May 2008

A Tehran-based institute working on Quranic studies has recently set up a section sending books via post to the readers free of charge. The readers can select from over 5000 books available on the institute’s website www.tafsirejavan.com. The application should be sent through fax.

In today’s Observer Review, Robert McCrum writes about the effect of the last decade on the world of books. On balance, he thinks change has served global literature well: “What’s not in doubt is that it’s a huge democratic moment: more people than ever before are being able to share their ideas and feelings with a global audience, and to engage in a vivid contemporary dialogue about the meaning of culture, in books, film, music, theatre and art.”

Police in the suburbs east of San Francisco are investigating how an X-rated recording detailing a dog and a pig’s intimate relationship ended up on a public library’s dial-a-story service.
The Benicia Public Library’s story line typically features children’s fairy tales like “The Three Bears.”

But Geri Engberg said she and her 6-year-old daughter instead heard a pornographic, profanity-laced description of the relationship between the two animals.

shinyshiny.tv: “This another of their creations, with the pendant of the necklace looking like some totally hot (in a librarian way) pair of glasses. Buying these, you’re only one step away from the Holy Grail of librarianism – wearing your actual glasses on a chain round your neck. And that’s even hotter. “

“On the Media” from NPR has an entire episode dedicated to books. You can find the entire episode here.

Segments include:
One For The Books
Down With Paper!
Long Live Paper!
The Bookmaker
Vanishing Reviews
The Long Tale
OTM’s Novel Challenge Finale

The following book review was posted by mdoneil is his blog. Because of all the controversy of the original post that got him to buy this book I figured I would move this over to a story.

mddoneil said in his blog:
I remarked earlier that I thought Prioleau Alexander’s book, You Want Fries With That? would suck. I could not have been more wrong.

I got it from my local independent bookshop a couple of weeks ago, but I had not had time to read it. I took it with me to read on the plane last week. It was a scream. I called a friend from the airport to read part of the prologue -the dialogue between a RWM (me) and a South American father of 3. It was hilarious and yet absolutely correct.

Read complete blog post here.

The Search giant’s CEO talks about how the company plans to overcome the challenges it faces. On the last day of March, two and half weeks before Google reported impressive financial results that defied predictions of an economy-affected slowdown, Schmidt sat down with Fortune’s Adam Lashinsky at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, Calif., to discuss Google’s reputation, its challenges and what impact the company is feeling from the departures of some of its key employees.

If you’re like me (and you know you want to be) you’re a Twitter user. Andrea Mercado is like me, and says It’s a struggle, keeping Twitter simple, and yet adding the features everyone craves. She Says “It strikes me as treading that fine line of using Twitter for evil… but marketing isn’t always bad, and libraries could use some help with that. Plus, these tools have non-library, non-marketing applications.”

Author in “World Authors 1900-1950”

Bess Streeter was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa. After graduating from Iowa State Normal School, she taught school at several locations in the west, later returning to Cedar Falls to earn an advanced degree in education. A writer since early childhood, she won a writing contest at age fourteen and another at seventeen.

In 1906, she married Charles Aldrich. They moved to Elmwood, Nebraska, where Charles, Bess, her widowed mother, and family friends invested and purchased a bank. They had four children–Mary, Robert, Charles and James.

Aldrich began writing more regularly in 1911 when the Ladies’ Home Journal advertised a fiction contest, which she entered and won. She went on to become one of the highest-paid women writers of the period. Her stories often concerned Midwestern pioneer history and were very popular with teenage girls and young women.

Full Wikipedia entry.
Bess Streeter Aldrich Foundation Web Site.

Major works:
A Lantern in Her Hand
Spring Came on Forever
Song of Years

Mobile Web surfers in the U.S. spend more time on classified-ad site Craigslist than on any other Web site, and they spent nearly twice as much time browsing as their British counterparts in March.