An Edison Research consumer survey wanted to know when audio book users were listening to their books. Most of the time, it was while driving, 65 percent. Relaxing before falling asleep was 52 percent. Doing housework or chores was 45 percent. Since this adds up to 162 percent, someone’s listening during all of the above. .
Meanwhile. . . .You don’t think authors suffer for their art? E.B. White, who wrote Charlotte’s Web was asked to record it on tape for audio books. It took him 17 tries before he could get through the spider’s death without crying.
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“Did you know reading aloud with your kids is the #1 way to help them achieve reading success in school?” So says Sarah Mackenzie, author and host of the Read-Aloud Revival podcast. Furthermore, “Reading aloud to your kids, even after they can read to themselves, is one of the best academic boosts you can give a child of any age.” Besides, isn’t it fun for you, too, unless it’s the same picture book every night?
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For the older kiddies, the latest classroom sensation is classics in manga, comic books in the Japanese style. Teachers are enthusiastic about the books, which are not simplified. Hamlet, for instance, is more than 500 pages. The goal of the publisher, Manga Classics, is to “create the most faithful adaptation possible in the graphic form.” The thirteen titles available so far include Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Jane Eyre, The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Scarlet Letter. Visit mangaclassics.com for more information and lesson plans for interested teachers. And good ol’ Longmont Library has several Manga Classics for you to enjoy!.
Finally, if you should be in Chicago, drop by the American Writers Museum. One year old, it’s received rave reviews from Fodor’s, USA Today, and others. Among the many exhibits are a Word Waterfall, a digital map of Hometown Authors, and a table of typewriters for visitors to add a sentence or two to an on-going story. Learn more at americanwritersmuseum.org
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It’s October—-treat yourself to a good book.
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*Written by Carol Cail — Read more from Carol at carolcail.com
Have you ever wished you had enough books and shelves you’d need a ladder to reach the topmost? Especially one of those sliding hooked-on-a-rail ladders? Melvil Dewey encountered his first one of those in the late nineteenth century in a Philadelphia library. He was not amused; the bronze hooks running along a pipe made “an annoying metal-on-metal sound.” Of course, there have been accidents, librarians falling off, sometimes fatal. Surely a partner with a belaying rope would solve that problem.
You all know the Boulder Book Store on Pearl Street Mall. Publishers Weekly has named it 2018’s Bookstore of the Year. In business for 45 years, the store is 20,000 square feet of new books (65%), used and remaindered books (16%), and non-book sidelines (19%), totaling 100,000 items for sale. Be glad that come January, you don’t have to count their inventory.
New York pharmaceutical manufacturer Eugene Scheifflin (1827-1906) was a big fan of Shakespeare. He also loved birds. He hit upon an epic plan to introduce to the United States every type of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays. Starlings made a brief appearance in Henry IV. The king ordered a soldier never to mention his brother-in-law’s name again, causing the soldier to dream of buying a starling that would repeat the name over and over. “Nay, I’ll have a starling shall be taught to speak; Nothing but ‘Mortimer,’ and give it him.” Over a two-year period, at great expense, Scheifflin imported 100 starlings to New York. Today there are almost as many European starlings in North America as there are people. Starlings are estimated to cause at least $800 million in crop damage in the United States every year, bring havoc to air traffic, and carry dozens of diseases deadly to livestock and humans. Ironically, four hundred years ago Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth warned,“What’s done cannot be undone.”
Now here’s something you don’t see every day: Dictionary Stories. That’s the title of an intriguing little collection of “short fictions and other findings.” The author, Jez Burrows, was looking up “study” in a New Oxford American Dictionary when he noticed a curiously melodramatic example sentence following the definition: “He perched on the edge of the bed, a study in confusion and misery.” Those few words sparked a unique idea. Dictionary example sentences (demonstrating usage of the word in a sentence) could be culled and combined into minuscule stories. The New York Times describes it as “sentences stolen from dictionaries and pasted together into tiny, delightful narratives.” Longmont Library doesn’t have this unusual book but will bring it over from Boulder if you ask nicely.
Okay, here’s where the turtle comes in. The first American cookbook was published in Connecticut in 1796. The author was Amelia Simmons. It contained some strange recipes, such as pan-cooked eel, and a turtle dish that instructed, “About 9 o’clock hang up your turtle by the hind fins, cut [off] the head and save the blood.” No pictures were included. Thank goodness. No, this classic is not in the Longmont Library collection, but a book about this book is United Tastes.