Tag Archives: Reading

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Film & Movies, Libraries, Pleasures

Your Literary Guide to the 2023 Oscars ‹ Literary Hub

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By Eliza Smith, March 10, 2023

From article…

Sure, we’re a website about books, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get in on the Oscars fun, too. (Exhibit A: If they gave Oscars to books, our 2022 nominees.) And while there are few adaptations in this year’s lineup, we’ll still be tuning in on Sunday to celebrate storytelling, judge the Academy’s taste, and perhaps witness some live drama. In the meantime, we’re recommending the books and films you should read and watch next for each Best Picture contender. Follow along with us on Twitter on Sunday at 8 pm ET!

Source: Your Literary Guide to the 2023 Oscars ‹ Literary Hub

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Pleasures, Podcasts

How to organize your books — even when you have thousands of them – The Washington Post

Serious book lovers share their strategies for displaying their collections and keeping all those titles from taking over

By Rosa Cartagena, March 3, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EST

Monica Chavez, pictured, built her home library with her husband. They chipped away at it on weekends for two years. (Monica Chavez)

Here’s a riddle for you: When a book editor and political science professor downsize from a six-bedroom house in the suburbs to a 900-square-foot Manhattan apartment, how many books will they have to get rid of?

For Matthew Budman (the editor) and his wife, Cristina Beltrán (the professor), the answer was a staggering 12,000.

“We had, you know, giant yard sales, and we had people carting off thousands of books,” says Budman, author of “Book Collecting Now: The Value of Print in a Digital Age.”

The transition was tough, but he says it allowed him to recognize that quantity isn’t everything. Now, he keeps roughly 3,000 titles at home (plus thousands more in storage).

Source: How to organize your books — even when you have thousands of them – The Washington Post

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Times They Are A-Changing, Web & Technology, Weblogs (Blogs)

Introducing the new EPUB reader for e-books at the Library of Congress | The Signal

Published February 2, 2023 by Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Kristy Darby, a Digital Collections Specialist at the Library of Congress.

Bird Species: How They Arise, Modify and Vanish is now available to view in the new EPUB reader.

The Open Access Books Collection on loc.gov includes approximately 6,000 contemporary open access e-books covering a wide range of subjects, including history, music, poetry, technology, and works of fiction.

All books in this collection were published under open access licenses, meaning the e-books are available to use and reuse according to the terms of the licenses. Users can access the e-books in the Open Access Books Collection by reading directly online in a browser or downloading the book as a PDF or EPUB file.

Green book cover for Bird Species: How They Arise, Modify and Vanish, edited by Dieter TietzeBird Species: How They Arise, Modify and Vanish is now available to view in the new EPUB reader.

When we first made open access e-books available on loc.gov, titles were available for download in either PDF or EPUB format, but PDF was the only one available for reading directly on the website; loc.gov did not support viewing EPUBs in the browser, and they were only available for download. As many books were available in both formats or in PDF only, this ensured most titles were viewable directly on the website.

However, we recognized an increase in titles available in EPUB only so we are happy to share the news that an EPUB viewer was launched on loc.gov. The viewer makes EPUBs available for reading on loc.gov and provides a richer interface for users.

Source: Introducing the new EPUB reader for e-books at the Library of Congress | The Signal

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Libraries, Pleasures, Times They Are A-Changing, Web & Technology

Learning to Love Paper Books Again | Tor.com

By James Davis Nicoll, Mon Jan 23, 2023 12:00pm

Photo: Gülfer ERGİN [via Unsplash]

I was an early adopter of ebooks, in part because of my terrible eyesight, but mostly because I happened to break into reviewing just before the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Fear of contaminated packages increased shipping time for cases of manuscripts from four days to forty. Electronic books (which in those long-ago days were really just doc files) provided instant gratification.

At one point, I even considered ditching paper entirely in favor of electronic formats. In addition to the instant gratification angle, one does not have to worry about ebooks overloading the floors of one’s residence. One can carry a few thousand ebooks in one’s pocket. One can—and for me, this is the killer app—adjust font size. Ebooks are great, and I would defend them to your last breath.

Source: Learning to Love Paper Books Again | Tor.com

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Memories & History, Politics, Times They Are A-Changing

Banned and Challenged: Restricting access to books in the U.S. : NPR

A series on books that are facing challenges to their placement in libraries in some areas around the U.S.

Special Series

Banned and Challenged: Restricting access to books in the U.S.

First in series…

Author George M. Johnson: We must ensure access to those who need these stories most

All Boys Aren’t Blue, a memoir for teens and young adults about growing up Black and queer, appeared on many “best books” lists when published in 2020. It’s being challenged in some U.S. counties.

Source: Banned and Challenged: Restricting access to books in the U.S. : NPR

Arts & Humanities, Books & Reading, Current Affairs, Libraries, Politics, Science & Health

How the pandemic affected our approach to reading and interpretation of books | The Conversation

Published: December 6, 2022 12.24pm EST, By Ben Davies and Christina Lupton

GoodStudio/Shutterstock

During the pandemic, reading took on new meaning. People turned to books for comfort. Some read to confront difficult issues, especially following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. Others used reading as a way to care for their children in locked-down houses.

Sales figures and lending data showed a huge spike in people buying and borrowing books. We wanted to follow the stories of real readers, and our new book uses a rare combination of literary analysis and qualitative interviewing to capture these dynamics of reception.

While many commentators at the beginning of the pandemic endorsed reading as a straightforward way to relax, our readers showed that the practice morphed and took on new forms and meanings.

Based on hundreds of survey responses and hours of reader interviews from Denmark and the UK, the study makes the interpretation of literature something dynamic and ongoing. And it suggests that readers themselves are agents of meaning, even in the case of novels that seem the most stable in our culture.

Source: How the pandemic affected our approach to reading and interpretation of books