Go Jane Give organized the “#Read4Refugees” social media campaign, encouraging users to raise awareness and funds for refugee issues. Over the past month, numerous well-known authors have joined in, including Junot Díaz, Jodi Picoult, Sue Monk Kidd, and Sherman Alexie, among others.
#Read4Refugees
Tuesday New Release Day: Plumly; Nakamura; Carroll; Waite; Kooser; Carrère; Berryman
Out this week: The Immortal Evening by Stanley Plumly; Last Winter We Parted by Fuminori Nakamura; Bathing the Lion by Jonathan Carroll; Sometimes the Wolf by Urban Waite; Splitting an Order by the former Poet Laureate Ted Kooser; Limonov by Emmanuel Carrère; and The Heart Is Strange by John Berryman, which I wrote about as part of our Great Second-half 2014 Book Preview.
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“The thousand cheerful chimneys”
Students and Reading
If we can’t teach students to read, should we try teaching more modern books?
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Good Grief
With his depressive musings, Charlie Brown was the original Morrissey. At “This Charming Charlie” tumblr, Lauren LoPrete pairs The Smiths lyrics with Peanuts comics to hilarious effect.
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The Son
He befriended Mark Twain. His father wrote The Scarlet Letter. He drank wine with Oscar Wilde, George Eliot and Henry James, and William Randolph Hearst once hired him as a reporter. He even published a few books to critical acclaim. So why do so few of us know anything about Julian Hawthorne? In the WaPo, Michael Dirda reviews a new biography. (h/t Arts and Letters Daily)
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“If Only O.J. Had Called Me”
Ever seen Henry Kissinger make eyes at a geisha? Richard Nixon ham it up at the Grand Ole Opry? Or Betty Ford (a one-time Martha Graham dancer) take a turn on the Cabinet Room table? Legendary photographer David Hume Kennerly has. His retrospective at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica just came down, but many of the best images are still up at the Frank Pictures Gallery website. Kennerly also took the somewhat notorious picture of O.J. Simpson and family with President Ford (the one O.J. was arrested for trying to steal), and for which his retrospective–“If Only O.J. Had Called Me”–was named.
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