Sarah B.'s blog

“Poetry is thoughts that breathe, and words that burn.” --Thomas Gray

It's National Poetry Month! We'll celebrate poetry in various forms including haiku, villanelles, sonnets, and sestinas. Please bring a poem or two that you really enjoy. Reading poetry out loud is the best way to experience poetry. Join us during April's Books Plus meeting led by Dory Lynch this Sunday, April 3 at 2:00 p.m.

As always we'll have healthy snacks and Amal's delicious cake, and good fellowship. For more details, see below. Hope to see you there.
Read more »

Forget what you know about Cleopatra - she was neither Egyptian, nor did she commit suicide with a live snake (though it remains a tenaciously romantic symbol) - and discover a much more complicated and interesting person. She was not the beauty as Elizabeth Taylor would make us believe, but was able to charm two of the most powerful men in history, and was lucky enough to bear sons by both. Stacy Schiff argues in this new remarkably readable biography, Cleopatra: A Life, that her death marked the end of an empire, the end of a dynasty and the end of ancient history. Read more »

The National Book Critics Circle Awards was announced this week. This award is to promote the finest books published in English for the previous year. The winners include:

Fiction:
A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

Biography:
How To Live: Or, A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer by Sarah Bakewell
Read more »

How important is the cover of a book? Will romantic new covers and bonus quizzes like "Are you destined for a love like Catherine and Heathcliff's?" be enough to appeal to young adult readers? HarperTeen thinks so. They have recently rereleased several classic books including Wuthering Heights, Pride and Prejudice, and Romeo and Juliet with covers no doubt reminding teen girls of the Twilight series.
Read more »

Amazon's blog Omnivoracious is a great read to keep up with not only what is happening at Amazon, but also generally in the publishing world, complete with reviews of reviews, author interviews, and other literary minded topics. Today's post was exceptionally astonishing and beautiful. Profiled is Chicago based artist, Brian Dettmer, who sculpts old books into amazing works of art. Check out both the blog entry and his website to see the images. I don't want to generally advocate cutting up books, but his end result is truly extraordinary.
Read more »

The seasons are turning again, and it's almost time for our 2011 One Book One Bloomington selection--Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin. Set in 1974, this National Book Award winner chronicles the day Philippe Petit tightroped across the space between the two World Trade Towers. In masterful prose, McCann chronicles how various strangers reacted to this event. It's a book about the interrelationships between the residents of a great city, and how one man's quest for adventure brings hope, fear, and wonder to the people standing below. Jonathan Mahler of the New York Times called it "one of the most electric, profound novels I have read in years."
Read more »

I admit to being a streaky reader - I think this time last year I was on a World War I fiction kick. And this winter I read three books in a row about the Johnstown Flood including both fiction and non-fiction titles - Three Rivers Rising, In Sunlight In a Beautiful Garden, and The Johnstown Flood. The latter is by David McCullough, a famous historian and two time Pulitzer Prize recipient who is from Pittsburgh near the area where the flood occurred.

Recently though it seems I am reading a lot of coming of age novels featuring girls as the main character. E. Lockhart has written some wonderful contemporary coming of age novels, but for something historical I also have recently fallen for The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate by Jacqueline Kelly.
Read more »

The teenage female protagonists of E. Lockhart's novels are funny, smart, interesting, questioning and underneath it all resilient and strong. They don't always make the best initial choices, but are willing to learn and adjust as they go. These coming-of-age novels feature a romance (or two), but not at the cost of ignoring other similar and frequently troublesome themes of any young life - parents, school, friendships and finding your niche.
Read more »

As part of the City of Bloomington's Black History Month schedule of events, a review and discussion of Kathryn Stockett's The Help will be held on Saturday, February 12 at 1:00 p.m at Showers City Hall Council Chambers at 401 North Morton Street.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett details the lives of black maids in 60's Mississippi and the white women they work for. It chronicles the lives of three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town, and the way women - mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends - view one another.
Read more »

As cold winter winds swirl around us, join us at the library on Feb. 6th where we'll travel to sunny Florida to explore Zora Neale Hurston's evocative world. Alice Walker remarked that "no book was more important to her" than Their Eyes Were Watching God. As always we'll offer hot drinks, Amal's delicious cake, and an outlet for your stimulating conversation. Hope to see you here.

For more information on this and future programs, please see below:

Books Plus meets the first Sunday of each month. All are welcome. Join the discussion or simply come to listen. No registration necessary. Drop in.
Read more »