I’ve never read anything by Peter Vansittart, but after reading his obit in the New York Times, I think I’m going to have to look him up (The Guardian‘s is good too). Nothing overly fancy, just sounds like good solid historical fiction writing. I mean, being compared to Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a good thing, I think. It’s a shame that I only picked up on him due to his passing.
Category Archives: Book Talk
Buy a Friend a Banned Book
It’s Buy a Friend a Book Week! This week is one of the four per year weeks where bookish types around the globe target a friend and plot which book to buy for them. bwahahaha! (that’s my October/Halloween laugh.) You can click on over and see what all the hub-bub is about (even on Twitter) and slap some BAFAB week icons on your site. But most importantly… pick someone… and buy them a book.
This week is also Banned Book Week as organzied by the American Library Association. Lots of libraries having events this week and the ALA has gone all social media with their Facebook and MySpace pages.
But WOW let me tell you how shocked I was at some titles included on page Amazon coughed up listing all the books that have been “banned or challenged in 2008”. Now, not having The Joy of Sex in a high school library, I get. And thinking that middle school library goers shouldn’t be digesting Sebold’s Lovely Bones, I grant you.
But banning Huck Finn? The Giver? Of Mice and Men? from high school or community libraries? For real? I’ve seen Hardee’s commercials that violate more social mores, in 18 seconds, than all three of those classics combined. Oh well. That’s reason enough to read a banned book (or explore one on Google’s Banned Books page)!
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What has changed?
This political season, Amazon is tracking all of the “red books” and “blue books” sold. It’s been fun watching the trends as they move through the country, but I’m having a tough time making sense of any of it. Usually, all the traditionally more liberal states are buying the “blue books, while the more traditionally conservative states are buying the “red books”. Here is a May-June snapshot that Amazon posted:
Continue reading What has changed?
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The Man Booker Shortlist – 2008
Here’s this year’s list and I haven’t read any of them. Not sure why I feel guilty about that… I think it’s just that I’d enjoy this more if I had a horse to pull for in this race.
Aravind Adiga The White Tiger (Atlantic)
Sebastian Barry The Secret Scripture (Faber and Faber)
Amitav Ghosh Sea of Poppies (John Murray)
Linda Grant The Clothes on Their Backs (Virago)
Philip Hensher The Northern Clemency (Fourth Estate)
Steve Toltz A Fraction of the Whole (Hamish Hamilton)
