The big day's tomorrow but if you're still flummoxed about what to go as, here's a literary Costume-Idea-Generator for you. Go forth, you Ironic Plums That Were In The Icebox, you.
It's almost Halloween! Still looking for inspiration? Search no more! Here are a whole Halloween candy bagful of literary ideas for you and your small people on Thursday.
English is, by any reckoning, a very large language. No one is entirely certain how many words it contains (since it is very difficult to get everyone to agree on how to count them), but general estimates are somewhere in the neighborhood of a million (it’s a very large neighborhood). Think you can name where the following words come from?
To celebrate the 125th anniversary of the McKim Building, the Boston Public Library is offering four couples the opportunity to get married for free inside the Abbey Room at the Central Library in Copley Square. Hey Jones Library, we have an idea...
Representative Elijah Cummings died one week ago today. He was a man who loved his librarians. “The people who helped me the most were the librarians,” Cummings told Steve Kroft in a 60 Minutes interview broadcast in January of this year, adding that the public library was the only integrated institution in his neighborhood. Watch a 2-minute video clip of that interview here .
The good folks over at BBC Radio have created a 15-question quiz for all you lovers of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy . Take it to find out if all the answers really are 42.
Some data-loving book nerds out there did a study of how many books are titled some version of "The ______'s Wife." As data-lovers ourselves, we kind of geeked out on this one. Curious? Here's what they found out .
You know how some libraries have those book detectors that go off if your book hasn't been scanned out properly? Or if you accidentally tried to leave with an un-checked out book? And still, books walk out of libraries, never to be returned again. Well, we have the solution for libraries experiencing book problems of this type: Protect Your Library the Medieval Way, With Horrifying Book Curses You know what those crafty medievalists did? At the beginning or the end of books, scribes and book owners would write dramatic curses threatening thieves with pain and suffering if they were to steal or damage these treasures. Bam! Problem solved!
Maybe you fancy yourself an erudite scholar of a certain macabre American writer? Maybe you think you'll be able to tell the difference immediately between such a lofty man of letters and My Chemical Romance or Jimmy Eat World? Let's take a look-see, Friends, with this quiz: Who Wrote It: Edgar Allan Poe or an Emo Band ?
“If they’re killing people for poetry, that means they honor and esteem it, they fear it, that means poetry is power.” This recent NYT op-ed, The Global War on Books, Redux , gives you food for thought.
Science in action! With real, live scientists! Doing science experiments! No need to bring your hazmat suit. This time. Bwaahahahaaaaa. (Click on image to enlarge.)