Category: Literature and Books

  • UOG Press children’s book series celebrates language and music

    UOG Press children’s book series celebrates language and music

    The University of Guam Press is launching the Kantan CHamoru Children’s Books Series at 2:30pm Saturday, Nov. 4, at the Main Pavilion of the CHamoru Village in Hågatña. “These books reintroduce long beloved songs to young readers, but they also introduce them to new musical voices who are carrying on the tradition,” Kiana Brown, project…

  • Literature Machines

    Literature Machines

    Do You Remember Being Born?Sean MichaelsAstra House, $27 (cloth) Death of an AuthorStephen MarchePushkin Industries, $3.99 (eBook) Air Age Blueprint K Allado-McDowellIgnota Books, £13.99 (paper) The Italian novelist Italo Calvino was unusually optimistic about the invention of a “literature machine.” In his 1967 essay “Cybernetics and Ghosts,” he imagines a computer that would be “capable…

  • Comic books can be used for serious learning in schools

    Comic books can be used for serious learning in schools

    I am writing on the topic of genres of literature at Monticello High School and what students are reading within the classroom. Currently, students at Monticello High School are reading traditional and classic novels. While this is important, it does not help all students become engaged in learning. Students deserve to read different pieces of…

  • Sinclair Lewis’ novel ‘Main Street’ is published Oct. 23, 1920

    Sinclair Lewis’ novel ‘Main Street’ is published Oct. 23, 1920

    By all accounts, Sinclair Lewis was an outsider in his home town. Perhaps because of that, he took comfort in reading as much as he could. Lewis was born on Feb. 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. He was the youngest of three boys. Their father, Edwin J. Lewis, was the small town’s doctor; their…

  • The Bookmark S5E7: Southern gothic – Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library

    Listen Now Download MP3 Subscribe via iTunes Subscribe via RSS What exactly does a “gothic” novel entail? Creepy, isolated mansions, long-buried secrets, brooding characters, inexplicable events and possible murder. Autumn was interested in and encouraged Miranda to read What Kind of Mother by Clay McLeod Chapman. We’ve heard this book described as a “twisted Pinocchio.”…

  • Nobel Literature Prize Winner Is Hailed as ‘Very Much a Catholic Writer’

    Nobel Literature Prize Winner Is Hailed as ‘Very Much a Catholic Writer’

    Norwegian writer Jon Fosse poses in Oslo, Norway, Sept. 6, 2019. (Photo: OSV News NTB/Hakon Mosvold Larsenvia handout via Reuters) by Carol Zimmermann, Senior National Correspondent WASHINGTON — Jon Fosse, a Norwegian novelist, poet, and playwright who converted to Catholicism from atheism 11 years ago, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature Oct. 5 “for…

  • New and Noteworthy Children’s and YA Books: October 2023

    New and Noteworthy Children’s and YA Books: October 2023

    As the weather cools down, cozy up with new books out this month, including a middle grade novel set in 1970s Brooklyn, a chapter book about an investigating duck’s first big case, a nonfiction work highlighting the variety of brain functions, and many more. Picture Books and Early Readers The Case of the Strange Splash…

  • Exhibits and collectors editions mark 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio

    Exhibits and collectors editions mark 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio

    NEW YORK — On the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, rare originals are being displayed and publishers are offering collectors editions of Shakespeare’s plays, including one that sells for $1,500. Scholars believe that between 200-300 copies still survive from the late 1623 release of “Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories & Tragedies.” Presided over by…

  • Salman Rushdie: allow writers to create characters outside of their own experience

    Salman Rushdie: allow writers to create characters outside of their own experience

    Salman Rushdie has said that if authors are only allowed to write characters that mirror themselves and their own experiences, “the art of the novel ceases to exist”. “If we’re in a world where only women can write about women and only people from India can write about people from India and only straight people…

  • Who’s your favorite Minnesota writer?

    Who’s your favorite Minnesota writer?

    “What about Lorna Landvik?” you asked. Garrison Keillor? Wanda Gag? Susan Power? “Good point,” we answered. When I wrote about a “Literary Legends” poll by stoicquotes.com, purporting to determine the favorite author in each state, I suggested a bunch of alternatives to the poll’s choice, Sinclair Lewis. Many of you suggested alternate alternatives — so…