I’m guessing by now that readers of Free For All recognize that we here at the blog love books, and reading and clearly, we love talking about books. For a while (OK, still, but we’ve managed to control ourselves recently) blogger-in-chief Arabella and I couldn’t stop talking about Susanna Clarke’s wonderfully magical tome, Jonathan Strange … Continue reading A Saturdays @ the South Bibliophile Confession: When book lovers don’t love your book back…→
It’s that time of year again… Downton Abbey season is upon us. And while every season of this marvelous historic drama has been memorial, the knowledge that this is the final season makes every episode, every lingering glance, ever caustic put-down, and every jauntily-angled hat that much more meaningful. The season has already … Continue reading “We must always travel with hope”…A Downton Abbey Edition of If/Then→
We’re moving our weekly wrap-up of our favorite reads of 2015 up a few days, since the holidays are looming large at the end of the week. This week’s selection comes to you from the Main Library’s Circulation Desk…or, as I like to think of it, the All You Can Read Buffet. We hope … Continue reading Our Favorites: The Peabody Library’s Favorite Reads of 2015→
Good friends…they aren’t easy to find in this world. But good friends are often the ones who show you the sides of yourself that you didn’t know were there, and introduce you to books you might never have read. Take, for example, an exchange between myself, and our fabulous Saturday Blogger, who goes by the … Continue reading Genre Talk: On magic, dragons, and friendship…→
As many of you lovely patrons know, I am a student of the First World War. Now, this is not a topic that is generally applicable to everyday life…unless you use a spork on a daily basis. Because they were first conceived of and developed by the American Army in 1917. The more you know. But there … Continue reading On Bibliotherapy→
Today, we dip into our Bookish News file and pull up an editorial written by author Glen Duncan for The New York Times in October of 2011. The piece is, from its first sentence, a study in “nerd-baiting”, to borrow a phrase, though we should not ignore the charming threads of misogyny woven throughout the piece, beginning … Continue reading No-one Puts (zombie) Baby in a Corner…in defense of genre fiction (And some other things)→
I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this by now, but I really like books. A great deal. I wouldn’t say I like them more than most people…especially not in a crowded room….but that is what is great about working in a library. Not only am I surrounded by books (very friendly books, by the way), … Continue reading Staff (and Patron!) Recommendations!→
"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free." ~Frederick Douglass
