Today is the last day of Banned Books Week, which we’ve been celebrating here on the blog daily, in various ways and from various perspectives because it is a broad topic to consider. You would think that since the South kicked off the Banned Books Week-bonanza last week that I would have something to say … Continue reading Saturdays @ the South: Comfort Reads
I hope loyal readers of this blog have figured out by now that we here at the Peabody Library love books. We love reading, pairing great books with the right reader, defending the reader’s right to read and talking about cool things in the book world. We also love movies (bonus if they’re literary adaptations) … Continue reading Saturdays @ the South: The Readers’ Advisory will be televised…
So because my birthday was last week, Stephen King made an appearance in Cambridge to moderate a discussion with Lee Child, author of the much-beloved Jack Reacher novels (at least, that’s what my dad told me–not because Lee Child just released a new book). The event was a wonderful one for fans of Child and King … Continue reading “Tom Cruise isn’t coming to steal your books”: A word about adaptations
As an historian, I love good, detailed footnotes; the kind that not only tell you where an author came across a piece of information, but offers anecdotes, qualifies the point in some way, or generally just feels like you have been privy to some kind of secret insider information–like the author has taken you aside … Continue reading Footnotes in books…A bibliographic If/Then…
I’ll be honest, between the time difference and the different publishing schedule in the UK, today’s list of new releases came as quite a bewildering surprise to me. Which may speak to precisely how exciting an existence, I lead, but nevertheless, I hope this list brings you the same level of wonder and excitement it … Continue reading Five Book Friday!
This week’s postcard comes to you from the British Museum, home of the score of Handel’s Messiah and the world’s oldest known chess set and the ever-contentious Elgin Marbles. But I wasn’t there to see any of these wonderful displays. I was there because I was in exactly the right place at precisely the right time … Continue reading Postcards from London: The Best Day Ever.
In the past, I have been skeptical of page-to-screen adaptations…as discussed previously, it’s always difficult to balance expectations with reality, or to find the book that you read in the show or film that a production company put on the screen. But, as was proven with the super-terrific Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, good adaptations do exist, … Continue reading More Books On the Screen…