My first encounter with the work of Ursula K. Le Guin happened in my freshman year at Rutgers, when my friend handed me a book she was reading for a class and insisted I read one of the short stories in it. It was a short short story, she said, and I could finish it … Read More
Library instruction sessions can be boooooring! Unless students feel the urge, pun intended, to pay attention (paper due, a strict course instructor is watching, the librarian is rolling their eyes, or all of the above), 80 minutes can fly away quickly, with zero impact. Time wasted, for all parties. Nothing new under the sun, not … Read More
Poodle Springs sounds like an intriguing title alone. The eighth novel in the famous Philip Marlowe series has two authors listed, Raymond Chandler, the original writer of the series, and Robert B. Parker. What’s going on here? With only four chapters written, Poodle Springs was left unfinished in 1959 when Chandler died. For his 100th … Read More
As I’ve written about previously, short stories are quite different in breadth and depth than a novel. Like a snapshot in a photo album or a scene in a play, short stories provide a glimpse into something – a person, locale, event, etc. It’s up to the writer to decide how fully developed they want … Read More
Certain disasters dwell in the public consciousness long after they take place. The sinking of the RMS Titanic on April 15, 1912 took the lives of 1,500 people. In the 110 years since the sinking, numerous books and films, along with a voluminous amount of scholarship have ensured that the memory of the event lives … Read More
“Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us” is the theme of Banned Books Week 2022, observed from September 18 to 24 this year. Committed to intellectual freedom, Books We Read joins the American Library Association’s annual event, which has brought together the entire book community to support the freedom “to seek and to express ideas, even … Read More
Editor’s note: celebrating the freedom to read with The Library Book on Banned Books Week 2022. Held September 18 – 24, this year’s theme is “Books Unite Us. Censorship Divides Us.” Read more about the initiative from the American Library Association, including the most frequently challended books of 2021. We at Books We Read are … Read More
After reading more than half of Absolutely on Music: Conversations with Seiji Ozawa, by Haruki Murakami, I realized that the title is a pun. In classical music, some pieces have extra musical associations, such as Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique, which musically embodies the accompanying narrative of a passionate lover gone mad. Pieces that don’t have … Read More
The Books We Read Blog is conducting a series of interviews with contributors and friends of the blog to get a snapshot of our reading habits: the things we like to read, the circumstances in which we read, and more. Judit H. Ward is a science librarian on the Cook Campus and program director of … Read More
The Books We Read Blog is conducting a series of interviews with contributors and friends of the blog to get a snapshot of our reading habits: the things we like to read, the circumstances in which we read, and more. Meredith Parker is Science Reference and Instruction Librarian, who was based out of the Library … Read More