The Monstrosity Gazette: A weekly smattering of all things literary...

Quote of the Week

If information is the currency of democracy, then libraries are its banks.

-Wendell H. Ford

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Today in Literary History...

On this day in 1930 Harold Pinter was born. The famous Pinter pause may have been learned as an only child in Hackney: at the age of eight or nine Pinter and a group of imaginary friends would gather in his back garden, where they "talked aloud and held conversations beyond the lilac tree." He also says he was deeply affected by being a child-evacuee during WWII: "'There was no fixed sense of being ... of being ... at all.'"

For more literary history, visit Today in Literature.

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Segment in which I shamelessly pimp Etsy:

Edgar Allan Poe Collage Print

by EarlyBird

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Book I'm eyeing this week:

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

by Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Algonquin, 2010

Nonfiction

Summary in a Sentence:

A handicapped woman finds unexpected pleasure in observing a snail as it resides first on her bedside table and then in a homemade terrarium.  

Read the Reviews:

Pocket Review | Algonquin Books Blog

The Monstrosity Gazette: A weekly smattering of all things literary...

Quote of the Week

My lifelong love affair with books and reading continues unaffected by automation, computers, and all other forms of the twentieth-century gadgetry.

-Robert Downs

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Today in Literary History...

On this day in 1862, while rowing on the Thames at Oxford, Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) began to tell the three Liddell sisters the story that would become Alice in Wonderland. Alice, the ten-year-old middle sister, was so taken with the improvised story that she badgered Dodgson to complete it; when he had it done two and a half years later he presented it to her, with his own illustrations and bound in leather, as a Christmas gift.

For more literary history, visit Today in Literature.

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Segment in which I shamelessly pimp Etsy:

Defining the Life of a Librarian Artful Hardware Pendant

by COGnitivecreations

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Book I'm eyeing this week:

The Passage
by Justin Cronin
Ballantine Books, 2010

Summary in a Sentence:

FBI agent Brad Wolgast vows to protect six-year-old orphan Amy Harper Bellafonte after a government military experiment she was involved in goes bad, unleashing a toxic virus that turns humans into bloodthirsty monsters.

Read the Reviews:

Presenting Lenore | S. Krishna's Books | Hey Lady! Whatcha readin'?

The Monstrosity Gazette: A weekly smattering of all things literary...

Bookish Quote of the Day:

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
– Italo Calvino

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Today in Literary History...

On this day in 1670 English playwright William Congreve was born. His "comedy of manners" toasted and tilted at the "gala day of wit and pleasure" enjoyed by those who lived in the inner circles of power, or wished they did -- "men and women of quick brains and cynical humours," says the Cambridge History, who talk "with the brilliance and rapidity wherewith the finished swordsman fences."

For more literary history, please visit Today in Literature.

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Literary Pic of the Day:

"Subway Stories, New York City" studio print

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Book on my Radar: 

Beneath the Lion's Gaze
by Maaza Mengiste
W. W. Norton (Jan. 11, 2010)
Fiction
305 pages

Summary in a Sentence:

Hailu, a physician, his wife Selam, and their two grown sons, Dawit and Yonas, face the trauma of the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia in their own ways, with Hailu being ordered to report to jail for aiding a victim of state-sanctioned torture, Yonas struggling to protect his wife and daughter, and Dawit becoming active in the fight.

Read the Reviews:

• Tadias
• MostlyFiction 
• Bookmunch
  

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Interesting Links to Peruse:

• Interview with Newbery winner Rebecca Stead.
• Biblioaddict on "Why I read what I read".
• Poe had a lonely birthday this year...
• Booklust discusses racism in fantasy.