Eliza McGraw tells the story of the Pack Horse Library, a WPA program that served the isolated, book-starved towns of the eastern Kentucky mountains.
Category: words
Angolan Author Wins €100K International Prize Chosen By Libraries
José Eduardo Agualusa and translator Daniel Hahn share the International Dublin Literary Award 2017 for A General Theory of Oblivion, which was a finalist for this year’s Man Booker International Prize. Candidates for the IDLA are nominated by librarians and library readers all over the world.
The Importance Of Historical Fiction In Times Of Historical Turmoil
“Reading historical fiction not only puts our current events into a historical context, but also helps us understand and imagine and empathize with what people lived through in other times and places. It reminds us that other people, ordinary people, real people, have lived and survived and fallen in love, but also, died in these times of political turmoil before us.”
When Secondary Characters Get Novels Of Their Own
Anjum Hasan looks at the phenomenon of “minor-character elaboration” – from Jean Rhys’s The Wide Sargasso Sea (the story of Jane Eyre‘s madwoman in the attic) to Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad (how Ulysses’s wife and queen passed the twenty years waiting for his return) and onward. (Hasan also includes Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, though we think that wasn’t the same thing.)
The Word ‘Interesting’ Has Lost Most Of Its Interest
Chris Townsend: “If we really believe that something is interesting, then surely its interestingness should be self-evident. Must it really be flagged up, in a flagrantly unsophisticated way? I wouldn’t write that I merely liked something, nor that a thing holds intellectual appeal to me, at least not without validating that statement. Yet, ‘interesting’ often sneaks by without making a case for itself. And once you start seeing it in your own work, you notice it everywhere. Interesting, despite its insufficiency as an autonomous unit, has a tenacious hold on writing and on everyday speech.”
Does It Matter If There Are Publishers Who Are Canadian?
Interestingly, governments make little fuss about nationality when they hand out money to the interactive industries: various federal and provincial tax credits – and even some grants – are available to any company as long as the jobs go to Canadian workers and Canadian consumers have access to the content thus created. There it’s all about employment; on the publishing side, it’s all about “telling Canadian stories to Canadians.”
Arundhati Roy Has A New Novel (If That’s What You Can Call It)
“More than a novel, this book wants to be an offering. It isn’t concerned with the conventional task (or power) of fiction to evoke the texture and drama of consciousness. Instead, it acts like a companion piece to Roy’s political writings—collected in books such as The Algebra of Infinite Justice (2001) and Walking With the Comrades (2011). It tours India’s fault lines, as Roy has, from the brutal suppression of tribal populations to the 2002 pogrom against Muslims in Gujarat.”
Here’s The Reason The Roxane Gay-Written Marvel Comic Was Canceled
And no, it wasn’t “diversity.” Nope – it’s a system of how comic books are sold, “a system that rewards the status quo, instead of taking risks and breaking new ground.”
How A Man Who Hadn’t Finished A Book In 35 Years Became A Reader
It all began with a conversation with his daughter about craft. “It doesn’t just happen?’ he asked. I clenched my fingers into my palms. ‘No,’ I told him. ‘I don’t just create something in one sitting.’ Finally, I told him that if he tried to read, he’d understand better.”
Translating Jokes When There Are Simply No Words
Translator Jessica Cohen, who along with author David Grossman just won the Man Booker International Prize for A Horse Walks Into a Bar: “Obviously if you have to explain something, it’s not funny. There were some cases like that where I managed to come up with a kind of equivalent. Some things we just had to drop.”