Literary News You Can Use: June 1

June 1, 2012


Analyzing Writers’ Personalities From Their Handwritten Manuscripts [via Flavorwire]

Expecto Patronum! Watch 17 minutes of Harry Potter spells [via NylonMag.com]

How to Hide Your Wireless Router With a Book Cover [via Mashable]

Spelling bee contestant makes the most of a tough situation … hat tip to OoP fan Leah Bush [via 5newsonline.com]

Tweet of the Day

Movies
Snow White and the Huntsman opening today. Why does pop culture love fairy tales again? [via TIME]

Remembering
Leo Dillon, illustrator and writer, died at the age of 79. [via GalleyCat]

Literary News You Can Use: May 31

May 31, 2012

Recipes and Household Tips From Great Writers [via The Atlantic]

Breakdown the Les Misérables trailer starring Jackman, Hathaway, Crowe [via The Guardian]

10 Great Science Fiction Books for People Who Don’t Read Sci-Fi [via Flavorwire]

Tweet of the Day

Birthdays
Walt Whitman (1819) “And your very flesh shall be a great poem.”

Walking with Whitman: Poetry in Performance series presented by the Walt Whitman Birthplace [via waltwhitman.org]

Walt Whitman manuscripts [via NYPL]

All things Whitman [via Melville House and The Walt Whitman Archive]

Literary News You Can Use: May 30

May 30, 2012


Anthony Burgess on the message of A Clockwork Orange [via Boing Boing and The New Yorker]

Updates
Fifty Shades of Grey returning to Florida libraries [via GalleyCat]

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s home saved [via BBC News and SaveUndershaw.com]

Tweet of the Day

Miscellany
Congratulations to Toni Morrison, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom yesterday!

Birthdays
Strand Bookstore celebrating 85 years today! [via Strand]

Remembering
Christopher Marlowe, who died on this day in 1593. [via History.com]

Voltaire, who died on this day in 1778. “Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.”

Literary News You Can Use: May 29

May 29, 2012

Save NYC Libraries Campaign [via HuffPost Books, Urban Librarians Unite, Save NYC Libraries Campaign]

5 Ways to Share Books & eBooks with U.S. Troops [via GalleyCat]

Raising money to free classic volume on Africa’s oral literature [via Boing Boing, unglue.it]

TV+Lit … ‘Hemingway & Gellhorn’ [via HBO]

Belated Birthdays

May 25: Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803) “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

May 25: Raymond Carver (1938) [Interview via Paris Review]

May 25: Robert Ludlum (1927) [The Ludlum Conundrum via The New York Times]

May 27: Dashiell Hammett (1894) “If you have a story that seems worth telling, and you think you can tell it worthily, then the thing for you to do is to tell it, regardless of whether it has to do with sex, sailors or mounted policemen.”

May 28: Ian Fleming [Interview via Playboy]

Literary News You Can Use: May 24

May 24, 2012

Occupy Wall Street Library sues city, NYPD for destroying 3,600 Books [via Gothamist]

Electric Literature Launches a Digital Mag Devoted to Reading Recommendations [via Flavorwire and Electric Lit]

Who is reading Fifty Shades of Grey? [via GalleyCat and Goodreads]

Happy Birthday, Joseph Brodsky! Brodsky won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987) “for an all-embracing authorship, imbued with clarity of thought and poetic intensity.”

Literary News You Can Use: May 23

May 23, 2012

[via GalleyCat]

A Confederacy of Dunces might finally make the big screen [via Vulture]

Shake Up Your Library: Using Hip Hop and Rap to Attract Teens and New Adults [via New Jersey State Library]

Is Braille still important in a digital age? [via Wired]

Literary News You Can Use: May 22

May 22, 2012


Rare engraved print by Paul Revere found [via NPR and Brown University]

Mark Twain responds to a ban on Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer [via Letters of Note]

Remembering Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, who died on this day in 1885. “To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.”

Remembering Langston Hughes, who died on this day in 1967. [obit via The New York Times]

“Dreams” by Langston Hughes

Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.

Literary News You Can Use: May 21

May 21, 2012


First trailer for new James Bond movie, Skyfall [via Mashable]

Extremely Silly Photos of Extremely Serious Writers [via Flavorwire]

The Marriage Plot by Jeffery Eugenides to be adapted for film [via Word & Film]

“Ryan Buynak’s poetry should not be read in front of an open flame.” [via ryanbuynak.com] Check out his new book The Ghost of the Wooden Squid: Random Acts of Poetry here

Don Quixote Project: Winner!

May 18, 2012


Congratulations to Miguel H., the winner of our Don Quixote design contest with Wilco and Veer.com in support of 826 National! His winning design is titled The Helmet of Mambrino.

You can purchase the limited edition Don Quixote shirt on our website.

Weekend Reading: May 19-20

“They pay me absurd amounts of money,” he observes, “For something that I would do for free.”
Neil Gaiman interviews Stephen King [via NeilGaiman.com]

Random Readings

May 19: Brooklyn, New York – Lit Crawl Brooklyn – “Book lovers will take to the streets of Cobble Hill for an evening of crawling with cocktails, trivia, and blowing things up (you read that right).” Follow them on Facebook and Twitter to join in the fun!

May 18-19: Portland, Oregon – Rose City Used Book Fair – “An unpretentious book fair 1000s of books from Independent Booksellers”