Whatever you think about Christopher Hitchens, I think you’ve got to appreciate his iconoclasm. His review of David Nasaw’s book about Andrew Carnegie gives me the slight feeling that he wishes he had written it himself, or at any rate that he appreciates it very much for the many-sided story that it tells. It is … Read more Christopher Hitchens reviews David Nasaw’s book on Andrew Carnegie
Library Juice Concentrate and Library Daylight are in the final phases of publication and will be available for purchase in about a month. Review copies will be available sooner to anyone who wants to review one of these books for a publication – just contact me if you’re interested: rory at libraryjuicepress.com. I thought I … Read more Library Juice Concentrate teaser
Today is Human Rights Day. Two sites I will recommend: OHCHR Human Rights Day page Human Rights Education Association Human Rights Day page Also note Toni Samek’s upcoming book: Librarianship and Human Rights, coming out very soon on from Chandos Publishing. Also… Kathleen de la Peña McCook and Kathryn Phenix are working on a book … Read more Human Rights Day
Why do I care so much about France? I don’t know, maybe just because it’s the traditional first stop for a semi-cosmopolitan anglophone and I am less culturally far-reaching than I would like to think. Or maybe it’s simply that I want America to be more like France. Anyway, I think this is a very … Read more Four top French book awards go to non-French authors
New from Library Juice Press: Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library: How Postmodern Consumer Capitalism Threatens Democracy, Civil Education and the Public Good By Ed D’Angelo November 2006. 139. paperback. $18 ISBN 978-0-9778617-1-2 Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library is a philosophical and historical analysis of how the rise of consumerism … Read more New from LJP: Barbarians at the Gates of the Public Library
Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, 6th Edition, by Byron Anderson, is officially published, and available from Ingram, Baker and Taylor, Yankee Book Peddler, Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. It is the first title published by Library Juice Press, LLC. This book is a directory of alternative publishers in the U.S. and Canada, meaning … Read more Alternative Publishers of Books in North America, 6th Edition
“The real culture of America is not corporate monoculture and television. It’s the writers, teachers, universities, libraries and librarians. That’s the mainstream culture of America.” – Lawrence Ferlinghetti, announcing the finalists for the National Book Awards, in his City Lights bookstore in San Francisco last week.
The New York Review of Books discusses Google’s massive scanning project and general ascendency in a review essay that touches on five recent books…
There’s a brief article in Counterpunch about the National Book Festival, which features our very non-warlike First Lady. It is intended as a happier source of news than the complete disaster we have created in the Middle East, from which news consumers and election-hopeful Republicans would understandably like some relief. The main things that Russell … Read more Are you proud of our “National Book Festival?”
I’ve replaced the simple one-page placeholder with a true website for Library Juice Press, LLC. Explore the site for an idea of what we’ll be publishing in the next few months. Library Juice Press is accepting manuscripts, by the way.
Kim Leeder at Envirolibrarian has a brief review of the 1997 book by David Shenk, Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut, which says that the amount of information easily available to people ends up harming more than helping civic participation. It sounds like an interesting book; I wasn’t aware of it. Since that book Shenk … Read more Data Smog
The University of Alberta’s Express News today features an article titled “Librarians are freedom fighters, says author,” about professor Toni Samek and her recent advocacy of school librarianship in Alberta. Samek has written extensively on librarians as activists for intellectual freedom and human rights. Dr. Samek has a book coming out soon on Chandos Press … Read more Dr. Toni Samek profiled in U. of Alberta article about teacher-librarian crisis
The Dade County, FL, school board’s attempt to ban Vamos a Cuba, the children’s book that local Cuban expatriats complain paints too rosy a picture of life in the socialist country (blogged here on June 14th), is presently being held up as a result of the ACLU’s legal challenge. At the time of the ALA … Read more Vamos a Cuba update
Students of media consolidation and market censorship are well aware of the importance of small, independent and alternative publishers in providing balanced viewpoints in libraries. In our practice as librarians we know that there is an array of institutional challenges to learning about, acquiring and making available literature from these hidden corners of the publishing … Read more Resources for the Alternative Press
Interesting post in if:Book, about the new book coming out in France, Quand Google d?ɬ©fie l’Europe : plaidoyer pour un sursaut, by Jean-No?ɬ´l Jeanneney. Jeanneny, who is the director of the French National Library, is one of the most prominent critics of the Google Book project, and is worried about the project leading to an … Read more if:Book – Google and the myth of universal knowledge: a view from Europe
The Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards were announced in late April of this year. The award is described thusly: “The Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards are given annually to the children’s picture books and longer books published the preceding year that effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, world community, and the equality of … Read more Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards
“The ‘IPPY’ Awards, launched in 1996, are designed to bring increased recognition to the deserving but often unsung titles published by independent authors and publishers. Established as the first awards program open exclusively to independents, over 1500 ‘IPPYs’ have been awarded to authors and publishers from throughout North America and around the world. This year’s … Read more 2006 IPPY Awards
I decided to do something a little different with the blog. Let me know if you have seen this elsewhere. In my right-hand sidebar I’ve added a section of book authors, which links to searches for their books on Red Light Green. I read books, so why should I link only to blogs and online … Read more Book Authors in the Sidebar
Interesting story behind Harvard student-author Kaavya Viswanathan, the one whose hit novel turned out to be somewhat plagiarized… She was working for (or with?) a company called Alloy Entertainment, which does “book packaging” for the YA book world, handling authors and book concepts and working with publishing companies. It seems that Alloy’s postmodern-capitalist way of … Read more The Death of the Author, as a Business Model
Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression, edited by Robert Atkins and Svetlana Mintcheva and just coming out from The New Press, is about a range of new and subtle forms of censorship of artistic expression. I’m excited about this book and expect to be of special interest to librarians.