Posts by Jenny Baum

“When you write, you give your version of reality.” —Maryse Condé

Many, many people have been motivated by the catastrophe in Haiti to donate, including one librarian who donated $10,000 of his personal savings and whose fundraising efforts were picked up by several blogs. Librarians can contribute in a different way, as well, by highlighting the wealth of literature that Haiti and the Caribbean offer.

Wilkie Collins’s Armadale is one of the Sensation Novels of the Victorian era, full of the kind of 19th-century drama that, especially at the time, had readers on the edges of their seats. Some of the shocking plot developments that made this novel so much of the time were: the character of Lydia Gwilt, a red-headed villainess addicted to laudanum who poisons her husband (and has an unbecoming surname, besides), the “ripped from the headlines” approach that Collins uses to reference newspaper scandals, and the shiny new technologies of the penny post and the telegraph.

If you enjoyed reading The Post-Birthday World, you may also like:

I hope everyone has been enjoying The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver. Here are some discussion questions to contemplate while running holiday errands!

Shriver uses gray and white in each chapter heading to represent and distinguish between the dual lives of Irina. That is, chapter one has a gray background and then she alternates for each succeeding chapter: one white and one gray, respectively. The final chapter, chapter 12, uses elements of both. What is the significance of this, if any?

Welcome to week two of this month’s Reader’s Den! In The Post-Birthday World, the Irinas in both parallel stories are children's book illustrators. In discussing the theme of her latest children's book, Irina lays out the premise of the novel.

Welcome back to the Reader's Den! This month's online book discussion will be The Post-Birthday World by Lionel Shriver, the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin (winner of the 2005 Orange Prize for fiction, awarded to a work of contemporary fiction by a female writer).

Halloween is fast approaching, as is the opening of the new film, The Box, starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden in early November. Of course, many great books have been made into movies, and sure, there's the Twilight series and Cirque du Freak, both book franchises with new movies coming out, but what are the some of the best horror and science fiction books for adults that have been made into films that you may or may not have heard of?

In his recent movie review of the documentary film No Impact Man, available in book form from NYPL here and in blog form here, A.O. Scott writes, "The year of doing something crazy to learn a lesson or prove a point is by now less a gimmick than a full-fledged publishing genre. Activities that would, in the course of ordinary life, count as modest or private undertakings acquire a special significance when they become the basis of book proposals. A. J.

Here’s a small sampling of nonfiction science books that are sufficiently strange that even readers who usually shy away from such titles may enjoy, and that readers who usually enjoy such titles may have missed. While none of them will bring back Pluto’s official status as a planet, they all have something interesting to say about medicine, science or technology.

Back in the summer of 2005, Jake Gyllenhaal was quoted as saying:

I am reading a booked called SALT: A WORLD HISTORY, and it's all about salt.
I have a weird fascination with specifics. I like the idea of learning a lot about one thing. And salt is something you take for granted.
You think it's just something on your table. But it has a huge, long history. Wars were started over it.

My friend and I have a longstanding debate over whether kangaroos run or hop. Regardless of who is correct (I am), it’s true that many urban dwellers develop a curious understanding of the natural world. Here’s a small sampling of how some people, city folk and others, relate to animals or view the animal kingdom.

Lazare-Nicolas-Marguerite Carnot was the original multi-tasker, known as the “Organizer of Victory” because he applied his background in engineering to French military operations under Napoleon Bonaparte and successfully led them to victory. His background in mathematics led to innovative ground tactics and recruitment methods. To be sure, mathematics and science never ceased to be part of his life. He was well known for his early work on kinetic energy and went on to write La métaphysique du calcul infinitesimal in 1797.

If you enjoyed my earlier post on the Unexpected Lives of Women, here are some authors who did or wrote about things that were different from the status quo at the time.

George Eliot, wrote under pen name of a man so that she would not be seen as, what was considered at that time, merely another writer of romances. Other female writers who have used male pen names include George Sand, and more recently, writers such as Nora Roberts who have used gender-neutral initials, as J.D. Robb, for various reasons.

“Revolution is but thought carried into action.” —Emma Goldman

“All creative people want to do the unexpected.” —Hedy Lamarr

“If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.” —Jane Fonda

For Women’s History Month, you might expect to hear about the same Notable Women, but what about women who are famous for one thing, and yet are accomplished in multiple arenas? Many modern women are familiar with juggling different aspects of their lives. Let’s take a look at a few famous women who have accomplished great feats for things 

Thank you for participating in this month’s discussion! If you enjoyed A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown, here are some more titles that you might enjoy:

I hope you have been enjoying the memoir A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown. Here are some discussion questions to get you started. Feel free to talk about other parts of the book as well.

Welcome back to the second edition of the Reader's Den!

A brief summary of February's book selection:
A Piece of Cake is the autobiography of Cupcake Brown. Cupcake (not her birth name) finds herself wrenched from a loving home at a young age and placed with a sadistic woman, her privileged birth daughter, and a handful of other foster-care children. Running away leads into deeper trouble — brushes with prostitution, gangs, and heavy drug use. Ultimately uplifting, this memoir documents her rise from difficult circumstances to becoming a functioning but drug abusing employee, to becoming a stable and sober paralegal. Those who enjoyed James Frey's