TILT #81 — starting out the decade with BOOKS and READING
Welcome to 2020! Love to be in a decade with an obvious name again. As someone born late in the 60s, I’m now entering my seventh decade. My word! I do a few year end wrap-ups that are loosely librarian-related:
Finally got my “books written by women/non-binary authors” percentage over 50% and am happy about that. Working on my non-Western/POC reading and am going to use this list as a jumping off point. Also reminding myself that as the act of reading has certainly been changing, it’s not necessarily getting worse. I look to this interview with Leah Price, who wrote What We Talk About When We Talk About Books.
[W]hen we blame the absence of printed books for the distraction and the impatience and superficiality of the digital world, it’s unfair. We’re comparing an ideal scenario of print reading with a more realistic assessment of digital reading.
So hey let’s talk about books a little. As you know, I am a fan.
- “We are in a golden age for picture books, and many of them are being made by women,” says Sophie Blackall, author of Hello Lighthouse and winner of two Caldecott medals.
- “The immutability of printed books is their superpower,” says Craig Mod in a long rumination about why we still love and enjoy the “simpler contracts” of printed books.
- The Onion: Scientists Discover Dangerous Link Between Book Learnin’, Back Talk.
Books on the move!
- Watchet, a town in Somerset County England, turned an old bus stop into a lending library complete with a place to sit and read (FB video with loads of comments of people with similar library stories).
- Never get tired of the “Human chain to move a library” human interest stories.
- How do you prepare an F-117 to be put into a (Presidential) library?
- Stick library for dogs, in New Zealand (FB video).
Stupid ebook/online book news:
- In a European copyright case many have been watching closely, it was determined that the sale of second-hand e-books infringes copyright. Nuts.
- Macmillan wished people a happy 2020 and got dragged by librarians on Twitter. This is okay with me.
- Wikipedia’s got gender bias issues, slowly (maybe too slowly) being chipped away at. Kirsten Menger-Anderson highlights another Wikipedia gender bias not as frequently discussed: how often women are cited on Wikipedia. As you might expect, it’s not good.
Libraries for the senses:
- The State of Rhode island has a Children’s Sensory Story Time Support Group with a lot of resources for people interested in creating inclusive programming.
- Colin McAllister has created a performance called The Library at Night, based on a book by Alberto Manguel the director of the National Library of Aregentina (book chat video about this book by EarnestlyEston). It premiered in 2016 at San Diego Public Library and you can watch a performance online; it’s quite moving.
I have not been following the Romance Writers of America dust-up very closely, but this article in the Guardian is a good explainer about what went down after Courtney Milan called out Kathryn Lynn Davis for her racist depictions of Chinese women.
Contrast this to this conversation of historians, many of them in the American South, trying to broaden the storytelling that takes place around their historic homes and locations. Or Claude Winfield who came to Putney, Vermont from Harlem, New York and helped the Putney School library to build their collection of books written by African American authors, or about the black experience. Now thanks to ILL, they’re available to all Vermonters.
Reading has been a little same-y lately. My morning book (the time when I usually read non-fiction) has been the same history of Vermonters in baseball for a while. Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was really something though.
Today in Librarian Tabs is written irregularly by Jessamyn West who also maintains librarian.net. It’s available in more-accessible format your inbox via TinyLetter. Thanks for reading.
