She saw her pale reflection in the window
by Anne Stameshkin
Garrison Keillor responds to the NEA report that reading is on the rise.
Garrison Keillor responds to the NEA report that reading is on the rise.
According to a new report by the NEA (“Reading on the Rise: A New Chapter in American Literacy”), the percentage of US adults reading fiction is growing for the first time in a quarter-century (chart borrowed from the NY Times). But I’m not ready to hit the street with pom-poms and a marching band just yet: a higher percentage of Americans were reading literature in the late 20th century–and it kind of blows my mind that only 50.2% of my fellow citizens have read even one novel, short story, poem, or play in the past year…
The book industry–hell, literature itself–is in jeopardy, and even some of the most avid readers are getting blamed. This has been a very traumatic season for publishing…even highly successful celebrity editors have been laid off from houses big and small, and some publishers aren’t signing any new books. It’s clear we need to think about change at every level of the industry; as publishers, booksellers, journalists, and authors raise the alarm, will we find creative ways to fight the fire or curl up on the floor of a burning house? Read how we might learn to publish without perishing, why […]
For every book you received this year as a holiday gift, consider donating $1 to the Book Wish Foundation, a nonprofit providing “reading relief” for Darfur refugees in Chad.
Earlier this fall, School Library Journal published an article called “Has the Newbery Lost Its Way?”, sparking a heated debate about criteria for what has long been recognized as the most prestigious prize in children’s literature. Are the latest Newbery medal-winning books really too “inaccessible” for kids? Should accessibility and popularity be issues in determining a winner? Are popularity and quality mutually exclusive? Does the Newbery tend to favor “good” books over “great” ones? What responsibility does the award have to young readers? What do you think?
Writing the His Dark Materials series was awesome in and of itself; now Pullman is fighting, along with a host of other writers, to save school libraries across the UK. He recently wrote to the Meadows Community School, which plans to replace their books–and librarian–with a “virtual learning environment,” whatever that means. From Pullman’s letter (via the Guardian): The idea that fiction is not worth looking after properly and does not need a qualified librarian runs contrary to every experience I have ever had. Are you going to relegate the whole activity of reading fiction to the status of a […]
Happily, not everyone predicts an imminent doomsday for the book (or book publishing). David Ulin at the LA Times urges publishers to stop panicking and “focus on the writing rather than the noise.” And Amelia Atlas at the New York Observer talks to some industry insiders who think the book might do OK in a recession: reading is, after all, a form of escape. She herself suggests: “There are only so many times, it would seem, that the industry can hear the sound of its own death knell and still worry.” Still, she quotes Sonny Mehta as saying that “Fiction […]
Like many, I bristled at recent remarks by Nobel Prize Committee head Horace Engdahl that American writers are “ignorant,” “isolated,” and “insular,” unworthy of consideration for the prize. Guaridan writer Jean Hannah Edelstein agrees that these remarks were offensive but wonders if particular limitations imposed on American writers might restrict our capacity for literary greatness. In this article, she argues that American writers “need support to reinvent the national literature. This will require a great deal of support and sympathy from US publishers: what the industry must do, in order to give American literati the license to unequivocally scoff at […]
Celeste just linked me to this article. “You can’t just make a book anymore,” said Mr. Haarsma, a former advertising consultant. Pairing a video game with a novel for young readers, he added, “brings the book into their world, as opposed to going the other way around.” Celeste: Really? Isn’t falling into the world of a book one of the joys of fiction? But then, if a game *does* draw kids to reading, maybe it’s a good thing after all. We found the following scene disturbing — and not just because it transpired in our MFA Homeland: At a gaming […]
This story (audio and transcript available here) covers the high rate of teen suicide on Nantucket. The community is struggling with how to cope – and how to prevent further cases; psychologists and trauma specialists are working with police officers and teachers, training them to identify (and recommend to counseling) kids who suffer from depression. At a town meeting earlier this year, Harvard’s Robert Macy urged parents to take the time to really listen to their kids, stressing that this was more important that actively trying to prevent them from harming themselves. All of this seems like good work and […]
