It’s December, and along with the holiday preparations and the shortened
days, this time of year brings with it the barrage of year-end lists.
Over the past weeks, critics and editors from numerous publications have
released their Top 10 and Best-of-2013 lists in which they share their
favorite movies,TV shows, albums, songs, and books (among an array of
cultural offerings) of the past year.
Monday 16 December 2013
A Point Of View: Why Charles Dickens endures
As Christmas approaches, so Charles Dickens begins to seep once again
into TV and theatre schedules. I have my own theory about the reason
for his cultural longevity. Listen to this:
"There was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities - had been an officer in a South American regiment among other odd things - but had not achieved much in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him the furniture. The story arose out of the furniture… "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25347787
"There was a man who, though not more than thirty, had seen the world in divers irreconcilable capacities - had been an officer in a South American regiment among other odd things - but had not achieved much in any way of life, and was in debt, and in hiding. He occupied chambers of the dreariest nature in Lyons Inn; his name, however, was not up on the door, or door-post, but in lieu of it stood the name of a friend who had died in the chambers, and had given him the furniture. The story arose out of the furniture… "
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25347787
Friday 18 October 2013
Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming
It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why,
and whether they might be biased. A declaration of members' interests,
of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going
to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction,
that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can
do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what
libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.
And
I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an author, often an author
of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about 30 years I
have been earning my living though my words, mostly by making things up
and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to
read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist
and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.
So I'm biased as a writer. But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British citizen.
Teaching Thoreau In a Hyper-Connected World
Nashville English teacher Elizabeth Smith introduced Thoreau’s Walden by asking her AP juniors if they were ever truly alone in a hyper-connected world — even without a smartphone. In doing so, she wanted to emphasize how Thoreau’s Transcendentalist
experiment living alone in the woods might be nearly impossible to
replicate in modern, plugged-in lives — at least not without some
effort.
“One student said that he gets panicked if he goes an hour
without a text message,” she said, “and he has to blow up his friends’
phones with messages to make sure they are still out there.” Other
students, she said, bristled at the idea they were sheep in the digital
herd, and liked to think of themselves as being able to manage a healthy
balance between solitude and digital connection.
But for both adults and kids — parents, teachers, and
students — because we have the luxury of being instantly and constantly
connected, “Being alone feels like a problem to be solved,” said MIT
Professor Sherry Turkle in the moving TED Talk based on her book, Alone, Together.
Based on her research, Turkle argued that relationships maintained
through texting and social media might make kids feel connected, but
because the phone is always buzzing, they may miss valuable
opportunities to experience real solitude, which is vital for
self-reflection. “If we don’t teach our children how to be alone,” she
said, “they will only know how to be lonely.”
Monday 23 September 2013
Literaturkurs im Martinushaus: "Zeitsprünge"
Zeitsprünge
Island: Herbjörg Maria Björnsson, Jahrgang 1929, lebt in einer Garage und
lässt ihr Leben in Zeitsprüngen Revue passieren.
Wir bearbeiten Hallgrímur Helgasons Roman Eine Frau bei 1000º, der
2011 auf der Frankfurter Buchmesse vorgestellt wurde. 'Skurill', 'fulminante Sprache', 'ein gelungener, bissiger Roman'
- ein Meisterwerk der besonderen Art erwartet uns.
Kursmaterial: Helgason, Hallgrímur: Eine Frau bei
1000º
DTV, 2013
ISBN-13:
9783423214490
9,95 €
Referentin: Ellenruth
Molz, M.A., Alzenau
Zeit: Mittwoch,
10.15 – 11.45 Uhr, 5x
Anmeldung: Martinushaus
Aschaffenburg
http://www.martinushaus.de/index.php?id=27
Literaturkurs Herbst 2013 - "Umwelt * Eigenwelt * Mitwelt" - Kursinfo
Umwelt * Eigenwelt * Mitwelt
Literaturkurs Herbst 2013
63741 Aschaffenburg
10 Termine montags, 17.00 - 18.30 Uhr
Kursgebühr 200,00 EuroAnmeldung: mail@creativzeit.com
Tuesday 17 September 2013
What's the worst book on your bookshelves?
Contributors to our regular Tips, Links and Suggestions
threads usually enjoy a debate about good reads. This week, however,
thoughts turned to terrible ones. We've all struggled with poorly
written books; ironically, they're often the ones we can't get rid of,
gathering dust on our shelves.
MsCarey kick-started the debate with these thoughts:
What's the worst book on your bookshelves? I was just browsing my shelves and came upon Postern of Fate by Agatha Christie. It's an absolute stinker. Unreadably bad.
Surprising
words, perhaps, from a self-confessed "big Christie fan". Sadly, for
MsCarey, "the book's turgidity, ludicrous pomposity and a literally
nonsensical plot which clearly hadn't been edited properly by author or
editor" are the book's only legacy.
Monday 16 September 2013
A Bookless Library Opens in San Antonio
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff isn’t the man you’d imagine as the visionary for the nation’s first all-digital public library.
The former San Antonio mayor doesn’t own an e-reader (“I refuse to
read the e-book!” he says) and for years has collected first editions of
modern novels (in print, mind you). Back in the 1990s, Wolff helped
spearhead San Antonio’s 240,000 square-foot, six-story, $50 million
central public library, a building the city is now struggling to figure
out what to do with. Today, Wolff says he would’ve avoided building such
a large facility.
Fifty Shades of Grey now officially rubbish
Fifty Shades of Grey. Just when we thought no more bad stuff
could come out of this book: first the monstrous book sales, then the
media frenzy, then the film announcement followed by all the tiny
updates about who would direct and star in the film (readers, I covered this too), then the recent news that hotels up and down the country were lumbered with discarded copies of the books.
After all that, it is now charity shops, those high street paragons of virtue and volunteerism, who must bear the brunt of the Fifty Shades legacy.
Monday 19 August 2013
The Kindle has turned me off paper books
It was the second lead story on The News at Ten. JK Rowling, it seems, had just been unmasked
as the author of a pseudonymous thriller, The Cuckoo's Calling, under
the name Robert Galbraith. By the time the newsreader was on item three,
I was on page three. Kindles are perfect for speedy delivery: 30
seconds between desire and fulfilment.
British Library's wi-fi service blocks 'violent' Hamlet
A man using the British
Library's wi-fi network was denied access to an online version of
Shakespeare's Hamlet because the text contained "violent content".
Author Mark Forsyth was writing his book in the library, and needed to check a line from the famous play.
The British Library said the fault was caused by a newly installed wi-fi service from a third-party provider.
One security expert said the incident highlighted the "dysfunction" of internet filters.
Mr Forsyth revealed on his blog that the filter had logged his attempt to access the page.
A spokesperson for the British Library said Hamlet had since been made accessible.
"The upgraded service has a web filter to ensure that inappropriate content cannot be viewed on-site," he added.
Writing - for health and happiness?
Decades of research have
shown that writing down your emotions has concrete health benefits -
even helping wounds heal. But as more and more people publish their
intimate feelings online, could they be doing themselves more harm than
good?
High-profile coverage of cyberbullying might make sharing
your deepest emotions online sound like a bad idea, but when it comes to
the risks and benefits of writing online, advice is mixed.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, suggests questions about social media are included in visits to the doctor, a move prompted by worries about cyberbullying, internet addiction and sleep deprivation.
On the other hand, blogging about health problems has been shown to improve feelings of social support, especially when that support is lacking from family and friends.
Tuesday 2 July 2013
The Case for Preserving the Pleasure of Deep Reading
When a minaret dating from the twelfth century was toppled in the
fighting between rebels and government forces in Aleppo, Syria, earlier
this spring, we recognized that more than a building had been lost. The
destruction of irreplaceable artifacts—like the massive Buddha statues
dynamited in the Bamiyan Valley in Afghanistan in 2001 and the ancient
texts burned and looted in Iraq in 2003—leaves us less equipped to
understand ourselves and where we came from, less able to enlarge
ourselves with the awe and pleasure that these creations once evoked.
Monday 1 July 2013
Der größte Buchverlag der Welt entsteht
Bertelsmann und Pearson haben die Gründung des weltgrößten Buchverlags
perfekt gemacht. Nachdem die Kartellbehörden den Weg für das neue
Unternehmen Penguin Random House frei gemacht hatten, unterzeichneten
die Medienunternehmen am Montag die abschließenden Verträge. Gemeinsam
wollen Bertelsmann und Pearson künftig in schnellwachsende Märkte wie
China, Indien oder Brasilien und in neue Geschäfte investieren.
Tuesday 25 June 2013
What makes Jane Austen the ideal banknote candidate?
When Charles Darwin disappears off the back of the Bank of England's £10 note, Jane Austen is a candidate to replace him. It's exactly what was speculated yesterday.
Austen is likely to make a popular choice, but how might she have won over the Bank of England?
It's the bicentenary of Pride and Prejudice, arguably her
best-known novel, so getting her on a note by the end of the year would
be rather appropriate.
Monday 24 June 2013
TIME Presents the 12 All-Time Great Summer Reads
To celebrate the beginning of a new season, TIME editors have
compiled a list of our favorite summer reads from the past 40 years.
What defines a summer read? To us, it’s the kind of buzzed-about book
that seems to flourish in warmer months, equally ubiquitous on beaches
and in subway cars. (Not all summer reads are mindless page-turners—one
of our selected titles is a brainy mystery that touches on medieval
studies and semiotics.) Once you’ve perused the list, take our poll and
help us crown the All-Time, Ultimate Summer Read.
And we acknowledge that our list is by no means definitive—though we
think it’s a darn good representation of 40 years of seasonal tomes. So
we invite you to help fill in our gaps—to correct what you might think
are our egregious oversights—by telling us which books should join our
list. Tweet your picks—or share what you plan on reading this
summer—using the hashtag #SummerBooks. We’ll post the winner of this poll alongside a collection of your suggestions next Friday, June 27.
And now, on to our list…
Monday 10 June 2013
Will Power: 10 Great Shakespeare Movies
William Shakespeare wrote 38 plays — and perhaps a couple more for which
there’s circumstantial historical evidence, but no surviving copies.
The magnitude and influence of the Bard’s output, even if we leave aside
the brilliance of his sonnets, cement his reputation as the single
greatest writer the English-speaking world has produced. (Note to those
who believe that Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe or other Elizabethan
scribes penned some or all of the works: your arguments are compelling.
Saturday 18 May 2013
Literarische Entwicklungslehre
Die Evolutionstheorien eines Charles Darwin oder Jean-Baptiste
de Lamarck sind ihre Religion, die Eckpfeiler ihrer Weltdeutung
Konkurrenz und Räuber-Beute-Beziehung: Judith Schalanskys Roman Der Hals der Giraffe konfrontiert den Leser mit der kruden Weltsicht einer Lehrerin aus dem niedergehenden vorpommerschen Hinterland.
Monday 6 May 2013
Kathrin Passig, Dank E-Books lese ich mehr und kaufe weniger
E-Books haben ihr das eigene Leseverhalten
transparent gemacht, schreibt Kathrin Passig. Das hat Folgen: Sie muss
ihre Meinung über die Zukunft des Lesens revidieren.
Im
Jahr 2009 las ich 30 Bücher, allesamt auf Papier. Die damals
erhältlichen E-Reader wirkten so attraktiv wie Schwarzweißfernseher, und
ich sehnte mich nicht nach einem weiteren herumzutragenden Gadget. Im
Sommer 2010 stellte Amazon die Kindle-Software gratis auch für andere
Geräte zur Verfügung, Anfang Oktober kaufte ich mein erstes E-Book. Im
darauffolgenden Jahr las ich 40 Bücher, im Jahr 2012 waren es 74, 2013
werden es – extrapoliert aus der Lektüre der ersten vier Monate – etwas
über 80 sein. Ich lese also derzeit etwa doppelt so viele Bücher wie vor
dem Umstieg.
Monday 18 March 2013
Grace Paley - Kurzgeschichten in neuer Übersetzung
Grace Paley
Die kleinen Widrigkeiten des Lebens
Storys
Aus dem Englischen neu übersetzt von Sigrid Ruschmeier
256 Seiten. Leinen. Lesebändchen.
€ 19,95 €[A] 20,60 SFR 28,50
ISBN: 978-3-89561-235-0
Sunday 17 March 2013
Remixing Melville: Moby Dick Meets the Digital Generation
In a traditional English class, a teacher might assign Herman Melville’s famous novel Moby Dick
in small chunks. Students might complete their reading (or not),
discuss major themes and perhaps write an essay at the end of the unit.
But if a student never gets past the first few pages, the rest of that
unit is lost.
It’s become a common refrain that traditional education isn’t serving
a generation of students whose lives outside of school are completely
disconnected from what happens inside. But there are plenty of teachers
working hard to make reading material relevant to students, including a
team of researchers from University of Southern California Annenberg’s Innovation Lab that includes Henry Jenkins and Erin Reilly. They’ve created a model of what they call participatory learning
that engages students with materials on a personal level, often by
incorporating different types of media into the classroom and offering
varying points of entry to a text. Most recently, the team has put
together a teacher’s strategy guide, Reading in a Participatory Culture: Remixing Moby-Dick in the English, Classroom and an interactive digital book, Flows of Reading, to provide models of their approach.
Friday 8 March 2013
Die alles überwölbende Melancholie des Liebenden
Orhan Pamuks Roman „Das Museum der Unschuld“ ist wohl der einzige Roman,
dem ein eigenes Museum gewidmet ist, nämlich ebenjenes Istanbuler Museum
der Unschuld, dessen Entstehungsgeschichte im Buch ausführlich
beschrieben wird. Im Roman ist das Museum das Monument der Liebe Kemals
zu Füsun. In der Realität ist das Haus, das selbst in der an
Attraktionen nicht gerade armen Metropole Istanbul eine Besonderheit
darstellt, weit mehr: das Denkmal, das sich ein Dichter selbst errichtet
hat, das kuriose Dokument einer ausufernden Sammelleidenschaft und das
erste und einzige Museum für die Alltagskultur der westlich orientierten
Türkei in der zweiten Hälfte des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts.
Gedicht, Interpretation, Lesung „Teekanne mit Khakifrüchten“ von Durs Grünbein
Zu den Spielregeln des Stilllebens in der Malerei gehört der Ausschluss
des Lebendigen, des Wachsens: die Blumen sind abgeschnitten, die Tiere
zum überwiegenden Teil tot, und vom Menschen selbst ist allenfalls der
Totenschädel oder ein Gebrauchsgegenstand sichtbar, eine Kerze, ein
Instrument oder ein Buch, vielfach etwas Essbares. Das Gedicht von Durs
Grünbein, aus einem Band, in dem die bildende Kunst eine höchst
bedeutende Rolle spielt, setzt sich auf raffinierte Weise mit dieser
„natura morta“ auseinander: Die langen Schatten des Winters wie des
Schweigens bereiten eine ebenso präzise wie hintergründige Erfahrung des
Stilllebens vor, einer „Idee des Stilllebens“, die anschaulich als
Prozess entfaltet wird (Gedichttext im Kasten unten).
Friday 15 February 2013
Electronic readers 'better than books' for older people
Elderly people should use e-readers or tablet computers rather than books because they place less strain on the eyes while reading, a study has found.
Digital reading devices allow older people to read the same text more quickly
and with less effort than printed pages, without affecting their
understanding of the text, researchers said.
But when asked which device they preferred reading on, traditional books were
twice as popular as electronic devices among older readers, backing up
previous surveys.
The results suggest that despite digital book sales overtaking print in the UK
and the US, readers are still more attached to the culture associated with
books than the convenience of electronic devices.
Researchers from Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, tracked the
eye movements and brain activity of 36 younger participants aged 21-34, and
21 older adults aged 60 and above as they read text from e-readers, tablet
computers and printed pages.
Each participant was asked to read extracts from nine texts which ranged in
difficulty from fiction extracts to academic texts, reading each one once on
either a tablet, e-reader or printed page.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9852996/Electronic-readers-better-than-books-for-older-people.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/9852996/Electronic-readers-better-than-books-for-older-people.html
Monday 4 February 2013
English literature's 50 key moments from Marlowe to JK Rowling
What have been the hinge points in the evolution of Anglo-American literature? Here's a provisional, partisan list:
Depressing books could be just what the doctor ordered
Instead of 'mood-boosting books', imagine doctors handing out prescriptions for gloomy masterpieces by Samuel Beckett and Thomas Hardy. Martin Chilton looks at the appeal of 20 great depressing novels.
Puddleglum is an unusually cheerful marsh-wiggle in Narnia, "altogether
too full of bobance and bounce and high spirits". He is told sternly by
other wiggles that he has to learn "that life isn't all fricasseed
frogs and eel pie".
Would CS Lewis have passed a “cheerful test” for the new 'Books
On Prescription Scheme'? The project, which will be rolled out across
doctor's surgeries and libraries from May, means that patients suffering
from panic attacks, depression, relationship problems and anxiety will be
offered “mood-boosting books” on prescription, to be redeemed at the
library.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/9847523/Depressing-books-could-be-just-what-the-doctor-ordered.html
Thursday 31 January 2013
Monday 28 January 2013
Pride and Prejudice at 200: from Colin Firth groupies to Jane Austen erotica
Obsessive Jane
Austen fans or “Janeites” are nothing new. The term “Janeite” was coined
in 1894 by George Saintsbury in his preface to a new edition of Pride and
Prejudice. In 1924 Rudyard Kipling wrote a short story, “The Janeites”,
about First World War soldiers who coped with the horrors of trench warfare
by discussing their love of Austen’s novels. Fans of Austen seem, almost
uniquely, to feel the need to identify with the heroines, in a way that fans
of George Eliot (for example) do not. A symptom of this is the novel The
Jane Austen Book Club (2004) by Karen Joy Fowler and its 2007 film
adaptation. Five women and one man meet monthly to discuss Austen’s novels.
Each of them relates to Austen’s work in different ways; as the narrator
sums it up: “It was essential to reintroduce Austen into your life regularly
... let her look around.”
Pride and Prejudice at 200: take the quiz
It is a truth universally acknowledged that we all like a good literary quiz, so prove you can tell your Bennets from your Bingleys and your de Bourghs from your Darcys with our test of Jane Austen's greatest novel, Pride and Prejudice.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/books-life/9831077/Pride-and-Prejudice-at-200-take-the-quiz.html
Pride and Prejudice: Jane Austen fans celebrate novel's 200th anniversary
It has one of the most
famous opening lines in literature, it turned Colin Firth into a
heartthrob and it spawned a zombie spin-off. Now Pride and Prejudice has
reached the venerable age of 200.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the bicentenary
of Pride and Prejudice will be accompanied by a surge of Jane
Austen-related events and merchandise - and articles that shamelessly
hijack the novel's first sentence.
Monday's anniversary is being marked by a "readathon" of the novel at the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, which has launched an 11th-hour internet campaign to find an international star to read the first chapter.
How to use your iPhone, iPad or Mac to borrow ebooks from the library
You may be familiar with purchasing books and magazines for your iPhone
and iPad, but have you ever borrowed an ebook or digital edition of a
magazine from your local library? As more and more local libraries are
adding online digital catalogs of books for borrowing, it’s a great —
and cheaper! — way of building up your digital library for free. After
trying out a few methods for using the resources of your local library
to borrow electronic versions of your favorite ebooks, magazines and
audiobooks, I’ve written up a quick guide to follow.
Janeites: The curious American cult of Jane Austen
Two centuries after her
most famous work, Jane Austen inspires huge devotion in the US. What
makes this most English of writers so appealing to Americans?
She wrote it herself in 1813: "How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book."
Jane Austen's own work is a case in point. It may be 200
years since her most celebrated novel, Pride and Prejudice, was
published, but in the US she is the subject of more wildly devotional
fan-worship than ever.
With their conventions, Regency costumes and self-written
"sequels" to their heroine's novels, Austen's most dedicated adherents
display a fervency easily rivalling that of the subcultures around Star
Trek or Harry Potter.
Monday 14 January 2013
Favorite Book Cover Designs of 2012
NY Times
We asked people in and around the world of graphic design to name
one of their favorite book covers from 2012 and briefly describe its
appeal.
Der Zauber der Wirklichkeit
Buchtipp Der Zauber der Wirklichkeit
Von Frank Patalong
Ein Buch von Richard Dawkins als weihnachtlichen Tipp zu empfehlen,
hat eine gewisse Ironie - denn Dawkins ist vielen religiösen Menschen
ein Graus. Der Engländer ist einer der einflussreichsten
Evolutionsbiologen der vergangenen 50 Jahre und zugleich der
prominenteste Vertreter einer Bewegung offensiv auftretender Atheisten.
Inzwischen hat er den Kampf gegen den erstarkenden religiösen
Fundamentalismus zu seiner Sache gemacht.
America's first bookless public library will look 'like an Apple Store'
Bexar County, Texas says that it will open
the first 100 percent digital public library system in the country,
unveiling plans for its first location this past week. The plan has been
in the works for a while, headed up by Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff,
who says he was inspired to create a digitally native library while
reading Walter Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs.
"If you want to get an idea what it looks like, go into an Apple
store," Wolff told the San Antonio Express News. Called BiblioTech, the
library system plans for several locations, starting with a first one in
the fall of 2013 on the south side of the county. Wolff says this
system won't be a replacement for the County's City library system, but
an enhancement to it. They plan to save money by using buildings which
are already owned by Bexar County, and have estimated that beginning
costs are around $250,000 to secure the first 10,000 titles for the
library.
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