The Monstrosity Gazette: A Weekly Smattering of All Things Literary...

Bookish Quote of the Week:

The free access to information is not a privilege, but a necessity for any free society. … One of my favorite things to do as a young man was wander through the stacks of my hometown library.

-Ed Asner

Today in Literary History:

On this day in 1932 John Updike was born. In a writing career of almost fifty years and as many books, the five Rabbit novels (counting the 2000 novella, Rabbit Remembered) stand out as a bell tolling, at decade intervals, for Harry Angstrom and America. Two of them won Pulitzers; one of them was reviewed as a book "that one can set beside the work of Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, Joyce and not feel the draft."

For more, visit Today in Literature.

Bizarre Link of the Week:

Former library president admits stealing nearly $100K
The former president of Blue Mountain Community Library in Pen Argyl, Pennsylvania, admitted March 9 to stealing nearly $100,000, in a plea agreement under which his wife will be allowed to enter into a first-offender program. Over nine years, Richard Leidich used the public library’s funds to support himself, his wife, and his various business interests, pilfering $99,212 from it before he was caught....
Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, Mar. 9

Book I'm Eyeing this Week:

Gillespie and I
by Jane Harris
Harper Perennial (January 31, 2012)

Summary in a Sentence: 

From the Orange Prize-nominated author of "The Observations" comes a sweeping literary novel of one young woman's friendship with a volatile artist and the controversy that consumes him.

Read the Reviews:

Savidge Reads |  nomadreader