E-book Developments

In a move that could add to the book publishing world’s jitters about the effect of e-books on their business, author Stephen R. Covey has transferred the right to publish the electronic editions of two of his best-selling business books, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and Principle-Centered Leadership from Simon and Schuster to Rosetta Books. Rosetta, in turn will market these e-books exclusively through Amazon for use on the Kindle book reader. An article in the New York Times about this move says that Covey will garner a higher percentage of the profit with this new arrangement. Covey also has plans to publish the electronic versions of a number of his forthcoming books through Rosetta.

The whole issue about who has the rights to the electronic editions is apparently still up in the air. According to the Times article, “Many authors and agents say that because the contracts for older books do not explicitly spell out electronic rights, they reside with the author. Big publishing houses argue that clauses like ‘in book form’ or phrases that prohibit ‘competitive editions’ preclude authors from publishing e-books through other parties.”

Another element in this story is the effort by major publishers to curb the growing power of Amazon in the marketing of books. Stay tuned for later developments.

Rare Books at Harvard

Book lovers might enjoy this video of some of Harvard University's rare books holdings.

"A Book" by Hannah More

A Book

I'm a strange contradiction; I'm new, and I'm old,
I'm often in tatters, and oft decked with gold,
Though I never could read, yet lettered I'm found;
Though blind, I enlighten; though loose, I am bound,
I'm always in black, and I'm always in white
I'm grave and I'm gay, I am heavy and light --
In form too I differ, -- I'm thick and I'm thin
I've no flesh and no bones, yet I'm covered with skin;
I've more points than the compass, more stops than the flute;
I sing without voice, without speaking confute.
I'm English, I'm German, I'm French, and I'm Dutch.
Some love me too fondly, some slight me too much;
I often die soon, though I sometimes live ages,
And no monarch alive has so many pages.

By Hannah More

This is a page turner

Readers who would like to combine the pleasure of reading a traditional, beautifully illustrated book with the experience of using a cool online site might want to check out the Library of Congress's page turner website, which contains a handful of classic stories including The Arabian Nights and The Secret Garden.

Though the site mainly contains books of interest for younger readers, there are some that might appeal to those who are only young at heart. These include Dickens' A Christmas Carol and Poe's The Raven.

The cool technical part of all this is that the format is booklike--readers can turn pages back and forth. One can also adjust the size of the page.

Awful Library Books

Sometimes, at the Reference desk, a person will ask for a good book about such and such a topic. If I am feeling especially witty and the person asking the question seems to have a sense of humor, I sometimes say "We only have good books." Then I proceed to really answer the question. I may have to modify my responce as I have come across a site called Awful Library Books. Among the esoteric volumes mentioned are How to Preserve Animal and other Specimens in Clear Plastic and Knitting with Dog Hair. The real point of the site, however, is that public libraries need to weed their collections regularly, so that they don't have ten year old books about how to use a computer, etc.

Non-Fiction Books to Read Before You Die

To give the blog an energy boost, we're asking people to name non-fiction books they would recommend. As this will be a kinder, gentler poll, we'll probably expand the list to 25 books. We'd love to know which titles you'd come up with. Please leave your list in the comments.

To get things started, my 10 selections are listed below:

Gifts of the Jews—Thomas Cahill

A Short History of Nearly Everything—Bill Bryson
The Progressive Historians, by Richard Hofstadter

Blink—Malcolm Gladwell
The Tipping Point—Malcolm Gladwell
How to Ruin Your Life—Ben Stein
1776— David McCullough
On Writing—Stephen King
You Just Don’t Understand—Deborah Tannen
The Practice of Writing—David Lodge

Ah, the literary life...

So, you want to be an author. Before you quit your day job, check out this New Yorker article to see what you’re in for. This satiric piece take the form of a memo from an overwhelmed publisher’s representative, who doesn’t quite seem to know what book you wrote, detailing what you will be expected to do to market your book.
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The note includes a strong suggestion that you start a blog and pump out 600 words a day, making sure to include numerous pictures of yourself; then you should friend everyone you ever met on you Facebook page; also, you will be participating in the publisher’s RAP (Readings by Author by Proxy) program, in which, to save money, you will do readings at bookstores close to where you live, not only for your own book but others your publisher designates. The memo is loaded with indecipherable jargon-- e.g. “We like Reddit bites (they’re better than Delicious), because they max out the wiki snarls of RSS feeds, which means less jamming at the Google scaffold.”
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The piece presents a witty and insightful glimpse of the shaky state of the book publishing business today.

Emily Dickinson on Books

There is no frigate like a book

To take us lands away,

Nor any coursers like a page

Of prancing poetry.


This traverse may the poorest take

Without oppress of toll;

How frugal is the chariot

That bears a human soul!

And the Nobel Prize Goes to.....

The Nobel prize for literature this year goes to Herta Muller. I'll have to admit up front that I had never heard of her, but then again, some of the journalists reporting about her selection seemed unfamiliar with her writing.

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The committee that chooses the Nobel laureates in literature does not always opt for writers widely familiar in America; for instance, the list of the literature prize winners in the last ten years, include such names as Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio , Elfriede Jelinek, and Imre Kertész. It is perhaps more interesting that since 1901, when the Nobel prize for literature was first awarded, the committee has passed over such noted writers such as Mark Twain, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Frost, Jorge Luis Borges, Graham Greene, Vladimir Nabokov, and James Joyce.

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Herta Muller was born in 1953 in a German speaking section of Romania, and a number of her books deal with life under Communist rule of Nicolae Ceausescu in that country. After years of persecution and censorship in Romania, the author moved to Germany in 1987.

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Only 5 of Ms. Muller's 20 books have been translated into English so far, but with her new celebribrity, this seems likely to change. You can check the Nassau Library System's holdings for Herta Muller by clicking on this link.

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We'd be interested to know who you think deserves a Nobel prize for literature.

NYRB Blog

Just a quick note to let people know that the New York Review of Books now has a blog. What took them so long?

Dan Brown Plot Generator

The big day has come and gone. What day you ask? Publication day for Dan Brown's long awaited thriller The Lost Symbol, a follow-up to the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons.

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These three novels have a number of similarities-- an intrepid and intelligent hero meets up with an alluring heroine in a major city; the pair then deal with a conspiracy involving secret codes and gruesome villains. Also, the author uses an over-the-top writing style to unravel the plots at break-neck speed.

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Though Janet Maslin gave The Lost Symbol a good review in the New York Times, Brown's style has drawn some satiric comment, such as an article in the British newspaper the Telegraph about Dan Brown's worst sentences. My favorite among these sites though is the Dan Brown Plot Generator, which allows one to choose a city and an organization, press enter, and bingo-bango a plot appears.

I'm not sure Dan Brown is worrying too much about these sites, however, as The Lost Symbol sold a million copies the day it came out.

Trouble with Reading

The August 9 issue of the Los Angeles Times contains an article called “The Lost Art of Reading” by the paper’s books editor, David L. Ulin. He writes that “Sometime late last year -- I don't remember when, exactly -- I noticed I was having trouble sitting down to read.” He notes that with his particular job this is a problem.

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After giving some of his own background of being a voracious reader since he was a teenager, he asks “So what happened? It isn't a failure of desire so much as one of will. Or not will, exactly, but focus: the ability to still my mind long enough to inhabit someone else's world, and to let that someone else inhabit mine…. I pick up a book and read a paragraph; then my mind wanders and I check my e-mail, drift onto the Internet, pace the house before returning to the page."

Toward the end of the article Ulin says “How do we pause when we must know everything instantly? How do we ruminate when we are constantly expected to respond? How do we immerse in something (an idea, an emotion, a decision) when we are no longer willing to give ourselves the space to reflect?” The last line of the article sounds both mournful and heroic, “It's harder than it used to be, but still, I read.”

Interestingly, about a year ago Nicholas Carr had an article in The Atlantic called “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” that spoke about the same problem. We may have spotted a trend. I hate to say it, but maybe we need to turn off our computers and sit down with a book.

Book Blogs

For those of you who have read every post in the 10 Books Blog, but still crave more blogs about books, I've gathered some sites I hope you like. All have published posts in the last month. If you have a book blog you'd like to recommend, I'd love to hear about it.

Bookey Wookey

Bloggin’ about Books

Book Lust

A Common Reader

Ex Libris

Farm Lane Book Blog

A Girl Walks into a Bookstore

HPL Book Hunt

HPL Great Books Reading and Discussion Group

Incurable Logophilia

Inside Books

A Life in Books

Mysteries in Paradise

Paper Cuts

Reading Matters

Problems with Google Books Database

As someone who has had some success in using Google Books to locate the full text of certain books online and in finding which book contained a particular quote, I was surprised to see an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education called “Google's Book Search: A Disaster for Scholars.” In the piece, Geoffrey Nunberg chronicles a series of mistakes that appear when one searches in Google Books. These include having the wrong date of publication, completely inappropriate subject headings, and typos in titles.

I suppose it is not surprising that a project as huge as Google Books, which is being worked on at a rapid speed, is bound to have a few glitches, but this article suggests that mistakes go way beyond the “few glitches” stage.

Google Books is a valuable tool with great potential for making the information found in major libraries available to people around the world. Let’s hope that Google can locate and repair the errors in this database.

WSJ Article Says "Good Books Don't Have to be Hard"

I was happy to read a Wall Street Journal article by Lev Grossman entitled “Good Books Don't Have to Be Hard.”

Grossman says that most literary novels from the first half of the Twentieth Century-- by authors such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and Henry James—fall into a category literary scholars call Modernist. These authors thought that earlier novels were too neat, with all the loose ends tied up ends, and didn’t reflect how life really was. The Modernists wrote stories that sometimes didn’t have plots one could describe easily, and which sometimes seemed to end abruptly with no real conclusion. Some of their novels contained extensive inner monologues called stream of consciousness. Sometimes it was difficult to follow which character had said a particular line of dialog. Often these authors took pride in the fact that their books were difficult to read. They would not pander to the common reader. They tried to appeal to readers who didn’t mind doing some work.

The automobile, telephone, radio and psychoanalysis had revolutionized the way people of the Twentieth Century traveled, communicated and even how they thought. Modernist authors thought that these changes should be reflected in literature. Just as Modernist artists no longer felt compelled to paint “pretty pictures,” Modernist writers did not feel they needed to entertain.

Grossman writes that times have again changed, and good readable novels are back. He cites such authors as Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, and Richard Price as contemporary authors who use literary language to relate riveting stories in various fiction genres. He notes that Cormac ­McCarthy, who Grossman says for years “appeared to be the oldest living Modernist in captivity,” has more recent writings that include a serial-killer novel and a work of apocalyptic science fiction..

Take a look at the article, and check some of the other authors Grossman mentions, and then check out their books at the Merrick Library.

Program Promotes Life-Long Reading

Today, I came across a New York Times article, “The Future of Reading: Students Get New Assignment: Pick Books You Like,” which profiles two teachers who are participating in a growing movement to encourage the love of reading by giving children more freedom to choose which books to read for school. OK, I’ll admit that my first reaction to the headline was sure, next they’ll be asking fifth graders what courses should be taught.

But it’s not that bad. Nancie Atwell, one of the teachers mentioned in the article lets students choose books they want to read, with certain guidelines—no Gossip Girls, no books based on video games. She has the students spend time reading during class time, during which she goes around and talks with the children about the books they are reading. She has them keep journals and report on the books they read.

Part of the process with this program involves teachers nudging the students to read higher quality books. For instance, when one student finished a book, Chaka! Through the Fire, a memoir by singer Chaka Khan, Lorrie McNeill, the other teacher mention in the article, suggested the student might now read Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Despite the increased freedom in her classroom, Atwell’s teaching method remains rigorous. Speaking with one boy, she said “I keep trying to get you to read things other than James Patterson,” Ms. Atwell said, pointing to the book he was reading, “But if you are going to write a book review of substance, you are going to have to find substance in the book.”

Not everyone agrees with Atwell’s approach. Most teachers still assign “classic” books, but if one of the goals in education is to encourage lifelong reading, maybe these caring teachers’ approach deserves a try. What do you think about letting students choose what they want to read?

Presidential Reading

With summer winding down, President Barack Obama is on vacation on Martha's Vinyard. At this blog, of course, we are interested in what he's reading. Slate, the online magazine, has answered this question in an article called "Barack's Book Bag."

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We'd love to hear which books you're spending time with this summer. Personally, I'm reading Schulz and Peanuts: A Biography and listening to Silks, by Dick Francis.

Classic Children's Books

NPR has been doing a lot of good stories about books this summer. Their latest profiles classic children's books such as Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, Jean Webster's Daddy Long-Legs and The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs, illustrated by one of my favorite artists, Edward Gorey.

Take a look at the link. Then let us know what your favorite classic children's books are. I'm going with Uncle Wiggily.

Some Thoughts about Reading

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Richard Steele

Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man;
and writing an exact man.
Francis Bacon

Les livres cadrent mal avec le mariage.
(Reading and marriage don't go well together.)
Moliere

The greatest part of a writer's time is spent in reading;

in order to write, a man will turn over half a library to make one book.
Samuel Johnson

The reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries—in fact like a prepared conversation, in which they reveal only the best of their thoughts.
Rene Descartes

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
Logan Pearsall Smith

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I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

Groucho Marx

Poetry is not the most important thing in life…
I'd much rather lie in a hot bath reading

Agatha Christie and sucking sweets.
Dylan Thomas

If you have a favorite quote about reading, we'd love to hear it. Please add it to comments.

Alternative View of Atticus Finch

Many years ago, when my wife first saw Gregeory Peck play Atticus Finch in the movie version of To Kill a Mockingbird, she decided he would be the ideal father. Finch is portrayed as honest, just, fair, understanding, and basically everything one could hope for in a father. In a recent article in the New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell looks at the character from a different angle.

In the novel, published 50 years ago, Atticus Finch, a lawyer in Alabama, defends a African American man falsely accused of raping a White woman. Though the attorney does an admirable for the defense, Gladwell notes that Finch does not express moral outrage or try to challenge the white supremacist Southern culture of the time. Gladwell writes that "Finch wants his white, male jurors to do the right thing. But as a good Jim Crow liberal he dare not challenge the foundations of their privilege. Instead, Finch does what lawyers for black men did in those days. He encourages them to swap one of their prejudices for another." This other prejudice was against a so-called "White trash" family, the Ewells, one of whom Bob Ewell is the main villain in the story.

While it is interesting to have a different point of view on one of the most esteemed characters in American fiction, Gladwell might be accused to being present-minded, that is taking today's political or social views and criticizing a character from half a century ago for not meeting our standards. Still, the article makes good reading.

Writing and Drinking

Though this blog is more about reading than writing, I thought I’d note “When Novelists Sober Up” in the online magazine More Intelligent Life. The piece chronicles the effects of alcohol on authors. Perhaps the most sobering point in the article is the line, “Of America’s seven Nobel laureates, five were lushes—to whom we can add an equally drunk-and-disorderly line of Brits: Dylan Thomas, Malcolm Lowry, Brendan Behan, Patrick Hamilton, Philip Larkin, Kingsley Amis, all doing the conga to (in most cases) an early grave.”

I can remember a teacher in graduate school advising students in his seminar class not to lubricate the writing of term papers by drinking; he suggested that one glass of sherry could affect one’s writing. In the same vein, the article quotes Ernest Hemingway saying “When I read Faulkner I can tell when he gets tired and does it on corn just as I used to be able to tell when Scott would hit it beginning with Tender is the Night.”

The article does note a number of writers who sobered up—e.g. John Cheever (pictured above) and Stephen King. Not surprisingly, the change affected their writing. Of Cheever’s novel Falconer, written after he sobered up, the New York Times commented “It is as if our Chekhov had tucked into a telephone booth and reappeared wearing a cape and leotard of Dostoyevsky’s ‘Underground Man’.”

The Whole Five Feet

Our 10 Books… list looks easy when compared to reading project undertaken by Christopher R. Beha, who set out to read the 51 books in the Harvard “Five-Foot Shelf” of classics in a year.

Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University in the early part of the 20th Century, put together the collection as “a good substitute for a liberal education” for the growing middle class who could not go to college at that time. The set, published by P. F. Collier and Son between 1909 and 1917, contains many of authors one might expect-- from Plato to Thoreau, and from St. Augustine to Darwin.

Beha, 27 at the time, worked his way consecutively through each volume. The beginning of this reading project coincided with his aunt’s finding out she had skin cancer. Beha spent time reading at her bedside as the cancer spread. During his year of reading Beha came down with a case of Lyme disease. So, the consolation of philosophy played a part in his real life.

Beha decided to write a chronicle of his reading experience and produced The Whole Five Feet: What the Great Books Taught Me about Life, Death, and Pretty Much Everything Else. Check the work's website after picking up the book from the library.

There was also a good piece about The Whole Five Feet in the New York Times Sunday Book Review

What to Read and What to Skip

Mostly, we’ve been talking here about recommended reading, especially our 10 Books to Read before You Die. But today I came across an entry from the Washington Post’s blog Short Stack that talks about what to skip in literature. The posting mentions a new book called Beowulf on the Beach: What to Love and What to Skip in Literature's 50 Greatest Hits. I have not seen this book, but it sounds intriguing. Its author, Jack Murninghan, has chosen fifty works of literature and goes through each suggesting parts busy readers can skip and parts people should not pass up. The Wahington Post blogger notes books where he went along with Murninghan's recommendations and one (Great Expectations), with which he disagreed.

Personally, I read every word. I don't feel I've read a book if I haven't read all of it. However, I know many people who blithely skim books, skipping parts they consider dull. As the Romans used to say, "De gustibus non est disputandum." If your Lain is rusty, that means there's no accounting for taste.

Summer Reading

Those of you who have gone though our 10 Books to Read before You Die and are looking for some further guidance might want to try Rebecca’s Pocket's Summer Reading 2009. This posting includes links to a variety of recommended reading lists including Smart Summer Reading from UC Davis and Excellent Summer Reading Recommendations for Brides-to-Be. Rebecca also has lists of books for Young Adults, such as Summer Reading for Tweens from the Kansas City Star.

Of course, once you find a book to read you can check our holdings in Merrick Library's catalog.

I found Rebecca’s Pocket listed on the Librarians’ Internet Index, a great source for useful websites.

Would Holden Caulfield Be on Facebook?

Checking my Facebook page, I came across a link to a posting on the Barnes & Noble blog Unabashedly Bookish. The writer notes that some students reading The Catcher in the Rye today say that the book's protagonist is just a whiny rich kid, who maybe should shut up and take his Prozac. The piece goes on to pose a question as to whether Holden Caulfield would be involved in social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter if he was a teenager today.

As Catcher is on Merrick Library's list of Ten Books to Read before You Die, we'd also like to know what you think about this question. Comments welcome.

Ray Bradbury and Libraries

The front page of today’s New York Times features an article about Ray Bradbury’s fight to keep a California public library open. A number of the state’s public libraries may be forced to close because of the current fiscal crisis. Bradbury is focusing his efforts on the H. P Wright Library in Ventura County, which has been told that it must raise $280,000, or it will be forced to close.

When he was young, Bradbury, now 88 years old, could not afford to go to college, so he went to libraries three days a week for ten years. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities,” Bradbury says, “I believe in libraries.” Though the author of such books as Fahrenheit 451 and Something Wicked This Way Comes didn’t make our list of 10 Books to Read before You Die, we’ll have to give Bradbury an honorable mention for his support of libraries and reading. Here’s to you Ray!

Beach Books Poll

NPR is asking its listeners to vote for the Best Beach Book of All Time. They define this category as follows: "When you read one, your surroundings recede, time bends and you're transported, mesmerized, enthralled. These are page turners to be sure, but that doesn't mean they're brainless." OK, you have to remember that these are NPR listeners they are talking to.

Go post your vote. Then leave a comment here letting us know about the book you suggested.

Best Books You Never Read

It seems that NPR is on the same wavelength on which we are operating, given that this is the second post referring to them today. In an NPR blog called Monkey See, correspondent Lynn Neary writes about 'The Shelf Of Constant Reproach': Best Books You Never Read." These are those classic books that one owns and has been meaning to read--without much success. Ms. Neary admits to Moby Dick, anything by William Faulkner, and Lolita. I know exactly what she means, as I have whole bookcases that fall into this category. Maybe someday.........

Reading during the Great Depression

In the midst of the current international economic crisis, there has been much harkening back to see what happened during the Great Depression. In this vein, National Public Radio recently broadcast a segment called "What Were People Reading during the Depression?" The people at NPR went through some issues of Publishers Weekly from the period to see what books were popular.

Though we often ponder how things have changed in the last seventy years, much seems to be the same in the area of popular reading-- chick lit, commentaries by noted politicians, vampire novels, and books about dogs, including a fictional biography of a dog named Flush, by Virginia Woolf of all people.

Oh, yes, and like today, public libraries back then recorded marked increases in their circulation statistics. So join the crowd. Come on into the library and borrow a book.

Gatsby's Relevance

Recent comments about the relevance of some of our 10 Books to Read Before You Die inspired me to do a little delving. I happened upon an interesting 2008 article about The Great Gatsby in the New York Times. The author Sara Rimer wrote:

“Some educators say the best way to engage racially and ethnically diverse students in reading is with books that mirror their lives and culture. But others say that while a variety of literary voices is important, “Gatsby” — still required reading at half the high schools in the country — resonates powerfully among urban adolescents, many of them first- and second-generation immigrants, who are striving to ascend in 21st-century America.”

It may be interesting to note that The Great Gatsby had fallen into obscurity by the time of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s death in 1940, and only became popular again when critic Edmund Wilson began to promote it, and Scribner’s published a paperback edition.

11 Books You Can't Read

In this blog, we've been discussing 10 Books You Must Read before You Die, so I thought I'd take another tack and point out the article "Short Takes on Books that Don't Exist--Eleven Essential, Imaginary Beach Reads for Summer," published in a journal called Believer.

I came across this piece at one of my favorite sites Arts & Letters Daily. Of course, "Short Takes..." is silly, but we can't be serious (or read serious books) all the time....

J. D. Salinger Tries to Block the Publication of a Book

Many people know of J. D. Salinger's passion for privacy. The author, who lives in Cornish, New Hampshire and is now 90 years old, has not had a new story published or given an interview in decades. Salinger is protective of his short stories and his one novel, Catcher in the Rye, which made our list of 10 Books to Read before You Die. Few of his stories have made it to the big screen, and you will not find recorded book editions of Salinger's works.

In the 1980s Salinger fought the publication of a book In Search of J. D. Salinger by Ian Hamilton, which quoted extensively letters Salinger had written over the years. Salinger won that suit, and the book was later published without the quotes from his letters. Now, Salinger is fighting the publication of a novel by John David California called 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. In this book an elderly Holden Caufield-like character named Mr. C. escapes from a nursing home and roams the streets of New York in a story reminiscent of Catcher.

To read further about this dispute check this article from the New York Times and another piece from Publisher's Weekly.

The Contradictions of Arthur Conan Doyle

As we have have the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in Merrick Library's list of Ten Books to Read before You Die, I thought I'd pass along an interesting article about a contradiction in the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Holmes stories.

Sherlock Holmes, as Doyle described him, was the the most rational of characters--a thinking machine some might say. In "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," Doyle has Holmes say "This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply."

And yet, in real life, Doyle, who would be 150 years old this year, spent much time devoted to a belief in spiritualism. He attended seances and also wrote and spoke widely in favor of the spiritualist movement. Fans of the great detective can check this article for insight into Holmes' creator.

Orwell's Struggle to Finish 1984

I just came across an article about George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, one of the books on our list of 10 Books to Read Before You Die. It seems that at the same time that Orwell was trying to finish writing this novel he was mourning the death of his wife and fighting severe illness.

Check out this an interesting piece about what the author Robert McCrum calls "probably the definitive novel of the 20th century."

Reading, Not Readings

As the main purpose of this blog is to encourage reading, we wanted to note a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article by Mark Edmundson entitled "Against Readings." That's readings with an "s." "By a reading," Edmundson writes,"I mean the application of an analytical vocabulary — Marx's, Freud's, Foucault's, Derrida's, or whoever's — to describe and (usually) to judge a work of literary art." In other words, let's get back to reading books, without getting wrapped up in literary theory.

I remember reading another article about a young woman's disappointing experience as a graduate student in literature at Yale. At one point she asked one of her professors who her favorite authors were. The professor replied, "I don't read for pleasure anymore." Yikes!

Upon further reflection...

A comment from a lurker (you know who you are) prompted me to re-think two of our choices. We opted to exclude William Shakespeare from consideration because he wrote plays, not books. But we included the Bible, because it is so deeply ingrained in our culture. On reflection, if one should read the Bible whether one is religious or not just because of it cultural impact, then one should also read Shakespeare for the same reason.

How on earth did we choose these books?

The comment we've been hearing most often is "How on earth did you whittle all the world's great literature down to a mere ten books?" OK-perhaps not worded exactly that way, but the gist is, what criteria did you use? So, here is our methodology.
First, we started with the titles that were submitted by staff. From those titles, we eliminated the few titles that have not yet withstood the test of time. There were not many, but those we eliminated. Then we looked seriously at the titles that had been submitted by more than one person. But even then, we were looking at more than 10 books. Some titles were favored by one or the other committee person, so we discussed and each gave in on a title or two. Finally, we metaphorically threw darts at all the titles pasted on a dartboard, and thereby decided the final choices. Very scientific, no?

Why 10 Books?

We were inspired to ask the Library staff for their choices for 10 Books to Read Before You Die by an article on AOL. When we read AOL's list, we thought "Hmm, wonder what our staff would come up with?" So, we asked, and we received a very enthusiastic response. So then we said 'Hmm, wonder what our patrons would come up with?". This is how we thought we could find out. Just post your picks as a comment-what could be easier?

Merrick Library Staff's Picks

We had 121 entries. Some titles had multiple votes. From that list the committee chose 10 books. There will surely be disagreements, and that's good. Discussion is what we aim for. If you have books you think are better candidates, please let us know by posting a comment. Meanwhile, our final list can be found to the right.

Links to the Catalog

In case readers would like to check the Merrick Library catalog for the Books to Read before You Die here are the links:

1984

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

The Bible

The Catcher in the Rye

Charlotte's Web

The Great Gatsby

The Jungle Books

Pride and Prejudice

To Kill a Mockingbird