Reading a book a day!?!?!

I just cannot imagine setting this type of goal. I manage to get to many books during a year, but I can't even say I finish one a week. Right now I'm working on HG:The History of Mr. Wells. I never realized just how many books he wrote. I've been a fan of his History of the World for years.

NYT article

A Quest to Read a Book a Day for 365 Days

Lists of books

Yesterday I happened across one of those lists of books you should have read on a friend's FaceBook page. It was from the BBC and the remark was that most people had only read about 6 of the 100 listed. Another person in my office did some further research and it seems that the list was distilled from a list of 200 books nominated as favorites to BBC in the spring of 2003 as part of the Big Read project. As part of the rabbit trailing that has occurred in following this train of thought I came across a list of 110 books that the Telegraph in UK suggests as the perfect library.
That list is here.

Another Article on the Return to 100 Aker Woods

There's a new character in the gang, Lottie the Otter.
Felicia Lee in NYT discusses sequels and anticipation of the release

A New Pooh Story!

Return to the Hundred Aker Woods

Hot, Flat and Crowded

Finished Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded this weekend. Although he subscribes to the viewpoint that we have just enough time, starting now, to fix things; I can't help but be depressed at the prospects ahead.

A New Day at The National Endowment?

Rocco Landesman has been confirmed as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. While he is poised to make the case that the arts are drivers in community and economic development....
From the NYT story of August 8th...
The new chairman said he already has a new slogan for his agency: “Art Works.” It’s “something muscular that says, ‘We matter.’ ” The words are meant to highlight both art’s role as an economic driver and the fact that people who work in the arts are themselves a critical part of the economy.
“Someone who works in the arts is every bit as gainfully employed as someone who works in an auto plant or a steel mill,” Mr. Landesman said. “We’re going to make the point till people are tired of hearing it.”
However he is also indicating that the dispersion of funding throughout the nation will not be a guiding principle, but rather the support of perceived excellence. Which raises the question, how does the level of expertise improve without support?

Weird Indiana now in stock

We now have Weird Indiana in stock at Words and Images/The Train Place. As well as Weird Ohio, Weird Kentucky, and Weird Illinois.

Nicholas Kristof's Kids Summer Reading List

From his concerns with the state of American education, Nicholas Kristof offers a summer reading list to help your children staunch the loss of IQ points. I was excited to see Freddy the Pig on the list, an old favorite of mine.

I, of course, would offer up The Hobbit and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

His editorial is here, with links to his blog--where readers have been offering up other suggestions.

Indiana Authors Awards

Released this week is information about the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award.

From: Ray E. Boomhower [rboomhower@indianahistory.org

]
Sent: Thursday, July 02, 2009
Subject: Indiana Author Award finalists announced

The inaugural Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award recipient has been named. Indiana native James Alexander Thom was chosen as the national recipient, and finalists in all categories were named this week by the Award Panel. The winning author in the regional and emerging author categories will each be named on September 26 among the finalists.

This new award seeks to recognize the contributions of Indiana authors to the literary landscape in Indiana and across the nation by the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library Foundation, and is funded by the generosity of The Glick Fund, a fund of Central Indiana Community Foundation.

Nominations were submitted from across the state in early spring. Any published writer who was born in Indiana or has lived in Indiana for at least five years was eligible. A seven-member, statewide Award Panel selected the national winner and finalists in three categories from the pool of publicly nominated authors:

* National Author - $10,000 prize: a writer with Indiana ties, but whose work is known and read throughout the country. National authors were evaluated on their entire body of work. Winner: James Alexander Thom; Finalists: Scott Russell Sanders and Margaret McMullan

* Regional Author - $7,500 prize: A writer who is well-known and respected throughout the state of Indiana. Regional authors were evaluated on their entire body of work. Finalists: Jared Carter, James H. Madison and Susan Neville

* Emerging Author - $5,000 prize: A writer with only one published book. Emerging authors were evaluated on their single published work. Finalists: Kathleen Hughes, Christine Montross and Greg Schwipps

"This is a rare and heart-lifting pleasure," said James Alexander Thom. "I can only compare it with that first call I ever got from an editor, so long ago, saying, 'We love your story and we want to publish it.' I am grateful that Eugene and Marilyn Glick honored the storytelling art highly enough to applaud it in such a grand and generous way, and I look forward to applauding those whose work will be so acknowledged in the years to come."

Award finalists in all three categories will be honored on September 26, 2009 at the Central Library in downtown Indianapolis. The day's events will include free public programming such as author lectures, "how to get published" workshops for aspiring writers, and more. An award dinner/fund raiser benefiting the Library Foundation will follow that evening where the winner of the Regional Author and Emerging Author categories will each be named. Thom will serve as the dinner's keynote speaker. Ticket information for the award dinner is available by contacting the Library Foundation at (317) 275-4700 or by visiting www.indianaauthorsaward.org.

Ray Bradbury believes in libraries

Story in Saturday's New York Times about Ray Bradbury's help with a threatened library in California. It seems Mr. Bradbury is a fan of George Bernard Shaw.

Redwall Abbey

I had no idea how far behind I'd gotten on the Redwall Books. I happened to go looking for a Jasper Fforde that I realized I'd missed, and to make the $25 minimum for a free delivery checked on Brian Jacques. There have been three published in the last couple of years that I'm sure I didn't have!

Federal Funding Good News

At the federal level we're seeing progress in realizing the importance of the arts and humanities to the economy and the life of communities, through the improvement in levels of support for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

New York Time story here

Letterpress in Forbes

Forbes Magazine has an article in the June 8 issue about the revival of artisan letterpress operations.

Forbes online

Where the Wild Things Are

I have to mark my calendar! Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are is being brought to the screen by Spike Jonze. Scheduled for an October release, evidently there are issues brewing within the studio.

Advertising Age article here

Another Independent Bookstore Closes

Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher writes of the imminent closing of Vertigo Books. An interesting part of the commentary the owners provided in a letter to their customers points out the ramifications of local business a little more clearly than most.

"As Warren and Stewart put it: "Your shopping dollars help create the community you want to live in. . . . The money you spend with locally-owned businesses continues to circulate as we pay employees, buy supplies and pay taxes that are used to provide basic services to residents."

Amazon and other online booksellers have an unfair advantage because they still don't charge sales tax.."

And it is worth noting that not only do ecommerce sites not pay local sales taxes; they don't pay local real estate taxes, they don't employ local people, they don't buy groceries locally, they don't shop locally, in short, they don't support the local economy in any way.

One Day Trips from Indianapolis

We had a lovely couple in over the weekend, on their first trip to Metamora. When I asked how they happened upon us I was told that Metamora was included in a book of one day trips from Indy. Through the miracles of the web, I tracked down this publication.

Revisiting Edith

I spent the past week reading an Edith Wharton biography, and reading some of her major works as they were discussed. I finished the bio, and have started Age of Innocence to be followed by The Buccaneers.

Great Article from NYT on the current world of bookselling

Through my participation in the ArtsJournal newsletter I found this article from the New York Times about the person to person nature of book selling. It's very telling in a way, that those who most continue to buy books, are those who are slowly re-inventing the commerce in books.

The article is here.

Indiana State Library

The Indiana State Library, The Center for the Book, has two efforts underway for school age children to participate in. River of Words and Letter about Literature. Both have been underway for some time and are nearing the end of the entry period.

http://www.in.gov/library/2315.htm

Frances Mayes, Author of Under the Tuscan Sun at IUPUI in October

Frances Mayes, best-selling author of Under the Tuscan Sun and A Year in the World, will deliver the inaugural Efroymson Lecture on International Art, Culture and Heritage at IUPUI on October 8, 2008. The speech is free and open to the public.
Mayes, whose remarks are titled, “Writing in Place: Travels with My Notebook,: will talk about traveling and living abroad during her lecture, which begins at 7 p.m. in the Multipurpose Room on the fourth floor of the IUPUI Campus Center, 420 University Boulevard, Indianapolis.
After the lecture, Mayes will participate in a book signing at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in the Campus Center at 8:15 p.m.

From the Bio included in the press release from IUPUI:

Frances Mayes has always adored houses, and when she saw Bramasole, a neglected, 200-year old Tuscan farmhouse nestled in five overgrown acres, it was love at first sight. Out of that instant infatuation has come four marvelous, and hugely popular, books: the bestsellers Under the Tuscan Sun and Bella Tuscany; In Tuscany, a collaborative photo-textbook with her husband, the poet Edward Mayes and photographer Bob Krist; and Bringing Tuscany Home: Sensuous Style from the Heart of Italy, another collaborative book with Edward Mayes and photographer Steven Rothfeld. All four highly personal books are about taking chances, living in Italy, loving and renovating an old Italian villa, the pleasures of food, wine, gardens, and the “voluptuousness of Italian life.”

Her first novel, Swan, a family saga and mystery, returns Mayes to her childhood home of Georgia and was published in 2002. A film version of Under the Tuscan Sun, starring Diane Lane, was released in fall of 2003. Frances Mayes was the editor for the 2002 Best American Travel Writing. She is also the author of the travel memoir entitled A Year in the World: Journeys of A Passionate Traveller, which immediately debuted as a New York Times bestseller in 2006. Working again with Steven Rothfeld, she published SHRINES: Images of Italian Worship, also in 2006.

A widely published poet and essayist, Frances Mayes has written numerous books of poetry, including Sunday in Another Country, After Such Pleasures, The Arts of Fire, Hours, The Book of Summer, and Ex Voto. Her work The Discovery of Poetry: A Field Guide to Reading and Writing Poems is widely used in college poetry classes.

Formerly a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, where she directed The Poetry Center and chaired the Department of Creative Writing, Mayes now devotes herself full time to writing and to her “At Home in Tuscany” furniture and accessory lines. She and her husband divide their time between North Carolina and Cortona, Italy.