What does this perilous time of disease and destruction ask of us as readers and writers?
Three new books spotlight the power of the written word to foster creative responses to confinement and oppression — and to inspire deep change within us.
Azar Nafisi’s Read Dangerously: The Subversive Power of Literature in Troubled Times, Elena Ferrante’s In The Margins: On The Pleasures of Reading and Writing and Anna Quindlen’s Write for Your Life are all about the transformative possibilities that underlie political, social and personal crisis.
Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…
“Book bans are about limiting kids’ freedom to read and teachers’ freedom to teach”
By Kenny Stancil, Published May 12, 2022 5:00AM (EDT)
A big selection of books in English language are on sale, for example in the ‘Fantasy and Science Fiction’ section at the ‘English Bookshop’ of culture department store Dussmann in Berlin, Germany, 25 August 2016. More and more readers choose the original versions of the books in English. (Jens Kalaene/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The American Library Association, the American Federation of Teachers, and more than two dozen other organizations on Tuesday formed a coalition to fight the far-right’s record-breaking censorship barrage—wherein nearly 1,600 books were targeted for removal from public shelves and schools across the United States in 2021.
The goal of Unite Against Book Bans—which also includes the Authors Guild and prominent publishers such as Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster—is “to empower individuals and communities to fight censorship and protect the freedom to read,” according to the ALA.
“This is a dangerous time for readers and the public servants who provide access to reading materials,” Deborah Caldwell-Stone, director of the ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, said in a statement. “Readers, particularly students, are losing access to critical information, and librarians and teachers are under attack for doing their jobs.”
Dedication Lincoln Memorial, [5/30/22]. Photo by National Photo Company, [1922 May 30]. //hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/npcc.23029
At the end of the month, we mark the centennial of the Lincoln Memorial. This monument to our 16th President was dedicated on Memorial Day (then Decoration Day) in 1922 and its one hundred year birthday falls on Memorial Day this year. The Lincoln Memorial is visited by millions every year in Washington, D.C., and has been the site for many memorable speeches and events over time. The dedication ceremony drew quite a crowd. The dedication ceremony drew quite a crowd. On May 30, 1922, approximately 50,000 people gathered around the base of the memorial and some along the Reflecting Pool, as seen in the photo…
Editor’s Note: Read more, see link below for original item…
The Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin. James Colley dreamed of a home library with ‘a ladder that glides along the impossibly high shelves filled with more books than you could read in 10 lifetimes’. Photograph: Paul McErlane/The Guardian
I used to dream of owning a home with a library like the one in Beauty and the Beast. A ladder that glides along the impossibly high shelves filled with more books than you could read in 10 lifetimes. That was before I understood that the idea that you would have one house that you were able to live in for many years (and god forbid, add shelving) would itself be a fairytale.
Packing up these books, disassembling their low-grade flatpack bookcases, hauling them across the city and interstate, and trying to reestablish this budding library time and time again has made me thoroughly fall out of love with my old dream.
I do not wish to rid myself of every book, but I no longer wish to keep every book. At some point, I crossed the line from reader to hoarder and I need to go back. These are the books that do not pass the Marie Kondo test.
These books spark no joy. If anything, the many bookmarks still stuck less than halfway through them conjure embarrassment. I know I’m never going back to finish them. They know I’m never going back to finish them. It is time to end this charade.
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