A Book as a Friend?

By Janelle Yahne
Library Circulation Associate

When you think of a favorite book, what are its likable characteristics? The author probably writers well enough if he has been published, though a critic might argue otherwise. The book is about an intriguing topic and weaves a story that keeps you flipping pages when you should be sleeping. Personally, I like the narrator’s voice that pops in my head as I read. In the end, a favorite book is one that gets under your skin, and stakes a claim upon a piece of your life as a friend.

An article in The Guardian by Rick Gekoski called “Some of My Worst Friends Are Books,” has me thinking about my own personal experiences with books. I remember being shocked by the end of Brave New World¹ and the choice made by the main character. I felt encouragement and warmth after following a young woman’s passage through grief in P.S. I Love You. Devil in the White City had me dreaming of the 1893 World’s Fair and I devoured books about the architects for months. The empathy I felt with the woman in The Yellow Wallpaper as she descended into madness. For the reader Mr. Gekoski writes, “we suspend the everyday, ignore the telephone and doorbell, eat with our eyes fixed to the page, overcome, ravaged by the demands of the text.” I feel the same way about friends and family.

Though we are busy with living our lives we make time for friends and family whether living or in letters. Sometimes we may not see each other or have enough quality time, but the bookcase in my house reminds me that we will find a way to meet.

There are books about books in the library, to help one find new friends and others can be found through MeLCat.

Check out these titles:

• Bloomsbury good reading guide [electronic resource] by Nick Rennsion
• Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason by Nancy Pearl
• How to Read and Why by Harold Bloom
• How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading Between the Lines by Thomas C. Foster
• Read This Next: 500 of the Best Books You Will Ever Read by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark

1. Yes, I often recommend this book.

Banned Books Week: Brave New World

To celebrate Banned Books Week 2011, the library will be posting reviews and commentary from college staff about their favorite banned books and why during the celebration.

By Janelle Yahne
Library Circulation Associate

Picture a world of never ending instant gratification. All of your materialistic needs are met, there is no violence, free love is rampant, but the feelings are dosed out through over the counter medicine. It is a home of one government, you are taken care of from inception until death, and all you have to do is live within your caste. Welcome to Brave New World.

This is one of my favorite banned books because it is so different from 1984 and also pre-dates it. Both are about totalitarian governments controlling society, but Brave New World does it through consumer satisfaction, controlled recreational drug use, and technological advances in human control. Some of these methods may be recognizable in our own society today.

I recommend this book for those who like other banned books such as Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and the lost Russian classic, We.

Banned Book Week

By Steevigh Cwayna
Library Acquisitions Specialist

Next week, Sept. 24 – Oct. 1, 2011, is Banned Books Week; a yearly celebration of the freedom to read and the First Amendment.

Titles include [Links open to GRCC's library or if we don't have the title available, to GRPL's library]:

• And Tango Makes Three by Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson
  Reason for banning: homosexuality, religious viewpoint, unsuited to age group
• The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  Reasons for banning: offensive language, racism, religious viewpoint, sex education, sexually explicit, violence, unsuited to age group
• Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
  Reasons for banning: insensitivity, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit
• Crank by Ellen Hopkins
  Reasons for banning: drugs, offensive language, racism, sexually explicit
• The Hunger Games (series), by Suzanne Collins
  Reasons for banning: sexaully explicit, violence, unsuited to age group
• Lush by Natasha Friend
  Reasons for banning: drugs, sexually explicit, offensive language, unsuited to age group
• What My Mother Doesn’t Know by Sonya Sones
  Reasons for banning: sexism, sexually explicit, unsuited to age group
• Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting by in America by Barbara Ehrenreich
  Reasons for banning: drugs, inaccurate, offensive language, political viewpoint, religious viewpoint
• Revolutionary Voices edited by Amy Sonnie
  Reasons for banning: homosexuality, sexually explicit
• Twilight (series) by Stephanie Meyer
  Reasons for banning: sexually explicit, religious viewpoint, violence, unsuited to age group

For more information on the subject of banned books, please visit the American Library Association’s site.