The Los Angeles Police Department has some good safety and crime prevention tips as we enter the holiday season. Among the highlights: Shop during daylight hours whenever possible. If you must shop at night, go with a friend or family member. Teach your child to go to a store clerk and ask for help in [...]
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
A detailed survey of a World War I tunnel system is underway in northern France. From 1914 to 1916, French, German, and British miners dug tunnels in order to place charges beneath enemy lines. La Boisselle is at the heart of the Somme battlefield of 1916. Digging will start next year on the private land [...]
Monday, October 31, 2011
An Iowa site which was used as a setting for scenes in the 1989 movie “Field of Dreams” will be sold, and the field kept intact for visitors. The film, based on W. P. Kinsella’s book Shoeless Joe, made the site a popular tourist destination. The asking price for the 193-acre farm was $5.4 million; [...]
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
English writer Julian Barnes was announced yesterday as winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize for The Sense of an Ending. The annual award is given for the best full-length novel written by a citizen of the British Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. Barnes had made the shortlist three previous times, but this is [...]
Thursday, October 13, 2011
The National Book Foundation today announced 21 finalists for its 2011 National Book Awards, including the following: Fiction Andrew Krivak, The Sojourn Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife Julie Otsuka, The Buddha in the Attic Edith Pearlman, Binocular Vision Jesmyn Ward, Salvage the Bones Nonfiction Deborah Baker, The Convert: A Tale of Exile and Extremism Mary Gabriel, Love [...]
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Poet Tomas Tranströmer of Sweden was announced today as recipient of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature. The Swedish Academy awarded Tranströmer the prize “because, through his condensed, translucent images, he gives us fresh access to reality.” This year marks the first time since 1996 that the award has gone to poetry. Tranströmer’s work is [...]
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
A photographer spent a month taking 2,000 images of yellow ants in Vietnam. The strikingly back-lit photos show the insects appearing to engage in human-like activities— a large ant lifts a smaller one overhead, a group climbs on each others’ backs, two ants rear up on their back legs to touch feelers as if shaking [...]
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Yesterday Amazon made its Kindle reader compatible with e-book collections held by many of the nation’s libraries, including PVLD. The device could previously be used only to download e-books purchased through Amazon, or those out-of-copyright works available for free via the company’s web site. Some book publishers are worried that e-reader owners who used to [...]
Monday, September 12, 2011
Michael Hart, the man credited with inventing the eBook, died last week in Urbana, Illinois at the age of 64. In 1971, Hart, an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, was given time on a mainframe computer. He used part of it to type in the Declaration of Independence, and posted a notice letting users [...]
Saturday, September 3, 2011
The recent international bestseller status of Swedish novelist Stieg Larsson shines a light on the world of Scandinavian mystery writing. Worldwide attention for the genre dates back to the 1960s, with Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö’s Martin Beck series. Henning Mankell and Peter Høeg are more recent purveyors of the dark side of Nordic lands. Other current Scandinavian [...]
Monday, November 14, 2011
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