Category: words

Malerba, a book which recounts the life, crimes and education of Giuseppe Grassonelli – an erstwhile ‘savage criminal’ by his own admission – emerged triumphant in this year’s [Leonardo] Sciascia-Racalmare prize on Sunday” – defeating a book by the daughter of a judge who was assassinated for pursuing the Mafia.

“If we start categorizing books as appropriate for readers of certain ages, we are running a huge risk of missing wonderful opportunities for discovery and exploration. And children are fantastic at self-policing their own reading.”

“A survey by John Burke at Miami University found that 109 libraries in the US had a makerspace or were close to opening one. Others are hosting events like Wikipedia edit-a-thons, where residents plumb the library’s resources to create articles about local history. (One library even has its own farm.) This ferment is attracting patrons; a Pew Internet survey found that these new modes bring in folks who normally shun libraries, typically men and people with limited education.”

Esther Freud: “Sitting down at your desk every day is an appointment with doubt; that is the nature of writing. But eventually I just had to admit that it wasn’t working; there just wasn’t enough happening to keep me interested.”

“Amis went on to say that he felt the publisher had failed to understand the main character in the novel.”

“Her drive to observe her own perception, to take an ice-core sample of an instant, or of a day, or of a memory, is at heart a restorative gesture in the face of her era’s intensified speed, instability, and violence.”

“It’s this prose style that has made Orwell the Supreme Mediocrity – and like all long-lasting leaders, he has an ideology to justify his rule.”

Ed Hermance, the founder of Giovanni’s Room, “said the new operator had a good chance of succeeding because of the array of items the store will offer.”

“I really resent being told by swathes and swathes of people – and not just people, but people who ostensibly like books and read them – that a book is good, only to obtain it and find myself confronted with free-market capitalism funneled into something completely unremarkable, and I also really resent the alienation that goes along with that.”

“He’s interested in titles that teach — books with a moral. And that grows in part out of the three years he spent in prison on a gun-possession charge.”