Once upon a time, people read books over Winter Break. The English Department seems to think people still do this!
For the literate among you, take note: the English Department will be distributing free copies of Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao today as part of the Winter Reading Project. You can pick up your copy in the Fisher Bennett Hall Faculty Lounge between 3 and 4 p.m.
If you haven’t read the book, it happens to be excellent (and a 2008 Pulitzer Prize winner). Check out a description of the book after the jump.
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If you’ve been to the Perelman Quad around lunchtime any day this week, you may have noticed the sound of Winnie the Pooh being read aloud. Chances are, you let it go without a second thought. It’s not like it’s so bizarre to hear the faint mumblings of A.A. Milne every now and again, right guys? Well this time, there is actually an explanation.
The DP reports:
Starting [Sept 28], ACLU is honoring the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week by reading banned books aloud in Wynn Commons. Between the hours of 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. every day until Friday, group members will recites passages from books ranging from Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.
Today is your last chance to check it out. We stopped by on Wednesday and found an unmanned table, so let us know what happens. Otherwise we’ll think the event got banned.
Penn students probably spend more money in one trip to the bookstore than your average sorority girl has ever spent at American Apparel. Every semester, miserable Quakers trek to 36th and Walnut, swearing that this will be the year that they actually keep up with their reading rather than letting that $70 econ book sit and collect dust. And at the end of the semester, that mint condition book fetches us about $5.50.
While UTB relishes any opportunity to use our Bursar accounts, the fact that we have to spend hundreds of dollars on books we’ll rarely use while we’re in the midst of an economic downturn is ridiculous.
That’s why we were glad to hear that Penn Press feels our struggles. Showing how “with it” they are, they’ve started a Facebook contest to give away two free books from their catalog. All you have to do is become a fan of their Facebook page and post the title of the Penn Press book that you most resemble and why on their wall, and you’re entered. (And just in case you’re wondering, if UTB had to choose a book that best embodied us, we’d probably pick this one.)
Listen up, Kerry Golds, this could be you in four short years: onetime Street editor and ‘05 alum Grant Ginder can officially update his already-impressive resume to include his new novel, This Is How It Starts, which is out in bookstores this week. Ginder was featured on Daily Intel yesterday, where he plugged his book and sadly made no mention of Penn. Good thing we never forget a Streetie! (We don’t, um, actually call ourselves that though.) The book, per Amazon, is “about how far one postcollegiate idealist will go to be an insider in a town that is unyielding in what it will take from a person in exchange for granting him a margin of knowledge and power.” Sounds juicy — we would expect nothing less from one of our own.
Today, the New York Times Book Review assesses Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution, the new book by History department mainstay Richard Beeman. (Earlier this year, they reviewed Mary Frances Berry’s book — hey History department, who do you know at the Times?) So how does Beeman fare? The Times praises his “gently judicious tone,” and later calls him “almost too judicious,” before noting that Beeman’s “judiciousness … usually serves him well.” NYT, might we suggest investing in a thesaurus? We think it would be a judicious, wise, prudent and rational thing to do.
Join the Kelly Writer House tomorrow for their annual marathon reading, starting at 3:00 p.m. and going until…(who knows when?) Attendees will have the chance to read aloud for ten minutes from Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five, until the book is finished. Past years have featured Nabokov’s Lolita and Kerouac’s On the Road. The event will be accompanied by a lavish themed reception — so stop by to listen and eat and maybe even read a little!
Seyfarth + Cheney + baboon = <3
Who doesn’t love Professors Robert Seyfarth and Dorothy Cheney, (excluding people studying for Tuesday’s Animal Behavior midterm)? Not only are they adorable because they’re married and teach together, but they do all their research together, too. And their research is on baboons. And they know all their baboon subjects by name, sight, and call.
In 2007, Seyfarth and Cheney wrote a book called Baboon Metaphysics, which theBookseller.com thought was a crazy enough title to put it in the running for Oddest Title of the Year. As the couples says in an email, “I’m sure you can imagine that no one wants to finish third in this sort of competition (a middling odd book title?).” Such ambition, these two! Since the email was sent out, they’ve moved up to second, but go to theBookseller.com and vote for them so they can beat out The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-milligram Containers of Fromage Frais.
Would that Berry had been more discerning, sez NYT
Penn had a good weekend if we’re measuring in terms of NYT namedrops. After weeks of drought, Penn finally showed up in the Times’s wedding section, thanks to this undergrad-M.B.A. one-two punch. Elsewhere in the Sunday paper, Penn professor Mary Frances Berry scored a nicely sized review for her new book, And Justice For All. Frances teaches in the history department, occasionally moonlights as a cable news commentator, and her fancy new book focuses on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, which she served on from 1980 to 2004.
Unfortunately, the Times found the book only passable. According to reviewer Samuel G. Freedman, the book suffers from an “awkwardly divided personality.” The horror!
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Gotham glory days
Once upon a time, a super-cool New York-y little bookshop had to close and everyone was wistful and sad about it. No, we’re not talking about our favorite movie, You’ve Got Mail–NYC literary landmark Gotham Book Mart shut its doors in 2007. The Inquirer and the New York Times are now reporting that the store’s enviable book collection has been donated to Penn. Highlights of the collection include Truman Capote’s and Anais Nin’s personal libraries; Allen Ginsburg worked there and Jackie O. shopped there. Which is to say, it sounds like it was a very cool little shop.
The donation was anonymous, but the collection is reportedly valued at several million dollars. The NYT seems to think the gift came from Leonard A. Lauder, Penn alum and Gotham fairy godmother. Whoever it came from, the collection will fit in nicely with our library’s existing rareties, which include two of Shakespeare’s First Folios and several volumes bound in human skin.
Snow blanketed the eastern seaboard yesterday, and despite the picturesque quality it lent to our homecoming, today we find ourselves still snowed in and thus unable to partake in our favorite winter break activities: visiting the mall. Luckily, our internet connection is working and amazon.com is almost as good as the real thing. What follows is a last-minute holiday gift guide, conveniently featuring items that can be purchased online and shipped to you by December 24th. (We’re leaving out the gift suggestions that have already been posted about. And if you’re wondering whether “holiday gift guide” is a label that’s being used to mask the fact that this is really just a list of stuff your editor wants, well…so be it.)
1. For the sister, female cousin or Michael Gold in your life: Everyone forgets that before Chuck was awesome, he was an attempted date rapist. Relive the simpler times with Gossip Girl – The Complete First Season on DVD.
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Spotted at The Last Word Bookshop on 40th Street.
