People

Would You Believe..."Savior of the American Publishing Industry"?

birdie — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:52:55 -0500

Guess we're not through with her yet...Sarah Palin that is.

According to Tony Allen-Mills in London's Times Online, but she “may yet emerge as the savior of the American publishing industry.” Literary agents are lining up to sign the former Republican vice-presidential candidate to a book deal that could earn her $7 million, and sales should justify the price.

Not bad for a “small-town Alaska girl turned beauty queen,” said the blog OhMyGov!. It’s too soon to know whether Palin is paving the way for a run for national office in 2012, or simply “defending herself from being labeled an intellectually weak, shop-a-holic, ticket-spoiling, loose cannon.” But one thing’s for sure—she’ll soon have enough money “to keep her living large in ‘real’ America for life.”

Obama and Libraries

birdie — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:59:43 -0500

It may be too soon to know how high libraries will fare on President-elect Barack Obama’s agenda, but it’s safe to say that the profession has a special place in the heart of the next president of the United States.

Emily Sheketoff, executive director of the American Library Association’s (ALA) Washington office, says she’s confident that Obama will recognize the “importance of what we do” because he has a track record of supporting libraries in the past. Take, for instance, his address to ALA in June 2005.

“The library has always been a window to a larger world—a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward,” he told the audience. More from this article at SLJ.

Around the World, Praise for Obama

birdie — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:44:28 -0500

The Washington Post features an international perspective of the people's choice of Barack Obama as America's next president.

Slideshow and reporting from Britain, Kenya, Japan, Lebanon and Indonesia.

Additional reactions from abroad via the New York Times.

106 Year-Old Obama Voter also a Library Supporter

birdie — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 09:26:45 -0500

President-elect Obama told throngs of people in Chicago’s Grant Park and millions watching on TV and the Internet, “This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that’s on my mind tonight’s about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She’s a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.”

Tuesday night, Obama spoke about Cooper for more than a minute, chronicling several of the historic events that have occurred during her 106 years. Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.

There is an Ann Nixon Cooper Collection at the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System’s Auburn Avenue Research Library on African-American Culture and History. The collection contains items from 1922 to 1956, including a daybook, two scrapbooks and other personal effects from the Coopers, according to the Digital Library of Georgia Web site. Cooper and her husband counted as their friends or acquaintances such luminaries as educators W.E.B. DuBois, Lugenia Burns Hope, John Hope Franklin, Benjamin E. Mays and E. Franklin Frazier, this Historymakers Website says.

Obama Wins

birdie — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:49:17 -0500

NYTimes, November 5, 2008 A Historic Day for the USA and the World
Obama Elected President as Racial Barrier Falls(report) / (editorial)

If You Win the Nobel Prize, You Might Just Get a Publishing Contract

birdie — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:47:37 -0500

Publishers Weekly reports that three small presses have benefitted from last month's news that French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

While David Godine, University of Nebraska Press and Curbstone Press all upped or rushed copies of their single backlist Le Clezio titles, Anne-Solange Noble, foreign rights director at Le Clezio's French publisher Gallimard, has been working feverishly to get more of the author's titles on American bookshelves. And, although there were seven Le Clezio titles which were published by Atheneum in the 1970's, bringing those books back into print has proven complicated.

At Simon & Schuster, where Atheneum (no longer an active adult imprint) is housed, a deal has just been finalized to bring Le Clezio's first book published in the US the 1965-released The Interrogation, back into print.

The title is not yet on the S&S site.

"JewBerry" Lets Observant Pray by PDA

birdie — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:27:24 -0500

Particularly if you live in New York City or another urban area, you might have seen Orthodox Jews reading or quietly reciting daily prayers from a prayer book while on a bus or subway or at a quiet corner at work.

Now it's been made easier, by technology of course. NY's Gothamist has a story on a new twist to the Blackberry for observant Jews: the "Jewberry".

Two Jewish entrepreneurs have developed software that can turn an average BlackBerry into a sacred prayer book. They've dubbed their upgrade "The JewBerry," and have sold it to over 10,000 customers for $30 a pop, according to the NY Post. Co-creator Jonathan Bennett explains the appeal: "Throughout the day, Jews gather in office-building stairwells and conference rooms to pray, and while sometimes you might not remember your prayer book, no one goes anywhere without their BlackBerry."

Beverly Hills Celebrity Baby @ Your Library

birdie — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:00:31 -0400

Gwen Stefani and Gavin Rossdale took their two month old son Zuma to the local library to have him photographed for his library card.

Baby is way cute, and his talented parents clearly care about giving him the right start in life. Daily Mail UK.

All About Yaddo

birdie — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 13:50:06 -0400

From the New York Times an article about a forthcoming exhibition at the NYPL on the artists' retreat, Yaddo.

In 1899 Katrina Trask, desolate over the death of their four children, proposed to her husband, Spencer, that they turn Yaddo, their 400-acre estate outside Saratoga Springs, N.Y., into an artists’ retreat. He was a baron of the Gilded Age. She was a pre-Raphaelite figure who wore gauzy white dresses and wrote poetry about the days of King Arthur, and she imagined the place as a perpetual house party of writers, artists and musicians.

There was writing, there was painting and composing, but it sounds like there more than a bit of sleeping around too. Among other choice tidbits from the article..."John Cheever used to boast that he had enjoyed sex on every flat surface in the mansion, not to mention the garden and the fields. It was at Yaddo that Newton Arvin, a literary critic and professor at Smith College, met and began a long affair with the young Truman Capote, or “Precious Spooky,” as he calls him in a couple of charming letters, on display at the library. The novelist Henry Roth met his wife, the composer Muriel Parker, there, and the novelist Josephine Herbst started enduring relationships with the painter Marion Greenwood and the poet Jean Garrigue (who was also having an affair with another Yaddo resident, Alfred Kazin).

Angelina Jolie

birdie — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:19:52 -0400

Can we still call Angelina Jolie a skank? I think maybe, an ex-skank?

New York Times article about the actress