CELEBRATE READING

Banned Book Week, a time to recognize and celebrate our freedom to read and create an awareness of the importance of our First Amendment rights, is celebrated yearly and this year the week of September 25-October 2 has been designated for this event. It is an important week for those who care about reading and the Libraries and a good time to read or reread one of the titles that has been placed on the list.

Every year I am surprised to find that many of the books which are regulars on the most challenged list are also on my list of personal favorites and To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee certainly tops that list. Targeted regularly for racial bias, inappropriate language and containing themes that are not suitable for younger readers it fortunately is still on most Library shelves.

Told in the voice of an eight-year-old girl this work deals with a variety of themes that range from coming of age to prejudice and injustice, Lee’s book creates a vivid picture of an unusual family, the small town atmosphere of the South in the 30’s and issues that still haunt our country. If you have not read this one, add it to your list. If you have then it may be time to revisit an old friend. To check availability of this in the Glendale Public Library collection, please click on the cover art.

One of the original reviews for To Kill a Mockingbird:

/* Starred Review */ A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy -- and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference -- but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends. (Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 1960)

This Week in Reading Sept. 27 - Oct. 3

Authors born this week -

Novelists and story writers
Miguel de Cervantes, Prosper Merimee, Elizabeth Gaskell, Alain-Fournier, Thomas Wolfe, Graham Greene, Louis Auchincloss, Josef Skvorecky, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Elie Wiesel, Jurek Becker, Carol Lynn Pearson, Tim O’Brien, Bernard Cooper, Irvine Welsh, Ben Greenman, Cecelia Ahern

Poets and Playwrights
Poets: Wallace Stevens, William Empson, W. S. Merwin, Kay Ryan Playwrights: Steve Tesich

Thinkers, Believers, Scientists, Historians, Biographers
Thinkers: Confucius, Miguel de Unamuno Believers: Al Sharpton Scientists: Albert Ellis, James Herriot, Mihalyi Csikszenthmihalyi, Barron Lerner Historians: George Bancroft, Louis Arragon, Daniel Boorstin

Humorists, Essayists, Editors, Journalists, Officials, Media and Others
Humorists: Groucho Marx Essayists: Alvin Toffler, Rex Reed, Molly Haskell, Michael Medved Editors: Louis Untermyer Journalists: Sandy Gall, Dick Schaap Officials: Jimmy Carter Media and Others: J. B. Rhine

Mystery / Crime / Suspense Writers
Mystery: Colin Dexter Crime: Jim Thompson

Fantasy / Science Fiction Writers
Fantasy: Jack Finney, S. M. Stirling Horror: William Beckford

Adventure / Westerns
Westerns: Ernest Haycox

Visual Artists
Photographers: Annie Liebovitz Cartoonists: Thomas Nast, Al Capp, Harvey Kurtzman

Young People’s Writers
Children’s: Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin, Stan Berenstain, Bernard Waber, John Hegley

Events to read about this week:

THIS IS BANNED BOOKS WEEK which happens every year. Imagine if you were not allowed to read any of this week's authors or read books about events that happened this week. Go ahead. Imagine it

Then check out a once banned book to see what some people want others to miss.

Obituaries
Essayist, lexicographer, columnist William Safire (79)

This Week’s Questions:
Again there are no winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature among those born this week but there are two winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Who are they?

Three of them have stong library connections and two have libraries named after them. Who are they?

A few authors from last week wrote several of the 100 most challenged novels of the 20th Century but only one author from this week has one on that list. Who is it?

Answer to Last Week’s Questions:
The term Gothic Fiction comes from literature that emerged at the same time as the Gothic Revival in architecture, the later eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. Reacting against the realism and scientism of the Age of Reason, two threads of emotion developed. While the Romantics took their anti-materialism toward celebration of the beautiful in art and spirit, more often tragic than merely satisfying, the Gothic Revivalists found beauty in the feelings of horror and romantic terror. They set their stories in the crumbling ruins of old castles and estates that had been built at the time of the Goth peoples in England and Europe. Beginning with Horace Walpole's The Castle of Otranto, the elements were haunting terrors, and romantic suspense. Even Bryron, a romantic poet, tried his hand at it.

Several other authors born last week and this week wrote gothic tales, Charles Maturin, William Beckford and Elizabeth Gaskell, while some of William Faulkner's books have been of the subgenre called Southern Gothic. Gothic themes have been in the works of the Brontes, Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ambrose Bierce, Oscar Wilde and dozens of others up to and past Stephen King, Peter Straub, Clive Barker, through Anne Rice and Stephenie Meyer. Vampires and man made monsters have featured prominently in gothic romances from Mary Wollestonecraft Shelley and Bram Stoker to today's very popular vampires for whom romance is stronger than terror, but who are not free of the terror that the worst of their nature inspires in others and in themselves.

It has been said that Gothic fiction thrives most when the world seems like it's spinning out of rational control which is often the state of both the readers and the characters. "[T]his world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel," wrote Horace Walpole, who is credited with both the quote and the word "serendipity." The word, as the quote, comes from one of his letters to acquaintances, many of which are still worth reading today. He refers to an old folktale "The Three Princes of Serendip," (which, by the way, was the English version of what is Sri Lanka today,) to describe the "accidental sagacity" which he described as finding something while looking for something else.

Serendipity abounds in libraries. Simply by looking through shelves you can find other fascinating things to read instead of only the book for which you came into the library. You could call it libradipity. And if you happen to open a book unconsciously at the very page that includes the concept you were looking for, one of our librarians has a word for that, too. We call it bibliodipity.

This Week in Reading October 5 - 11, 2008

There are three Nobel prizewinners this week yet it is unlikely that many of us have heard of more than one of them. Francois Mauriac, who is known for writing about the life of Jesus, is only one of two French novelists born this week to win the Literature prize; the other is Claude Simon. Serbo-Croation novelist Ivo Andric is the third.

Otherwise there are writers from around the world with a few bestseller names among them, hugely successful romance writer Nora Roberts, who also writes mysteries as J. D. Robb, fiction, mystery and western author Elmore Leonard, who also gives writers advice, adventure novelist James Clavell, horror novelist Clive Barker, and historian-novelist Thomas Keneally.

This Week's Question: Significantly, this week is when the Nobel prizes are given out. Last year's prize went to England's Doris Lessing. The one for literature this year will be announced Thursday, October 9. Will it be someone you have read? Or will it not be given out this year?

Answer to Last Week's Question: The two authors from last week that most appeared on lists of books banned in America were Truman Capote and Ann Rice. Capote's novel In Cold Blood was on the list of Top 100 Novels and was banned for its violence, profanity, and sex. Ann Rice writing as A. N. Roquelaure had the 53rd most frequently challenged book between 1990 - 2000 for her erotic Sleeping Beauty trilogy. The first novel in the series sold more copies than Rice's Interview with the Vampire and many of our nation's library copies of her books from this era are now missing or lost. Rice has recently returned to her religious roots, and after being "called out of darkness" writes bestsellers about the life of Jesus now.

This Week in Reading Sept. 28 - Oct. 4

It is Banned Books Week and the library and publishing worlds take time to remind Americans that the freedom to write, to speak one's mind includes the freedom to read and hear thoughts of other minds. Just ask Nobel prizewinner Elie Wiesel what book banning can lead to. As we are reminded this election season people who would limit access to books in libraries believe they are doing so for good reasons, but public libraries like this one are committed to allowing individuals to decide for oneself, just as, in the American way, we vote.

This week's list of author birthdays gives us a few well known names but not as many as last week. There's the literary line up, Gore Vidal, Graham Greene, Thomas Wolfe, and Truman Capote with noted poets Wallace Stevens and W. S. Merwin. Also reflective of the week is the wisdom of Confucius and the foolish but heartwarming naivete of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote.

Bestselling authors include romance novelist Jackie Collins and thriller author Anne Rice along with humorist Roy Blount, Jr., and fantasist Jack Finney. In our hearts from the last century are those colorful New York voices, Damon Runyon , Groucho Marx, and Brendan Gill.

This Week's Question: Two of the authors on this week's list have been on the American Library Association's list of the 100 Most Challenged Books in the last two decades. One appears under a pseudonym and one whose book was frequently challenged saw the same book on the list of Top Novels of the 20th Century. (And most of those were, of course, challenged, too.) Who are they?

Answer to Last Week's Question: "People need trouble— a little frustration to sharpen the spirit on, toughen it. Artists do; I don't mean you need to live in a rat hole or gutter, but you have to learn fortitude, endurance. Only vegetables are happy." William Faulkner, whose works faced frequent banning, would probably agree that people on both sides of book banning controversies need to endure each other's fortitude and frustration. Librarians also heed Faulkner's advice to writers: "Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad. See how they do it." We fill our libraries with books to help the next new writers, thinkers, and voters to do just that.

This Week in Reading Sept 30 - Oct 6

Quite a week, indeed. There are more Nobel prizewinners this week, two presidents (of different countries), a couple of literary giants known as much for their erudition and charm as talk show guests as for their writing, some other literary giants, and some bestselling women authors.

It's also Banned Books Week this week and October is National Book Month and National Reading Group Month, as well. It's also the anniversary of the founding of the American Library Association and the international writers group, PEN. Among the authors born this week is the creator of the world's first major encyclopedia, so librarians are celebrating. It's even a chance to bring out the tried and true, but favorite, quotations about reading.

This week's question: This is Taz, the blog dog's, favorite quotation. Which author, born this week, said it? "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read."

Answer to last week's question: George and Ira Gershwin won the Pulitizer Prize for their 1931 musical "Of Thee I Sing." The show satirized presidential politics and included a poke about the Supreme Court with the question "What is more important - justice or corn muffins?" For more about the show see the Library of Congress web page about it, or better yet, read it. It's the month to do so.

This Week in Reading September 23 - 29

There are three Nobel prizewinners born this week, Wiliam Faulkner, T.S. Eliot, and Enrico Fermi, but many of the other Americans this week are Pulitzer prizewinners, too: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Elmer Rice, Jane Smiley, as well as George Gershwin, Red Smith, and Al Capp. But then, there are usually Pulitzer prizewinners every week as there are so many categories of writing; Pulitzers are given for individual works but Nobels are given for a lifetime's body of work.

Answer to Last Week's Question: The American Library Association's Office of Intellectual Freedom's Banned Books Week is traditionally the last week of September which would be this week, but this year it is extended from Saturday, September 29, until Saturday, October 6. We'll post a list of some of the most banned books next week that you can read from our library.

This Week's Question: For what work did George Gershwin receive his Pulitizer Prize?

This Week in Reading September 16 - 22

Authors born this week include names whose work you were probably assigned to read in school, William Golding, Upton Sinclair, Francis Parkman, Samuel Johnson, and poet William Carlos Williams. But it also gives us names of the authors we'd read without anyone asking us to, masters of imagination and suspense like H.G. Wells and Stephen King.

It's also a good week to read about civil rights because the United States Constitution was signed on September 17, 1787. In January the library will host a presentation and series of sessions with Dave Kluge, the author of The People's Guide to the United States Constitution, which is being published on Constitution Day this week. (Watch this space for more details as they become available.) Also think about those who have been prevented from enjoying such rights until declared free and about other countries whose people later became free and independent.

This Week's Question: While thinking about civil rights, when is Banned Books Week going to be celebrated at this library and in bookstores?

Answer to Last Week's Question: In "James Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" Mark Twain responded to critics in nineteenth century America and England who had called James Fenimore Cooper an artist based on their seemingly numerical assessments of his work. Tongue thoroughly in cheek, he says "Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in 'The Deerslayer', and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offenses against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record."

Among these offenses: "That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere"; "that the personages in a tale, being both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there"; "the author shall ... use the right word, not its second cousin"; "eschew surplusage"; and "use good grammar." He goes to list other offenses and ends with "Counting these out, what's left is Art. I think we must all admit that."

Today's critics, however, have begun to look anew at Cooper's work and, as much as I agree with Twain, they say he was satirizing the pedestrian styles of literary criticism at the time, not the author per se. Some are re-assessing Cooper's importance to American literature. Coming soon to both libraries is Wayne Franklin's James Fenimore Cooper: the early years, the first of two such planned volumes.