their catalog…cata-blog get it? Queen City Massachusetts – which i find awesome…every object has a story and with catablogs, the object, pamphlet or image gets its fifteen minutes of fame too. Here’s a nice little blog post from Geneaology Insider with a sweet list of other Catablogs.
Stupid publisher tricks •Scholastic has no love for Luv Ya Bunches…a young adult title about four elementary school girls named after flowers…but OOPS…one of them has TWO mommies! and that’s apparently one too many for Scholastic. WTF? I can’t really comment on it properly..because when I try i start using expletives and hitting the keyboards like I am punishing them.
blog of note •if you haven’t seen it you HAVE to check out Letters of Note blog... it rules..”Letters of Note is an attempt to gather and sort fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos. ” Seriously i haven’t read one thing there that wasn’t fascinating.
Like there aren’t enough news items that make me crazy, now people are sending them into me, assumedly to watch my head explode into a hundred million pieces.
worth hearing – Lizzie Skurnick guest’s on NPR’s Talk of the Nation regarding about her new book: Shelf Discovery: The Teen Classics We Never Stopped Reading. – .between V.C. Andrews and Are you There God it’s Me Margaret that little town in Michigan’s gonna pull out the pitch forks and torches, lynch the librarian and burn down the entire library.
1732 • Benjamin Franklin begins publication of “Poor Richard’s Almanack” under the name Richard Saunders. containing weather predictions, humor, proverbs and epigrams, eventually selling nearly 10,000 copies per year.
Poor Richard, 1733 Courteous Reader,
I might in this place attempt to gain thy Favour, by declaring that I write Almanacks with no other View than that of the publick Good; but in this I should not be sincere; and Men are now a-days too wise to be deceiv’d by Pretences how specious soever. The plain Truth of the Matter is, I am excessive poor, and my Wife, good Woman, is, I tell her, excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to sit spinning in her Shift of Tow, while I do nothing but gaze at the Stars; and has threatned more than once to burn all my Books and Rattling-Traps (as she calls my Instruments) if I do not make some profitable Use of them for the good of my Family. The Printer has offer’d me some considerable share of the Profits, and I have thus begun to comply with my Dame’s desire. . . .
things you find while looking for other things – the ALA ’s pages on the history of censorship extends well into the 21st century.Seriously folks, when are we gonna grown up and get beyond this childishness? This rampant hostility towards ideas and unchecked religious zealotry frightens me right down to my library card.
blog of note • Book Patrol has a nifty post about a German memento mori to burned books. “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.” (German: “Dort, wo man Bücher verbrennt, verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.”)—Heinrich Heine, from his playAlmansor (1821) “Don’t join the book burners. Don’t think you’re going to conceal faults by concealing evidence that they ever existed. Don’t be afraid to go in your library and read every book, as long as any document does not offend our own ideas of decency. That should be the only censorship. How will we defeat communism unless we know what it is, what it teaches, and why does it have such an appeal for men, why are so many people swearing allegiance to it? It’s almost a religion, albeit one of the nether regions. And we have got to fight it with something better, not try to conceal the thinking of our own people. They are part of America. And even if they think ideas that are contrary to ours, their right to say them, their right to record them, and their right to have them at places where they’re accessible to others is unquestioned, or it’s not America.” — Dwight David Eisenhower From the remarks of the President of the United States at the Dartmouth College Commencement, June 14, 1953.
calendar • 1919 - Sylvia Beach opens Shakespeare and Company. Now if i had a book with THAT bookseller trade label in it – yummy. *Perhaps I will christen today International Unexpurgated Edition Day in honor of Shakespeare and Co. Yeah I think I will do that.
birthday • 1916 – Shelby Foote is born
The American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression is urging booksellers to post a new statement proclaiming their support for free speech and reader privacy. The statement–titled “To Our Customers” – explains why booksellers believe it is important to carry a wide diversity of books, including works that some people may find offensive. It also promises customers that the bookstore will protect the privacy of their book purchases. “There are many good reasons for making a clear statement of store policy on First Amendment issues,” ABFFE President Chris Finan said. “It makes the point that one of the most important roles of a bookstore is to protect free speech. It helps build support for the store and for free speech. It also can be useful in dealing with customers who may be offended by a particular book by reminding them that bookstores exist to serve the entire community.”
To Our Customers
The shelves of this bookstore hold a wide array of titles containing ideas as diverse as the world in which we live. We believe that it is in the best interest of our community and democratic society for ideas of all kinds to be available to interested individuals, regardless of what our own tastes may be. In that spirit, we believe that censorship—whether by individuals, special interests groups, or government—damages our society.
We also believe that it is our responsibility to you, and to the First Amendment, to respect the privacy of your choice of books, magazines and other materials. We will not sell information identifying your purchases to a third party without your permission or otherwise disclose it to anyone, including the government, on our own initiative.
events • 1756 -Giacomo Casanova, in prison on charges of being a magician, makes a spectacular escape & makes his way to Paris, where he introduces the lottery in 1757 & makes a name for himself among the aristocracy. 1892 -Arthur Conan Doyle publishes The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. 1905 -The producer & players of Bernard Shaw’s play,Mrs. Warren’s Profession are arrested, NY. 1913 -Historians Will and Ariel Durant 27 and 15 are married in New York’s City Hall. 1917 - Eugene O’Neill 1-act play In the Zonepremiers, NY. 1921 - Beginning date of the Poundian calendar, designed by poet Ezra Pound 1921 - James Joyce writes the last words of his novel Ulysses. 1922 -Karl Capek play The World We Live In opens in NY. 1947 -Bertolt Brecht, having fled Nazi Germany years ago, now flees the US during the American witchhunts. 1958 -Writer Boris Pasternak is expelled from the Soviet Union. Halloween
birthdays • 1724 – Christopher Anstey (d. 1805) English writer and poet. 1795 - John Keats, (d 1821) renowned British lyric poet, is born in a stable his father managed in Finsbury Pavement. 1920 -Dick Francis is born, Wales. Mystery novelist – Queen’s jockey
back again . . . . My Ma is up and talking, well no . . . technically she is actually sleeping now. But I have been up with her since about 7 am so my day is getting a really really slow start. I’m am curled up with my laptop, a nice Mexican horror movie and a nice bottle of port (from Australia no less, who knew?)
Texas father wants to ban book about banning books . . . yeah I had to work at that one . . he doesn’t like Fahrenheit 451 being used in the curriculum, so he wants to eliminate it. I swear i think these people just do this to prove they are more Christian than the guy next door.
birthdays • 1900 – Thomas Wolfe, American author (d. 1938) 1916 -James Herriot, English veterinarian and author born 1925 – Gore Vidal, American author
1967 -Thurgood Marshall was sworn in as an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court.
birthdays 1879 -Wallace Stevens, American poet (d. 1955) 1904 -Graham Greene, British novelist (d. 1991) 1911 -Jack Finney, American author (d. 1995)
