Guitar players, established luthiers, and aspiring guitar-builders now have a foundation-level reference resource for all facets of the guitar. In his new book, Bill Foley describes the historical development of ancient stringed musical instruments like the cithara. He also provides detailed scientific lessons about sound frequencies, harmonics, and guitar engineering.
Alabama is the most recent state to part ways with the American Library Association (ALA), joining Florida, Missouri, Montana, Texas, and Wyoming. On January 30, in response to pressure from Gov. Kay Ivey, the Alabama Public Library Service—the agency that advises and administers funds to the state’s 220 public libraries—announced its official decision not to renew its membership with the association.
Turn the page into 2024 and explore the books filling the year. Across fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, here are titles, authors, and subjects to note, from future best sellers, to gems readers will treasure, to works destined for award attention.
The Kansas City Public Library and San Francisco Public Library (SFPL) last Thursday announced that they would team up on a Tackle Censorship campaign with a friendly wager on the Super Bowl. As a result of Kansas City's 25–22 victory on Sunday, a library representative from SFPL will wear Kansas City gear and post a recording of themselves reading from a banned book on the library’s social media channels.
“This attack on ALA is a symbolic attack on the professionalism of libraries and librarians. It is trying to isolate us from the foundation of our profession, thinking that when they take away the ALA Bill of Rights, which is one of the things they would like to do, that will somehow undermine our profession and what we do—not realizing that if we don’t use the ALA Bill of Rights, okay, we’ll just use the regular Bill of Rights.”
On January 22, the Library of Congress (LOC) announced the launch of the COVID-19 Archive Activation website, an online tool created in collaboration with national oral history nonprofit StoryCorps, which will allow members of the public to submit audio accounts of their pandemic experience. Anyone wishing to share their story or interview others can take part. These oral histories will become part of LOC’s American Folklife Center collections and be made accessible at archive.StoryCorps.org.
The PEN/Faulkner Award longlist arrives and includes novels by James McBride, Alice McDermott, and Jamel Brinkley. WNBA player Brittney Griner’s memoir, Coming Home, will be published May 7 by Knopf. Author Saul Bellow is honored with a postal stamp. LibraryReads and LJ offer read-alikes for The Women by Kristin Hannah. Memoirs by filmmaker Ed Zwick and HGTV star Tarek El Moussa get buzz. B&N offers up a list of song-to-book pairings for Taylor Swift’s Midnights.
The Society of Authors Translation Prize winners and the UK’s Parliamentary Book Award winners are announced. The longlist is announced for the Plutarch Award for biographies. Novelist and Royal Society of Literature president Bernardine Evaristo defends the organization against recent criticism of its modernization efforts. Plus new title best sellers.
Fangirl Down by Tessa Bailey leads holds this week. Also in demand are titles by James Patterson and James O. Born, Susan Mallery, Kate Quinn and Janie Chang, and Susan Elizabeth Phillips. Nine LibraryReads and five Indie Next picks publish this week. People’s book of the week is The Book of Love by Kelly Link, which NYT calls “profoundly beautiful.” Disney+’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians, based on the books by Rick Riordan, will return for a second season.
James, by Percival Everett, is a starred fiction selection. "In this virtuoso reworking of Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, it’s the enslaved Jim who tells the tale. Heard from Jim’s perspective, events look different than they did to Huck, because Jim is living inside a mask: deliberately hiding who and what he is and whatever aspirations he may have." Neel Mukherjee's Choice is another starred fiction title. "These pages abound with misery: animal mistreatment, the harsh plight of refugees, and dire poverty. But the rewards—indelible images, admirable story-telling, and wicked good writing—are many." And Paul Tremblay's Horror Movie is a starred horror selection. "Balancing a terrifying cursed film with examinations of artistic creation, fandom, and truth, Tremblay’s latest is smart and well-paced and will have broad appeal. Recommended for fans of Tremblay’s The Pallbearers Club as well as Clay McLeod Chapman’s The Remaking."
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