Bookish News Round Up February 2020
I love collecting bookish news and articles that I find interesting to share with you all when they’ve accumulated. Here’s today’s Bookish News Round-Up!
marlasings / Via reddit.com
Buzzfeed posted this delightful article sharing 14 “book nooks”: decorative inserts that you can tuck between books on a shelf. They can depict anything from a charming bookstore to an Italian alleyway to the fairy forest pictured above. I think I know what my next DIY project is going to be… excuse me while I visit Michaels for fake moss and twinkle lights!
A fascinating article published by the Atlantic argues “fan fiction was just as sexual in the 1700s as it is today.” Tracing the history of often-elicit, reader-written stories back to the 18th century and Gulliver’s Travels, the article explains how fan fiction has been “useful for auditioning socially costly decisions and roles in less risky environments than real life.” (Read: throwing Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy together as the most fascinating literary couple that never was. RIP.)
I’ve committed to picking up Prozac Nation from one of my local bookstores since reading this article about its recently-deceased author, Elizabeth Wurtzel, and the “feminist disability memoir.” Upon its release, Wurtzel’s painfully relatable story about being a young woman “full of promise” yet struggling with her mental health was poorly received by major (male) reviewers for the New York Times and other publications. Publishers Weekly said Wurtzel was “too self-involved to justify her contention that depression is endemic to her generation.” I know… WILD. She also went to law school after becoming a best-selling author. Sign me up to honor this radical woman.
The Library of Congress is publishing thousands of Native American recordings and photographs online without the knowledge or consent of the source nation. Native American groups and ally organizations are concerned that culturally sensitive information will be published, including songs about mourning and sending the dead to the afterlife. Current law is largely on the Library’s side, as most of the recordings’ and photographs’ copyrights have expired. (For more information, see this article.)
The Dallas Public Library has converted its basement into an emergency shelter for the homeless and proven there’s still good in the world. Library staff weren’t paid overtime to prepare the facility for guests, but they were “determined to make the shelter work.” Though this article explains utilizing the library is far from the comprehensive solution Dallas’s homeless deserve, I can’t help but feel grateful for the library staff that went above and beyond their pay grade to help those in need.