Brian

I’m surprised that there doesn’t seem to have been an LISNews item yet this week about the new novel Pamela Anderson “wrote.” One reviewer says Star is “not badly written, as trash goes … One wonders, though, whether Ms Anderson’s fans are really the kind of people who can be bothered to read a book.”

And the answer to the question in this LISNews item’s department: There’s a “bonus pinup” printed on the reverse side of the dust jacket!

Review seen linked on Bookslut.

A new research report from the National Endowment for the Arts finds a dramatic decline in book reading by U.S. adults. The steepest drop over the last decade was for the youngest adults (18-24). A 60-page pdf of Reading at Risk: A Survey of Literary Reading in America is available here, and the NEA’s press release is here.

Larry Beinhart’s forthcoming novel is The Librarian, due in September from Nation Books. From the publisher’s fall catalog:

“How on earth did nebbish university librarian David Goldberg end up on Virginia’s Ten Most Wanted Criminals list for bestiality? And how did he get ensnared in a vast right-wing conspiracy to steal the presidency?”

How’s that for a hook?

DiscoveryNews reports on researchers who say it was fashionable for women in 17th-Century England to dress with their breasts exposed, a practice shown on illustrated ballad sheets from the period.

“Angela McShane Jones, a lecturer in history at University of Warwick in Coventry, England, became interested in the subject while studying the nearly 2,000 woodcut ballads housed in the Samuel Pepys collection at Cambridge University. Additional ballad sheets located at the British Library, the National Library of Scotland, Harvard University, and other institutions fuelled her study.”

According to Jones’ recent article in History Today (look at the hardcopy magazine or an online pdf for illustrations), “The evidence suggests that while displaying the breasts was supposed to be an upper-class affair, it had been vulgarized and imitated by lower-class women, aspiring to courtly fashion.” Not surprisingly, “Sermons, pamphlets, broadsides and ballads, written against women showing their breasts … were produced continuously.”

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose …

Q: When is an anti-pornography site run by evangelical Christians not an anti-pornography site?

A: When it’s run through CyberPatrol’s link checker! (Link goes to unaltered image of screen-shot I made this morning.)

Follow-up Q: Is CyberPatrol actually blocking this site in any libraries?

p.s. XXXchurch.com has been getting a bit of media coverage lately for their Pete the Porno Puppet psa.

Sara Drongensen, a high school librarian in New Mexico, was arrested for supplying a keg of beer at her daughter’s 16th birthday party. One student was hospitalized for alcohol poisoning, and kids at the party reported that “at one point bullets were flying.”

Drogensen has been placed on administrative leave from her job and has been evicted from her mobile home.

Southern Living issued a safety notice regarding a recipe in the April issue. The original version of the recipe apparently includes an instruction to heat shortnin’ and water in a dangerous way. Safe version of the recipe is here and will be in the May issue.

So, what are libraries that get the magazine doing with p. 154? Where I work, the page was ripped out; I just inserted the notice and corrected recipe.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is proposing that the state provide each child with a book every month from birth to age five. The Governor is quoted as saying, “I’d much rather see us spend money on books for kids and encouraging parents to read to their kids than some of the things that we waste money on.”

Story in the Chicago Sun-Times. The article in the registration-required-so-I-avoid-linking-to-it-when-I-can Chicago Tribune also mentions that the proposal targets families who tend not to use their public libraries.

The Delaware County Times reports that some citizens are not pleased that a Philadelphia-area public library has books like The Joy of Gay Sex, Great Sex Tips, and Sex Toys 101 on the adult nonfiction shelves.

But the members of the Pro-Life Coalition recognize that, even though they’d prefer not to look at those books, the sex guides serve an educational purpose for other taxpayers.

Just kidding. They’ve carefully analyzed the books and have filed requests for re-evaluation with the library board and director.

Just kidding. They’ve condemned the books as pornography and are holding a meeting at a church.

The article does a pretty good job of explaining the library’s, er, position on the sex books.

The Chicago Tribune has a nifty article (registration required) on a revived interest in lesbian pulp fiction from the ’50s and ’60s.

Playwright Patricia Kane sums up the appeal of these novels: “They embody this whole fantasy world that’s very fun, sexy, vibrant and dangerous. There is this illicit quality to them.”