Bush with a Million-Dollar Education Doesn't Read

George McEvoy,Palm Beach Post Columnist, on George Bush as Willy Loman:

George W., with his family's money, bought himself a million-dollar education at the finest schools. But what did he learn? I wonder.

Harry Truman never went to college, but academicians have described him as one of the finest historians ever to occupy the Oval Office. He did it by reading incessantly.

I don't mean that a president has to be a bibliophile, but to not show the slightest interest in books that analyze your own administration just seems deliberately anti-intellectual.....

I have tried to think what character in literature most reminds me of our current president, and I finally came up with the answer.

Willy Loman. Yep, George W. is like the title character in Arthur Miller's masterpiece play, Death of a Salesman.

After he dies, Willy is described as a guy who got by most of his life on a shoeshine and a smile.

That's our leader, folks. He's got the smile, the strut, the shiny boots.

But he won't read the books because that would be like looking in a mirror, and that's scary.

Lord Peter Wimsey- Guide for Young Adults

I tried to introduce some teens to Dorothy Sayers and found they struggled with locations and terms. I suggested that when they found a term they didn't know that they should find a definition on the Internet and I would post the information here.
Using the Avon editions in paperback from 1961. Maybe this will be helpful to others.
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Whose Body . 1923. Avon, 1961.

Piccadilly Circus. p.7.
Savile Club. p.7.
Battersea. p.9.
Eton. p. 9.
Balliol. p. 9.
'beautiful Malacca walking stick.', p. 11.
Joseph Chamberlain (July 8, 1836-July 2, 1914.) p. 16.
Harold Skimpole. p.18.
houris. p. 20.
Chesterfield sofa. p. 20.
Sèvres vases. p. 20.
Adolph Beck, John Smith. p. 22.
Ritz. p. 22.
Ingoldsby Legends. p. 23.
acushla. p.26.
golden mean. p.37.
golden ass. p.37.
Ishmaels. p.43.
"Letters of a Self-made Merchant to his Son." p.49.[1903 best-seller by George Horace Lorimer].
three-hat trick. p.52. [cricket term].
[Salisbury] Close. p. 79.

William Morris. p. 97.
Leon Kestrel, the Master-Mummer. p.106.
puss-in-the-corner. p. 111.
blatherskite: "A babbling, foolish person." p. 113.
Music Halls, p.136. Music Hall Society.
Socrates' slave.p. 151.

Becoming American – New Immigration Stories

"Becoming American – New Immigration Stories" is a project of the American Library Association, Public Programs Office designed to provide libraries throughout the United States with a selection of excellent books on immigrant literature for adults and families. The reading lists and resources on this Web site have been developed to help librarians engage their communities in reading and discussing important texts containing rich and deep insights into our vibrant tradition of immigrant literature.

Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

Joint Conference of Librarians of Color

Man Booker Announcement Today

Man Booker announced today.The announcement of the winner of the 2006 Man Booker Prize for Fiction will air on the BBC 10 O'Clock News; this will be followed by coverage on BBC 2 Newsnight, BBC News 24 and BBC Radio 4 as well as interviews that will air around the world. BBC Radio 4's Today Programme has been airing pieces on the shortlisted authors throughout this week and the Culture Show also featured a slot on the Prize on the 30 September.

The six shortlisted books were chosen from a longlist of 19 and are:

Desai, Kiran. The Inheritance of Loss - Hamish Hamilton
Grenville, Kate. The Secret River - Canongate
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down - Canongate
Matar, Hisham. In the Country of Men - Viking
St Aubyn, Edward. Mother’s Milk - Picador
Waters, Sarah. The Night Watch - Virago

Romanian-born German writer Oskar Pastior dies at 78

Romanian-born German writer Oskar Pastior dies at 78.
Germany's culture minister, Bernd Neumann, described Pastior as "one of the most significant authors of our time.""His virtuoso linguistic art is a pleasure but also a challenge for the reader," Neumann said in a statement. "Great seriousness and a passion for the word were evident in his playful linguistic experiments."

2006 Georg-Büchner-Preis.

Bush's Disinformation Machine (Miami)

Carl Hiassen:
Now we find out that the U.S. government-run stations are actually running a charity for needy journalists, at least 10 of whom have been paid to appear on their programs.
Some people might call this corrupting the press; I call it compassionate conservatism...Look what it did for Armstrong Williams, a newspaper columnist and conservative talk-show host. Back in 2004, he got $240,000 from the government to babble wonderful compliments about President Bush's No Child Left Behind education program....Over the last five years, while staff reporter Pablo Alfonso wrote columns and covered Cuba for El Nuevo Herald, he was getting paid nearly $175,000 to host programs on Radio and TV Martí. During that same period, staff writer Wilfredo Cancio collected almost $15,000.
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BUT THEN...
The publisher has been forced to resign.

The fired reporters were given their jobs back because, Diaz wrote,
ethical standards were not clearly articulated within the El Nuevo
Herald newsroom. Columnist Hiaasen says journalists at The Miami
Herald would never have been allowed to accept money from the
government -- but that reporters at El Nuevo Herald were operating in
a different world.

"You're either the voice of the free press, or you're the voice of
the government," Hiaasen says. "You aren't the voice of both."
Listen to this story... by David Folkenflik
'Herald' Publisher Quits, Reporters Reinstated

Reading First and NCTE

The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) responds:

The report reveals that during the crucial implementation years of the Reading First program, high-level Department of Education officials created guidelines that undermined the very principles of evidence-based decision-making. They held states to implementation guidelines not established under the No Child Left Behind Act,they stacked grant review panels with people sympathetic to their own view of literacy learning and, oftentimes, with direct ties to the same commercial programs they recommended; and they took charge of reporting review comments back to state education agency applicants themselves rather than having the review panels do so.

In 2002 NCTE called upon Congress to establish an independent investigatory body to look into the implementation of Reading First. Even then, we could not ignore the teachers and administrators across the country who disclosed that they were being steered toward particular commercial reading programs and were being forced to use poorly-conceived reading methods they knew to be ineffective.