Librarians love Obama

The Minnesota Post writes: "Librarians have a few reasons to love Obama, including the fact that he gave libraries a shout-out in his weekly address on Jan. 3: "To make America, and our children, a success in this new global economy, we will build 21st century classrooms,labs, and libraries." And unlike Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, he has never been known to try to ban a book not even "The Case against Barack Obama".

Obama also supports public access to publicly funded research which also assists developing countries access to information. In this case, the open access to US Research echoes the comments of Kim Carr in 2008 and which underpins a key section of the Cutler Innovation report.

Professor Mary Beard in her UK Times Literary Supplement blog contemplates why Gordon Brown is like the Emperor Tiberius?

"It's always nice when your old students put what you taught them to profitable use. Novelist, stand-up comedian and young polymath, Natalie Haynes read Classics in Cambridge and once upon a time took my third-year course on the Roman emperor (or, to be precise, 'The Roman emperor: construction and deconstruction of an image' which did quite a lot of comparison between political power in the Roman world and power in our own). Hence a smile comes over me to see her writing a classical op-ed piece in today's Times. Her theme? Which modern politician is like which Roman emperor?

She scores a few nice hits. Obama is the modern Titus, the golden boy of the Flavian dynasty, everyone's favourite-- until he died just two years into his reign. (Though she doesnt mention that in the course of his rise, young Titus destroyed the Jewish Temple and paraded the menorah and its other sacred objects as spoils through the streets of Rome -- which would hardly have endeared him to New York democrats.) And Gordon Brown is the morose, suspicious and hypocritical Tiberius. (Though, so far as I know, Brown doesnt enjoy underwater sex games with little boys on some sunny island.)

But often the memory of the young doesn't go quite far back enough to hit on the most apposite or revealing match."

Let's face it, after 40 you're past it

Robert McCrum writing in the UK Observer: "The sudden flurry of interest in Diana Athill after her memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, won the biography category of the Costa Prize will no doubt sponsor some wry comments from the author, a woman well-versed in the beaten way of books. At 91, Athill will know that, whatever else you may want to say about her, she is a) knocking on a bit, and consequently b) defying literary gravity. Old people, in general, don't have literary careers.........

The truth about most so-called literary careers is that they last 10 years, if you're lucky. Look at Jane Austen, Charles Dickens and Joseph Conrad. They all had "careers", but when you look more closely at the trajectory of literary success, you find that its parabola describes, at best, a decade of creativity. Austen had completed the drafts of her greatest books by the age of 30. Dickens's supreme decade was 1850 (David Copperfield) to 1860-61".

Sir John Mortimer's fetish for fun and spanking

The UK Evening Standard notes that "Mortimer's death will be keenly felt at El Vino's, the Fleet Street wine bar. "John Mortimer's glorious Rumpole of the Bailey stories frequently refer to 'Pomeroys' - modelled on El Vino," Sir David Mitchell, El Vino's proprietor, wrote in his memoirs. One of his greatest pleasures was starting each day with a glass of champagne before breakfast. "When I mentioned that on a radio show once, I was asked if I had taken counselling for it," said Sir John.

Despite failing health, he remained active well into later life and would often attend parties in a wheelchair. He had a love of gossip and was often the subject of it himself. It emerged in 2005 that he belonged to the ranks of Englishmen of letters, such as Paul Johnson-and Kenneth Tynan, who had a passion for spanking. This was attributed to his upbringing. Among Mortimer's ex-mistresses were the writer Molly Parkin and the actress Shirley Anne Field.

Field was 26 when she started her affair with Mortimer, then married to the novelist Penelope, his first wife. "He was fun, enormously charming and made me feel so special and safe," Field said. "However, he had this thing about spanking and hairbrushes! I thought, God, what a strange one we've got here!"

The Tournament of Books

I hadn't come across this jousting "tournament" of the best of the best book prizes. The Morning News reports: "we mention this because the Tournament of Books is one of those concepts that only could have been conceived and subsequently executed by people who used to drink a lot but now drink considerably less. In the absence of too much alcohol, it never would have occurred to us that we should take 16 of the most celebrated and highly touted novels of the year, seed them in a March Madness-type bracket, conscript them into a “Battle Royale of Literary Excellence,” and, in honor of David Sedaris’s brother, present the author of the winning book a live rooster.

And if we hadn’t eventually reduced our pint consumption, we never would have found the energy, desire, and increased number of waking daytime hours to actually do it. This will be our fifth year at this and if you ask the previous champions-David Mitchell, Ali Smith, Cormac McCarthy, and Junot Díaz-we believe they would tell you the Rooster is a badge they wear proudly on their highly decorated chests, somewhere between the ones for orienteering and basketry.

No author asks to have his work pitted against the work of another, but that is what all awards do, in effect. The Nobel Prize is an Olympiad of words. The Man Booker is the Premier League Championship of Letters. Everyone knows that, behind the scenes, the National Book Award is both arbitrary and brutal, sort of like Keeping Up With the Kardashians meets Ultimate Fighting. The Tournament of Books is every bit as arbitrary, but we have simply lifted the curtain so the reader can actually see the caged octagon in which the books meet, barefoot and snarling."

The Morning News 2009 Tournament of Books Contenders

The White Tiger, Aravind Adiga

2666, Roberto Bolano

A Partisan’s Daughter, Louis de Bernieres

The Northern Clemency, Philip Hensher

The Lazarus Project, Aleksandar Hemon

My Revolutions, Hari Kunzru

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, E. Lockhart

Shadow Country, Peter Matthiessen

The Dart League King, Keith Lee Morris

A Mercy, Toni Morrison

Steer Towards Rock, Fae Myenne Ng

Netherland, Joseph O’Neill

City of Refuge, Tom Piazza

Home, Marilynne Robinson

Harry, Revised, Mark Sarvas

Top 10 US out of print books of 2008

The BookFinder.com team lists the top 10 most sought-after out-of-print books in America in 2008. These begin with:

Once a Runner: A Novel (1978) by John L. Parker, Jr. The cult classic distance running novel, coming back into print April 2009; Sex (1992) by Madonna, The pop icon’s book of erotic photos, a perennial favorite; Promise Me Tomorrow (1984) by Nora Roberts, An early novel that the bestselling romance novelist refuses to reprint, describing it as “mediocre”; and

Murmurs of Earth: The Voyager Interstellar Record (1978) by Carl Sagan, a document from the first great era of space exploration.

The love of reading

In a rare version of her essay, Virginia Woolf muses on the complex pleasure and art of being a reader

Folger Shakespeare Library Expands Access to Digital Collection

The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, home to the world’s largest collection of Shakespeare materials, is expanding access to its digital collection by offering free online access to over 20,000 images from the library’s holdings. The digital image collection includes books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and 218 of the Folger’s pre-1640 quarto editions of the works of William Shakespeare. Users can now examine these collection items in detail while accessing the Folger’s rare materials from desktop anywhere in the world. ...

The Folger’s digital image collection provides resources for users to view multiple images side by side, save their search results, create permanent links to images, and perform other tasks through a free software program.

Ernest Hemingway and Cuba

The UK Guardian reports that "Cuba has begun allowing electronic access to more than 3,000 documents by Ernest Hemingway, most of which are unpublished. The 3,197 documents, which include a screenplay for The Old Man and the Sea and draft fragments of his novels and stories as well as coded details of his second world war exploits, were scanned as part of a 2002 agreement between the New York-based Social Science Research Council and Cuban national heritage authorities. They were left by the Nobel prize winner at Finca Vigía, outside Havana, where he lived from 1939 until 1960."

Your life story in six words

The frisky.com blog reports that "a couple years ago, the storytelling magazine Smith issued a challenge to its readers: “Can you tell your life story in six words?” Inspired by the legend that Ernest Hemingway once won a bet that he could complete a story in just six words (His story: “For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.”), the magazine’s call for mini-memoirs was answered with thousands of submissions and resulted in the New York Times bestseller Not Quite What I Was Planning.

Because so many people’s submissions dealt with love and heartbreak, Smith followed up with the newly published book, Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak. We talked to Smith co-founder Larry Smith about what will get your story included in the next book and how his own love story goes. What’s your favorite memoir in this collection?

One of my favorites, and I know it’s an absolutely true story because I happen to know the writer, is: “Monogamists meet at sex party. Marry.”

Bookboon

As the controversy over the cost of student textbooks rages in America, and will be refocused here when the academic year starts in late February, more will be looking to initiatives like Bookboon.co.uk, an online publisher of free books. "You can download the books for free and without providing any personal details. The books are provided in PDF so that you can print the books and/or read them offline. In the books there are relevant advertisements on every third page in average.

Bookboon’s students´ section provides you with free students´ books which will give you a concise and precise overview of a given subject, such as Macroeconomics or Chemistry. The books are targeted towards engineering students, IT students, and students of economy & finance.”

Quote of the Week

"The mania for phrases has dried up your heart" Flaubert to Flaubert

Odd Book Title

Female Tent Ritual. Anon. Manchester, Independent Order of Rechabites, 1912.

Debbie Campbell of the National Library, reports that Libraries Australia has no copy recorded in Australian libraries.

Pun of the Week

The list of the ten most neurotic people is called "The Best Stressed List"