Posts Tagged ‘quotes by writers’

WHY READ?

Wednesday, February 3rd, 2010

February 3, 2010
Washington, DC

toyairplanefromFlickr

“Yankee ranger, you’re cleared for takeoff” by tigerplish from Flickr (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tigerplish/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

A featured speaker at the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s New Orleans Big Read of The Maltese Falcon, Dennis Lehane is the author of such noteworthy books as Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and The Given Day. Lehane had this to say about the pleasures of reading:

I read to travel—time travel, country travel, consciousness travel. This year, I’ve been to Iraq and Afghanistan (The Forever War), the Dust Bowl during the Depression (The Worst Hard Time), Sweden in the 1970s (The Terrorists), and North Carolina, again during the Depression (Serena.) So I’ve gotten around, met some people, lived some lives. And I didn’t have to pay for checked baggage. A great book is dangerous—it makes everything else in your life vanish.

People are talking about . . . The Big Read somewhere near you! Check The Big Read calendar to find out where you can join the discussion.

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Posted in The Maltese Falcon, Why Read? | 4 Comments »

. . .AND YOU CAN QUOTE ME

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

January 13, 2009
Washington, DC

FolgerLibrarybooksLOCWeb

In this 1938 photo from the Library of Congress’ collection, Folger Library reference librarian Dr. Giles E. Dawson peruses one of 9,000 volumes that had been recently purchased for the library. Valued around $2.5 million, the books were published in England sometime between the the reign of Henry VIII and the Cromwell Revolt.

Continuing with the quotations meme I’ve had going since the new year, today I’m dipping into George Seldes’ The Great Quotations, first published in 1967.  The tome’s curiously taciturn on the subject of reading, but it more than makes up for it with a few pages on books. Here’s a sampling.

A book may be as great a thing as a battle. (Benjamin Disraeli, former British Prime Minister)

Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. (Alfred Whitney Griswold, former President of Yale University)

When a book raises your spirit and inspires you with noble and courageous feelings, seek no other rule to judge the event by; it is good and made by a good workman. (Jean de la Bruyere, French essayist)

It is wonderful that even today, with all competition of records, of television, of motion pictures, the book has kept its precious character. (John Steinbeck, American writer)

We all know that books burn—yet we have the greater knowledge that books cannot be killed by fire. . . [W]e know books are weapons. And it is a part of your dedication to make them weapons for man’s freedom. (Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32nd U.S. President)

What’s your favorite quote on books, reading, or literature? Drop a line to bigreadblog@arts.gov, or leave a comment.

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Posted in General | 4 Comments »

WHAT PAGE ARE YOU ON?

Monday, January 4th, 2010

January 4, 2010
Washington, DC

fireworksfromAustin

http://www.flickr.com/photos/yaxzone/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

A few words from the authors of The Big Read to kick off the new year. Happy 2010 everyone!

Hope is the thing with feathers/that perches in the soul/And sings the tune without the words,/And never stops at all . . . — Emily Dickinson

Vitality shows us not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over. — F. Scott Fitzgerald

New Year’s Day. Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. — Mark Twain

There are two ways of spreading light; to be/The candle or the mirror that reflects it. — Edith Wharton

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Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

WHY READ?

Friday, December 11th, 2009

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“Lepidoptera 0004″ by Noaha from Flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/visualarts/ / CC BY-SA 2.0)

New to The Big Read library for 2010-2011 is In the Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez’s powerful historical novel set primarily in mid-20th century Dominican Republic. Among those chiming in on the audio guide is Junot Diaz, who garnered the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, which is also partially set in the Dominican Republic. In this interview excerpt, Diaz discusses how and why fiction offers a kind of veracity that purely historical texts cannot.

[In the Time of the Butterflies] was extraordinarily powerful and human in ways that very few histories can possibly achieve and, in fact, I feel like the novel did more for understanding the Mirabal sisters than any historical documents that I have come across. I think it’s less about a deeper truth and more about the fact that both sorts of narratives, historical narratives and fiction narratives, have certain kinds of advantages.  One of the advantages that fictional narratives have is their ability to sort of mimic or create a wonderful, accurate, if not realistic, view of a person’s interiority.  In other words, fiction is brilliant at giving us the human,  at giving us hearts—as has been said by greater individuals—hearts that struggle with themselves.  That’s not necessarily the interest or the claim of most historical texts. They’re trying to give us different kinds of information.  I think that we need both and many other kinds of narratives to begin to address any historical period, but I think that people are especially susceptible, especially vulnerable to tales that foreground the human. People connect with people strongly, palpably, emphatically in ways that they don’t connect with figures and they don’t connect with theories and they don’t connect with abstractions.  The advantage of fiction is that it’s almost always about people and we love connecting with people.

Visit The Big Read website for application and guidelines for 2010-2011, and to find out more about all of the books in The Big Read library. 

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Posted in In the Time of the Butterflies | 4 Comments »