My grandparents had them. They lined the den in their modest Indiana home. In the garage, outdated sets were stacked neatly in boxes. Every year, salesmen came to the doors of homes and schools peddling their wares. But all that is over. Encyclopedia Brittanica has announced that they will no longer offer their product in…
Recently, Laura McKenna, reporter for the Atlantic, wrote about her frustrations in trying to find scholarly articles without the access afforded to people with university affiliations. If you do not possess a college identification card, the hundreds of thousands of full-text articles from databases like JSTOR are either very expensive or inaccessible (McKenna shelled out…
Read More "Free the Research! Make Academic Journals Accessible to All"
Ever wonder what your favorite, or most haunting, characters from literature might actually look like? Many writers give readers vivid descriptions but very few of their characters have ever "sat" for a portrait. Artist, avid reader, and blogger Brian Joseph Davis came up with the idea to create these "composite" sketches of literary characters, using…
Read More "Ten Character Sketches, Sketched: Portraits of Literature’s Most Infamous and Memorable"
Recently, the blog Brain Pickings wrote a piece titled "The Greatest Books of All Time, as Voted by 125 Famous Authors." Well, apparently none of these "famous authors" consulted some of the people who had previously commented on their selections at Amazon.com. Here is a sampling of their....err.... opinions.... 1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov "I…
Read More "Top Ten Classics Dissed: Amazon Commenters Fight Back!"
Recently, Flavorwire published an article titled "10 Legendary Bad Girls of Literature." They made some worthy choices: Sappho, Dorothy Parker, and Anais Nin among them. While these names are well-known, there are other notable women with less fame who also deserve some accolades. 1. Jeannette Winterson Winterson is not unknown, of course, but she ought…
Read More "“Don’t Look at Me in That Tone of Voice”: Ten Lesser-Known Women Writers Who Kick Butt"
When it comes to Valentine's Day, do you find yourself mulling over the remaining dozen or so cards left at the drugstore, trying to decide whether the kitten with the googly-eyes exclaiming "You're purrrrrrrrrrrrrrfect!" is any better or worse than the over-sized card with a creepily happy train chugging out the words, "I chooo-choo-choose YOU!"…
Read More "Top Ten Love Lines From Literature for Your Valentine"
Never heard of William Shakespeare's Coriolanus? You're not alone. In Shakespeare's day, it was never performed. Today it is rarely, if ever, staged or taught. But soon, two of Hollywood's most respected actors, Ralph Fiennes and Vanessa Redgrave, will try to rectify that situation. T. S. Eliot once called Coriolanus Shakespeare's greatest tragic achievement, superior…
Read More "Film Based on Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” Opens 2/14"
We all have created mental landscapes of the literary places we love... Pemberly, Maycomb, West Egg. But artist Guy Laramee has taken his vision of places and things to construct three dimensional canvasses out of actual books. By pressing books together with clamps, the pages and covers become hard as wood. Laramee then uses standard…
