LISNews: Librarian News

Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck took a road trip across America with only his dog Charley for company. He published a non-fiction book about his experiences two years later, called Travels with Charley: In Search of America. Journalist Bill Steigerwald
retraced Steinbeck’s journey this year and says the only problem with Steinbeck’s story is that it’s mostly a fabrication.

New Haven, CT (AP) Christine O'Donnell's TV ad declaration "I'm not a witch" during her U.S. Senate campaign topped this year's best quotes, according to a Yale University librarian.

O'Donnell's quote is cited by Fred Shapiro, associate librarian at Yale Law School, who released his fifth annual list of the most notable quotations of the year. In the ad, O'Donnell was responding to reports of her revelations that she had dabbled in witchcraft years ago.

"It was such a remarkable unconventional quote to be a part of the political discourse," Shapiro said.

The quote by O'Donnell, a tea party favorite running in Delaware, tied for first place with "I'd like my life back," the lament made in May by BP's CEO Tony Hayward after the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

"People resented the fact that he was wanting to get back to his yacht races and other aspects of his normal life when those little problems were dwarfed by the magnitude of what people on the Gulf Coast were dealing with," Shapiro said.

Shapiro noted that the top quotes stemmed from two of the biggest news stories of the year, the oil spill and the emergence of the tea party.

The original Yale Book of Quotations was published in 2006. Since then, Shapiro has released an annual list of the top 10 quotes. He said they will be incorporated into the next edition of the book.

Drumroll, please. Fairfield Town Librarian Karen Ronald announced the library’s official selection for 2011’s “One Book, One Town” program Wednesday morning at the Main Library. With much fanfare, Ronald told the crowd that the official selection is Jonathan Safran Foer’s “Eating Animals.”

“I will warn you, it is a mature subject matter,” Ronald said. “But it’s something near and dear to our hearts in Fairfield, with the local organic farms starting up.”

Foer’s book takes an in-depth look at the meat industry. But Branch Librarians Mary Coe stressed that it’s not an advertisement for vegetarianism. Rather, it’s “about where our food comes from.” Teen librarian Nicole Scherer added that it’s also a personal story about how Foer deals with his research in relation to the upcoming birth of his son.

There has been much ado lately over the release of Mark Twain's autobiography after a century-long embargo. But with only a small portion of the material in fact never-before-published, is this merely deft brand management by Twain from beyond the grave? Writer Craig Fehrman describes the tactics behind the embargo and how it has worked well as a modern day marketing strategy.

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