To celebrate libraries and librarians and the good work they do, an interview with Leigh Hurwtz, collections manager at the Brooklyn Public Library about the Books Unbanned program that provides access to banned books to young people anywhere in the US. My local library, Seattle Public Library, joined in earlier this year and now Boston Public Library has also just started offering the program.
Here's a link to the Books Unbanned program at the Seattle Public Library with detailed information about it, and a quick and easy application for young people 13 to 26 anywhere in the US to get access to the thousands of ebooks and audiobooks at SPL.
The Seattle Public Library's blog has an update on the library's Books Unbanned program with information about the number of young people who have signed up and their quotes about the program.
Just #read Alien Healer by Sue Mercury (#book 2/Vaxxlian Mates). This short alien #romance novella is a rescue & rehab of a human female. Themes of arranged marriages, forced marriages, pregnancy, etc but no glaring consent issues between MCs (sometimes I struggle with this author over the excessive violence in her books). Haven’t read book 1 but will. #books#reading#romancebooks#romancelandia#bookstodon@romancebooks
I am already 60% in on The Mote in God's Eye by Niven and Pournelle, and it's been fantastic so far. I haven't really read a "first contact" novel other than Contact Harvest from the Halo franchise.
Our final mystery #author is pulling back the veil with before and after pictures – a writer's desk as it was, and a writer's desk as it aspires to be.
Well, what did you expect from a writer of #fiction?
This mystery #author from our #Autumn issue is keeping things on the down low with laptop, cushions and a sofa. Extra points for the excellent colour matching between the natty throw and the spreadsheet…
My name's Megan, originally from Minnesota but living in the UK which is now home. Always something in my mind and will post about it here. Hope you have a wonderful day!
Last night I finished a funhouse mirror of a book, C.D. Rose's 'Who's Who When Everyone is Someone Else', which could almost be a cross between Italo Calvino and Umberto Eco's 'Foucault's Pendulum' and is a comic metafiction of literary games.
The narrator is not worlds away from the author and they share a first book, 'The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Failure'. By the end I felt like I had just stepped off a fast, but exhilarating merry-go-round.
Our next #Autumn author has gone walkabout and is working in a library. Note the cool shades propped behind the laptop, the studious workers on the next row of desks. But who and where could this possibly be?
#BookReview Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
Read in Braille
Viking
Pub. 2021, 256pp
My Name is Lucy Barton, 2016, was the first book I read by this author and I was struck by the writing style which seemed very different from anything else I was reading at that time. The character is very well drawn and I’ve often thought of the book since. Lucy has certainly stayed with Elizabeth Strout too as she wrote another book loosely based around her called Anything Is Possible which I haven’t read, and one that follows this book called Lucy by the Sea. I can see why she’s returned to Lucy as this book is about her life in her 60s where she’s left her first husband, remarried and is now alone again after her second husband dies. Her girls are grown up and married and William has remarried and has a young daughter. So there’s plenty to reflect on.
Elizabeth Strout’s prose is so distinctive and full of touching, beautifully observed details: “I saw him from afar and I saw that his khakis were too short. A little bit this broke my heart. He wore loafers, and his socks were blue, not a dark blue and not a light blue, and they showed a few inches until his khakis covered them. Oh William,I thought. Oh William!”
Lucy’s thoughts jump around as she recounts episodes from her life and tells the reader the reasons for her actions, and sometimes quite perplexing reactions to situations. She’s living with past trauma which resurfaces and takes her by surprise at times.
Lucy and William are brought together by a discovery made about William’s family and I enjoyed reading about them navigating spending time together now they are divorced; how they annoy each other but are also clearly still so connected and glad to be in each other’s lives. It’s gentle and touching.
Elizabeth Strout really knows how to make her readers feel the emotions Lucy’s going through and I very much enjoyed being in her company again. #Bookstodon#reading@bookstodon