Oh Snap!: The Happiest Place On A Bibliophile's Earth

The Kansas City Library in Missouri. Swoon!

--Photo: BoredPanda

--Nicole Crowder

Uptown Literati X Clutch Weekly Reading Recommendation 2.5.10

Who: Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Junot Díaz

What: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Díaz’ sophomore novel that created a literary firestorm for it’s stunning and fantastical account of a multi-generational family haunted by a supposed curse, the fuku. Told in brilliant color and dialogue, Díaz is able to narrate in the voice of four different characters, infusing his dialogue with Dominican vernacular and poetic prose to illustrate life’s tumultuous and satisfying moments.

Why: The Brief Wondrous Life is a book whose hype has not overshadowed its magnificence and beauty. Díaz manages to merge important literary references with relevant pop culture without skipping a beat. At once hysterical and heartbreaking, Díaz’ novel illustrates a people navigating through pain, love, violence, and redemption, with the stubborn tenacity of their character and the omnipresence of divinity guiding them.

Rating: 5 stars

--Nicole Crowder

Green Living: Make Use of Your Books

Over at Apartment Therapy, they've featured a cool post on how to reuse your vintage books. You know. The ones collecting dust but you are loathe to get rid of? Well, bust out the creative thinking and a few old pieces of furniture and voila!

Photos: Apartment Therapy

Oh Snap!: 'Glee'-ful About Vonnegut

Quinn Fabray of 'Glee' may be working it out with all kinds of accessories, but the one thing a girl can never have too much of is a good read.

--Nicole

Photo: Jezebel

Uptown Literati x Clutch Weekly Reading Recommendation 11.20.09

Who: African-American novelist Colson Whitehead

What: Sag Harbor. The story of a black teen belonging to a community of upper class African-American professionals and his growth out of pre-pubescence and into self-awareness during summers spent at the gated community Sag Harbor. Using diction and cultural references that lends themselves to the era—the 1980s—Whitehead paints a colorful and humorous sketch of a black teen during the days when ice cream color shirts and jeans, high- top shoes and fades were new fashion statements and not a throwback. Whitehead’s protagonist Benji Cooper is an all-white-prep-school-attending-Lite FM listening-Fangoria magazine-loving teen during the fall and winter back in Manhattan. But during the summers at Sag Harbor his mannerisms morph into a dap-giving-Run-DMC-listening-slang-talking kid. It’s this dichotomy of self in different environments that Whitehead explores in his fourth book.

Why: Using humor in literature requires skill, especially when tackling the issue of race identity. Whitehead’s humor adds a new dimension to the discussion of what it means to “act white” or “act black” without diminishing the significance of the conversation. Through Benji, Whitehead questions what is stereotypical behavior and attitudes of a young black man? How does he fit into or evade the box of black identity? But Whitehead does not approach this question with resentment. Instead, he employs nostalgia to transport the reader back to when they, too, were a teen and how confusing, awkward, and memorable it was for a lot of people, despite your race.

Rating: 3.5 stars

--Nicole Crowder

The Teacher's Lounge: Dr. Carol Pippen

The Teacher's Lounge eavesdrops on professors from various disciplines at universities across the country to find out what they're reading when they're not assigning you 12-page dissertations...due in two weeks.

Dr. Carol Pippen is a professor at Towson University and a scholar on Jane Austen. She supervises the ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) Writing Lab program as well as hosts yearly trips to England for students to retrace the life of Jane Austen.

UL: What is the name of the course you teach?

Dr. Pippen: I teach writing courses and courses on Jane Austen. I sometimes fill in for other teachers; for example, I taught an American literature survey course last semester.

UL: What five books would you absolutely recommend your students or peers read?

Dr. Pippen: I'd recommend all of Jane Austen books (six), Lee Smith's Fair and Tender Ladies, and the poems of Emily Dickinson--those are the ones that come to mind immediately.

UL: where do you shop for books?

Dr. Pippen: I buy books on-line, at college bookstores, and at the Smith College Book Sale each year. I choose books from the ones I hear about from many sources; I check out bookstores; and I read Bookmark magazine. I love mysteries too.

UL: What books are currently on your personal bookshelf?

Dr. Pippen: Currently, I am pushing Jane Austen and Lee Smith.

UL: Do you have a favorite quote from a book or author that you often refer to?

Dr. Pippen: I remember Dickinson's poetry more than I do lines from novels.

UL: As a scholar whose profession involves constantly reading to analyze works, what motivates you to read on your own free time? Inspiration? Catharsis? Relaxation? For Knowledge?

Dr. Pippen: I read for all the reasons you listed. I read different books for different reasons. I also read to escape and to have travels while being at home.

--Nicole Crowder

Oh Snap!: Rub a Dub Dub...

...who's reading in the tub?

--Nicole Crowder

Photo: Fuckyeahindiegirls

Oh Snap!: Instant Reading Room

Amid the hustle and bustle of Bethesda, Md.'s Montgomery Mall, this gentleman finds momentary solitude with Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

--Nicole Crowder

Photo courtesy Whitney Teal

Recognize! UL visits the D.C Book Festival

Last weekend, UL had the chance to join other giddy bibliophiles at the annual D.C Book Festival held on the National Mall. We scoped the festival grounds looking for cool readers like yourselves to find out what books they are currently reading and which authors they came to see:

Meet American University student Lauren, who we initially spotted for her adorable red-framed glasses.

"I wanted to meet Junot Diaz who wrote The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. He signed my book, and that was really nice. He was the primary author, but I’d really like to see John Irving and probably Lois Larby, if that’s possible."

"The last book I read... I’m reading a couple of books at school right now. I’m reading a book by Gabriel Garcia Marquez called Love in the Time of Cholera.

Next up are two friends M (left) +A who we spotted while checking out an author reading.



UL: Is there a particular author you came to see?

M: Not really, but there is this woman here named Sharon Robinson. When I was younger we went to see her at the National Book Fair, but I didn’t get to talk to her.

UL: What book are you both currently reading?

A: Right now I’m reading Dude, Where’s My Country? by Michael Moore.

M: My favorite book would probably be First Part Last by Angela Johnson. But right now I’m reading Gravity by Leanne Lieberman. It’s about an Orthodox teenage-Jewish girl, but then I guess she starts questioning her sexuality.


And before the rain ushered everyone under tents we bumped into mother-daughter duo Linda (left) and Jasmine.

Jasmine: I had my book signed by Jodi Picoult.

Linda: I'm hoping to catch Walter Moseley at four o'clock. I'm currently reading The Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T.E Lawrence (also known as Laurence of Arabia).

Jasmine: I'm reading Julie & Julia.


We hope those of you in D.C area were able to check out all the goings on of the Festival last week. And meet us back here for more coverage of future book festivals and events!

The Teacher's Lounge: Dr. H. George Hahn

The Teacher's Lounge eavesdrops on professors from various disciplines at universities across the country to find out what they're reading when they're not assigning you 12-page dissertations...due in two weeks.

Dr. George Hahn is a scholar of 18th British Literature and author of several published essays and a book titled The Ocean Bards: British Poetry and the War at Sea, 1793-1815 (2008). Dr. Hahn teaches British Literature at Towson University in Towson, Maryland.

UL: What is the name of the course you teach?

Dr. Hahn: Among other courses, I teach the undergraduate Beowulf to Virginia Woolf 6-credit survey, the course in 18th-century English literature, and a graduate seminar in 18th-century satire

UL: What five books would you absolutely recommend your students or peers read?

Dr. Hahn: How about seven? Severely constricting an answer to my specialization in 18th-century England, I would name these: Addison and Steele’s Spectator papers, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, Pope’s Essay on Criticism, Fielding’s Tom Jones, Boswell’s Life of Samuel Johnson, and Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France along with Paine’s Rights of Man. Why these?

Put into a time capsule, together they preserve the century’s interests and style. In them we hear how Englishmen talked and argued about questions still at issue, we sample the quality and value of their wit, we return to the Golden Age of satire and the birth of the novel, we see the change from reason to emotion in the way they thought and talked over the century, we see and hear and smell both the mean streets of London and the sunny countryside of that small but important island nation.

Knowing these books is to know part of our cultural genetics as Americans. Whatever our race, ethnicity, or religion, it is certain that our language and grammar, our political and legal structures, and the basis of our laws and social customs are rooted in 18th-century England.

UL: Do you have a favorite quote from a book or author that you often refer to?

Dr. Hahn: I can’t decide. Take your pick of one of these:

-“Never take part in the nonsense that is talked about by the ignorant and uninstructed.”--Marcus Aurelius

-“True ease in writing comes from art, not chance,
As those move easiest who have learned to dance.”—Alexander Pope

-“The slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.”—George Orwell

UL: Are there any authors, either living who dead, you hope everyone would explore or know more about?

Dr. Hahn: Authors that I name—Charles Dibdin, Henry James Pye, Tom Carter, to name a few—are lost in time. I call them the Ocean Bards, and my latest book, published in 2008, The Ocean Bards: British Poetry and the War at Sea, 1793-1815 would be my own general answer to your question. Long before Patrick O’Brian’s novels of the great age of combat sail, a vast popular poetry abounded about that 22-year war with France when England stood alone, and war was an existential fact and not escapist fiction. Yet none of thousands of these poems, printed in newspapers and magazines and hawked as broadsides and sung in streets and on shipboards ever gets into the anthologies.

So whatever the attitudes of literary critics now, to neglect these poems is to miss an appreciation of the literary landscape then. Certainly the tall oaks of Wordsworth et al. dominate the picture, but to erase from it the thick underbrush of popular war poetry below, the war clouds above and the sea beyond is to present a false picture of literary and social history.

So the book encourages the reconstruction of that time in chapters about poems of the navy, the nation and the Ocean Bards; invasion poems; sea battle ballads; victory odes; seascapes, and sailors’ elegies.


UL: What are your incentives for reading books? For inspiration? For catharsis? For relaxation? For knowledge?

Dr. Hahn: I see older literature, history, biography, and philosophy as French doors to walk back through to listen to those professors in absentia, wise men and women long dead, who wrote those books. To me, that’s the magic of great writing. But don’t we now know much more than they did? T. S. Eliot had the answer: “Precisely, and they are that which we know.”

--Nicole Crowder

Oh Snap!: The Charming Reader

A beautiful forest creature is spotted; a bookish 'indie' boy enjoys a sweet escape among the elements.

--Nicole Crowder

Photo: Fuckyeahindieboys

Oh Snap!: Behold, the Power!

Paris Hilton takes a drive over to Book Soup in West Hollywood and finds herself engrossed in The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene.

--Nicole Crowder

Photo by London Entertainment/Splash News

Oh Snap!: Only the Essentials...

Fashion blogger and bibliophile Olivia does a little shopping for vintage accessories and steals away with Steinbeck and Hemingway.

--Nicole Crowder

Photo by Olivia from I've Got a Lust for Life

Lit Talk Events: The National Book Festival Hits the National Mall

The Library of Congress' annual National Book Festival rolls into town this Saturday, September 26th, 2009 on the National Mall.

A gaggle of authors forming the who's who in literature, including children's authors, poetry and prose writers, fiction and non-fiction authors, illustrators, and historical authors, will be present. To see which will be in attendance just take a scroll, and be sure to close your mouth once you get to the bottom!

Patricia Sullivan

Ann Kidd Taylor

David A. Taylor
Julia Alvarez

Junot Díaz

John Grisham

Katherine Neville

Jodi Picoult

Nicholas Sparks

Colson Whitehead

David Wroblewski
Mary Jane Clark

Walter Mosley

James Patterson

George Pelecanos

Ana Menendez

Azar Nafisi

and more!

To find out what time your favorite author will be reading or signing his or her book, click here!

The Library of Congress will also be unrolling its newest initiative--Read.gov--which will combine all the literary promotional material from the Library's archive so that viewers have one specific location where they can find out about all the upcoming literary programs.

Date and Time:

Saturday, September 26th

10 A.M-5:30 P.M

The National Mall

Metro: Smithsonian

Hope to see you on the Mall!

--Nicole Crowder

Poster courtesy LOC Book Festival

Oh Snap!: Seduced... by a Cover, Of Course

Actor Ryan Gosling is a man who knows how to woo a lady with words (see The Notebook). Now we know where he gets it from. Gosling reads Albert Camus' The Stranger.

--Nicole Crowder

Photo by Melodie McDaniel

Recognize! Hispanic Heritage Month

September 15th-October 15th is National Hispanic Heritage Month, and UL proudly acknowledges the incredible contributions and achievements from Hispanic Americans (the most recent standout, of course, being newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor as the first Hispanic American to serve on the Court).

But there is no shortage of brilliance from the literary circle, either, as Latino writers and journalists who have been prominent movers and shakers help shape the art of storytelling. Head over to Barnes and Noble for more great titles!

--Nicole Crowder

Photos: Barnes & Noble

Oh Snap!: Bedtime Story

For this dapper chap, we guess nothing is more conducive for an afternoon nap than having his fill of reading The Menage of Fascism & Anarchy.

--Nicole Crowder

Oh Snap!: Model Citizen

This model in Paris knows what's up: great books never go out of style.

--Nicole Crowder

Photo by Scott Schuman/The Sartorialist

To Woodstock: Peace & Love

Uptown Literati is celebrating one of the most seminal events in history, and certainly of the turbulent 1960s. Woodstock reached beyond Max Yagur's dairy farm in the sleepy corner of Bethel, NY in 1969 to rock the world with its rallying cry for peace, love, and music. It's since spawned movies, books, and has inspired countless men and women to take up the guitar and start bands of their own. Today, we remember Woodstock in words and images.

Bobbi and Nick Ercoline at Woodstock in 1969.

Photo by Burk Uzzle/Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

One of the greatest to ever blaze the guitar, Jimi Hendrix.

Did you know Hendrix and his band improvised their now classic version of "The Star Spangled Banner"? I guess when the man of the hour says just play, you do just that.

WOODSTOCK PERFORMERS: THEN & NOW

Joan Baez

Richie Havens

Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (later only Crosby, Stills, and Nash)

Did you know that Woodstock was only the second time that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young had ever performed together? Get it!



Melanie

Sly & The Family Stone

(Check Sly with the mohawk action. What a difference 4 decades makes!)

Sha Na Na

Ravi Shankar

Photos: Getty Images, AP Photo, and Corbis.

--Nicole C.