Ruth Anne Latta

 I am halfway through a clever, engaging novel by an American writer named Rebecca Makkai.  "The Borrower"  (not "The BorrowerS") was published in 2011 and is a thoughtful, witty comedy about a road trip (some would say "kidnapping"). The title is both an echo of "The Borrowers", a work of literature for children about a miniature family surviving in a full s-zed world, and the term "borrower" as used by librarians.  Lucy Hull, a newly-fledged children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, has one particularly enthusiastic reader among the kids she serves. A ten year old boy named Ian reads well above his age-level and, in consulting Lucy about books to read, is a librarian's dream-child. His mother disapproves of many of the books in the children's collection; she doesn't want Ian reading anything to do with magic, Hallowe'en, etc. Lucy checks out books on her own account and gives them to Ian to read. When Ian asks he...

 Among the things I received for my birthday last month was a set of DVDs from The Great Courses on "Banned Books." The lecturer was Maureen Corrigan, a professor of literature at Georgetown University, a book critic on U.S. public radio, and a columnist for the Washington Post. The course examined the reasons for various book suppressions throughout history, from bowdlerizing Shakespeare to banning of famous novels like James Joyce's "Ulysses" and D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover."  She also discussed current pressures from right-wing people and groups to have certain books pulled from the schools.   After completing the course, I wanted to hear more from Maureen Corrigan, and from the public library got a copy of her 2005 non-fiction book, "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading."  Reading it is like having a conversation with a warm and witty friend. In it, she shares her life experiences and how they were influenced by the books ...

 I Will Return by Pablo Neruda Some other time, man or woman, traveler, later, when I am not alive, look here, look for me between stone and ocean, in the light storming through the foam. Look here, look for me, for here I will return, without saying a thing, without voice, without mouth, pure, here I will return to be the churning of the water, of its unbroken heart, here, I will be discovered and lost: here, I will, perhaps, be stone and silence.   See: The Poetry of Pablo Neruda , edited by Ilan Stavans (NY, Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2003)

My quote of the day about writing:       "What really knocks me out is a book that, when  you're all done reading it, you wish the author who wrote it was a terrific friend of  yours and  you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."     (The fictional Holden Caulfield says this in J.D. Salinger's, The Catcher in the Rye. )