Librarians might frown on P.D.A. in the library, that is, Public Displays of Affection by canoodling college couples. But another kind of P.D.A. might bring a different, more welcome sort of disruption to the library: Patron-Driven Acquisition, a model of e-book licensing that aims to relieve library purchasing agents from spending thousands on books nobody will end up reading.
Patron-Driven Acquisition
Sor Juana, the 10th Muse
Matthew Wills remembers Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century nun who went on to become the founding mother of Mexican literature.
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The App That Helps You Speed Read?
Riane Konc reviews the app Blinkist: “Blinkist is decidedly not a substitute for reading books. It may be a substitute for reading books that no one actually needs to read in the first place, books that only contained 15 minutes worth of an idea but had to be stretched out to 200 pages for the publishers.” The app summarizes over 2000 nonfiction books in 15 minutes: read Konc’s review and see if you should give it a shot.
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Ever Thus
Recommended Reading: Gary Krist on the friendship-gone-wrong of John Dos Passos and Ernest Hemingway.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Wallace, Kingsolver, Schutt, Millet, Kramer, Wagman, Gillespie, Pullman, Sacks, Jackson
There are plenty of new books to this week to fill that post-election void: Both Flesh and Not: Essays, a posthumously published collection from David Foster Wallace; Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior; Prosperous Friends by Christine Schutt; Magnificence by Lydia Millet; and These Things Happen, a debut by longtime TV writer Richard Kramer. From the indies, we have The Care and Feeding of Exotic Pets by Diana Wagman and Keyhole Factory by William Gillespie. Also out are Philip Pullman’s new version of Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm; Hallucinations by Oliver Sacks; and a big new Michael Jackson biography by a former Rolling Stone editor.
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Year in Viewing
Anthony Lane (New Yorker film critic, personal hero) lists ten films he liked in 2010.
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