Today in History: 20th Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall

I was in my German 101 class in college when we got the news that the Berlin Wall was coming down. Where were you?

Want to learn a little bit about the history of the Berlin Wall? Click here.

Want to find books about the Berlin Wall? Click here.

Find out latest news about celebrations of the anniversary of the Berlin Wall's fall here.

Rereading Wuthering Heights

Are there any Wuthering Heights fans out there? Talk to me. Please explain what makes this novel a classic. I just reread it & I still don't get it.

First, let me explain how I came to be re-reading the book. My reading often takes me on tangents. I was reading a book of essays by Judith Thurman called Cleopatra's Nose: 39 Varieties of Desire, which contains a great essay about Charlotte Brontë. This essay recommended a couple of biographies, including Unquiet Soul : A Biography of Charlotte Brontë, which I then read (& if you're interested in the Brontës, it's a very good biography). Reading a biography of one Brontë sister inevitably leads to you to others, and Unquiet Soul waxed eloquently about the mysticism of Emily and Wuthering Heights, so I decided to give it another try.

I mean, it's an interesting read, but I feel like I'm not getting what everyone else is getting. I have even picked up Wuthering Heights, Revised; An Authoritative Text, with Essays in Criticism. In between readings on the Gondal cycle of stories and Emily's poetry, I did find one excellent essay: "A Fresh Approach to Wuthering Heights," by Q.D. Leavis. (Please note that this approach was fresh in 1969.)

Q.D. (Queenie Dorothy) Leavis suggests that Emily "had some trouble getting free of a false start-a start which suggests that we are going to a have a regional version of the sub-plot of Lear." Leavis also posits that there "are various signs thatthe novelist intended to stress the aspect of her theme represented by the corruption of the child's native goodness by Society...", and, while this a "commonplace subject" of the Romantic period, it becomes "neither superficial nor theoretic because the interests of the responsible novelist gave it...a new insight..."

Leavis talks about the "genius devoted to creating Nelly Dean, Joseph, Zillah, Frances, Lockwood, the the two Catherines, and to setting them into significant action". Catherine is the real "moral centre" of the book, and Heathcliff and Hareton are giving only "very perfunctory attention..." (She also makes a lot of comparisons, based on the Catherine-Heathcliff-Edgar Linton triangle, with the movie Jules et Jim, which, given my case history, probably means I'll have to check that out in the not-too-distant future.)

I don't want to quote the essay here in its totality, but I have found reading it very useful & I'm considering tackling Wuthering Heights in all its confoundedness again. Leavis herself says, "Why does one feel that in spite of its intensely painful scenes-painful in a great variety of ways-Wuthering Heights always repays rereading?"

What do you think of Wuthering Heights?

Museum of Modern Art

Today is the 80th birthday of one of the country's most famous museums, the Museum of Modern Art or MOMA as it is sometimes abbreviated. Opened on November 7th, 1929, just nine days after the stock market crash, it is located at 11 West 53rd Street in New York City and has become a treasured stop for artists and non-artists alike when visiting the Big Apple. It is one of the biggest depositories of contemporary and modern art in the world with well over 300,000 items. There are several books in the library catalogue that MOMA has published through the years and are available for checkout. Some of the more interesting titles are an exhibition of work by Alberto Giacometti, a work on still life called "Objects of Desire: The Modern Still Life" by Margit Rowell and a work on the exhibition of Latin American artists titled
"Latin American Artists of the Twentieth Century" from 1993. The catalogue also has DVD's on modern art such as: "The Impressionists" by A&E Television and "The Life and Times of Frida Kahlo" narrated by Rita Moreno. It is a true testament of art lovers around the country that MOMA survived the depression of the 1930's and is today one of the premier art museums in the world.

Book on the Side: November

Our second Book on the Side read will be The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. Booklist Reviews has this to say about it: "Margaret Lea, a bookish loner, is summoned to the home of Vida Winter, England's most popular novelist, and commanded to write her biography. Miss Winter has been falsifying her life story and her identity for more than 60 years. Facing imminent death and feeling an unexplainable connection to Margaret, Miss Winter begins to spin a haunting, suspenseful tale of an old English estate, a devastating fire, twin girls, a governess, and a ghost. As Margaret carefully records Vida's tale, she ponders her own family secrets.Readers will be mesmerized by this -story-within-a-story tinged with the eeriness of Rebecca and the willfulness of Jane Eyre. A wholly original work told in the vein of all the best gothic classics. Lovers of books about book lovers will be enthralled."

The Thirteenth Tale is also available in large print and audiobook. There is no need to sign up for Book on the Side! Feel free to leave your comments and reviews for The Thirteenth Tale any time during the month of November. Leave your comments and reviews in the comment form of the blog. Don't forget to check back often to see what other readers are saying about the book!

Thank you for visiting abcreads! We look forward to discussing The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield with you.

Articles about Diane Setterfield & The Thirteenth Tale:

British Teacher Becomes a Literary Sensation in the U.S.

Debut Writer's Million-Pound Success Story

The Girl from Theale

National Novel Writing Month: Day 2

Ah, November. It's fall, the leaves are changing color, my family's trying to figure out where we're doing Thanksgiving dinner...& I'm going to try to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I started last night.

What is it? It's NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month--"a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30," explains the website. This crazy endeavor started out with 21 participants in 1999, and in 2008 there were over 120,000 participants. If you are interested in taking part, you can still sign up! The rewards you'll reap are mainly personal fulfillment; if you finish your novel, NaNoWriMo just puts your name up on their Winner’s Page and sends you a winner’s certificate and web badge.

The NaNoWriMo website has lots of starting tips, a "Procrastination Station" forum, & if, you sign up for it, you can receive pep talks in your email from established writers such as Philip Pullman & Sara Gruen. Also, if you are 17 years old or younger, you can still do NaNoWriMo as part of the Young Writers Program.

This is my second year participating but last year I didn't finish, so cross your fingers & wish me luck!

Book on the Side: Dreamers of the Day Wrap-up

So, are you all finished reading Dreamers of the Day? Did you like it? Dislike it? How did you feel about the characters? The plot? Do you like historical fiction that includes real people as characters? (I was at a book group recently where they were not fans of figures from history as fictionalized characters.)

Once again, here's a link to some discussion questions. Let us know what you think of the book or your Book on the Side experience! Don't forget to vote for November's Book on the Side!

Putting on quite a display

Believe it or not, sometimes, people don't know what they want to check out when they come to the library.

To help with this knotty problem, every month we offer new displays on different topics, with books set out for easy browsing. At Cherry Hills, our Duchess of Displays (also, your most prolific blogmistress) sets up one large adult display and several smaller once. For October, the large display has featured books that you might like to read in a book group... and highlighted our collection of downloadable books.

The smaller displays, set up in cubes toward the front of the library, might feature anything, from marathon running to jazz music to Eleanor Roosevelt. There's also a rotating display of mysteries, to meet the tastes of any of Cherry Hills' many mystery fans (if you're one of them, you might like our Mystery Book Group!). Just look for the little cubes with the small signs, like this:

Your friendly neighborhood children's librarian (aka, me) doesn't like to see her clientele go without displays, so each month, there is a large display in the children's area, sometimes attached to a monthly event, like Hispanic Heritage Month (right), and sometimes just pulled from thin air, like a popular geography display.

And why ignore the teens? They might want to know what to read next as well. So in the teen area, we set up displays for back to school, or displays of action/survival books, or, as this month, displays related to events like Teen Read Week, this year with the theme "Read Beyond Reality."

So come on in and check them out... you might find something you never knew existed!