[chicagopubliclibrary]

Life Advice from Harper Lee 

From Letters of Note: 

A young fan of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ named Jeremy wrote to Harper Lee in 2006, and asked for a signed photo. He didn’t get one, but instead received this lovely piece of advice from the author that is far more precious. 

Harper Lee announced today - on her 88th birthday — that ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ will now be released as an audiobook and e-book. 

Happy Birthday, Harper! 

[youngadultatbooktopia]

When someone tells me they didn't enjoy a book that I love:

[thepenguinpress]

An Interview With Phil Klay: "We Make Sense Of Experience Through Narrative"

[lakestreetpress]

Author and former Marine Corps officer Phil Klay on his debut collection, Redeployment , modern America’s relationship to combat, and there being “as many narratives about war as there are…

[leanin]

Wednesday inspiration from Toni Morrison, born this week in 1931. Morrison is the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

[lakestreetpress]

Thank you Toni for your amazing books, the world has never been the same since they came out. I know they will continue to inspire future generations.

[lakestreetpress]

Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis: President Barack Obama

with President Barack Obama, Zach Galifianakis, Scott Aukerman, Funny Or Die, Between Two Ferns

If you have not watched this, please do. It is hilarious, and gives us a new perspective on Barack Obama.

[observando]

Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it. Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.

(and begin again!) William Faulkner (via observando)

[booksandpublishing]

Poetry in Seattle: My Visit to the A.W.P. Conference

[lakestreetpress]

Maybe the mountain air got to my head, but in the land of Amazon poets and storytellers were kings and queens.

For all those who couldn't make it, get a taste of rainy-heaven. 

[belleresources-blog]

[sometimeskaren]

Also, persnickety

[devotiontobooks-blog]

[aquietsunday-blog]

Dora Fournier Gabillon by Hans Makart

[entertainmentweekly]

The part where she sings "let the storm rage OOOOOOONNN," though.

[lakestreetpress]

Adele Dazeem is really killing it, she should think about going onto broadway..

[therumpus]

Syllables! Syllables! My heart is in my mouth, I put her foot in my mouth, my mouth was stopped, not that this settled anything. To be human is a syndrome And no marker, no, not my tongue can wag that not-dog Contraption, The homeless arm drags, Eye wanders from its orbit. I lie in bed amidst the trickles, my candle blows out, Tissue thickens and deposits they compress, they seem no Longer mobile, the be- Longing slips away, The lung congests, say ah, What memory, what gives? It is the bat slips its fur. The flying worm slips its skin. The angel sheds its light, it is a baby Balanced on the pan against the folds and corrugations, Holding up A pink pointed shoe, priapic but a sheath for my eye.

From “What Gives” by John Wilkinson, in his new book of poems Reckitt’s Blue, reviewed at The Rumpus by Patrick James Dunagan. (via therumpus)

[photosetavenue]

[bookshop]

Here's every excerpt from George R.R. Martin's ''The Winds of Winter'

With the new official tidbit from the next book in A Song of Ice and Fire, fans now know… about as much as they did before, really.

Fantasy fans, there’s still no end in sight to the wait for the next volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, but there’s now preview for you to tide you over. There’s just one catch: It’s only 98 words.

George R. R. Martin, a.k.a. “GRRM,” author of the voluminous but beloved fantasy series that gave the world Game of Thrones, has developed a reputation for length—not just the length of his books, but the length of time between them. Since he started writing the series in 1991, the venerable GRRM has produced only five books in 24 years, with a six-year-long wait between the last two books, published in 2005 and 2011.

The sixth book, The Winds of Winter, is reportedly due to be published in 2015. On Wednesday, Entertainment Weekly received a short excerpt from the book from Tyrion Lannister’s point of view, which brings the total number of excerpts from the book up to six.

[READ MORE]

[duttonbooks]

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges (via duttonbooks)

[nouvellabooks]

Happy birthday to the indomitable Edan Lepucki! We’re so excited for the re-release of her magnificent If You’re Not Yet Life Me, 10 of which are currently being given away for $0.00 at Goodreads, btw.

[italicsmine]

For my birthday I want you to enter this giveaway.  Also, put on some special undies and dance around.

[acnlandcute]

From then on, Matilda would visit the library only once a week in order to take out new books and return the old ones. Her own small bedroom now became her reading-room and there she would sit and read most afternoons, often with a mug of hot chocolate beside her. She was not quite tall enough to reach things around in the kitchen, but she kept a small box in the outhouse which she brought in and stood on in order to get whatever she wanted. Mostly it was hot chocolate she made, warming the milk in a saucepan on the stove before mixing it. Occasionally she made Bovril or Ovaltine. It was pleasant to take a hot drink up to her room and have it beside her as she sat in her silent room reading in the empty house in the afternoons. The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.

Roald Dahl, Matilda (via likeseventeen)