***Interesting Articles: September-October.

I couldn't find this thread, so hope I'm not duplicating one that already exists.

Here's an article about a man creating "lending" libraries in largely unused phone booths in New York City. The one at 87th and Amsterdam was right in my neighborhood, but I somehow missed it.

I love this idea. Here's a somewhat different take on it: http://www.littlefreelibrary.org/index.html

The five regional winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (from Africa, Asia, Canada & Europe, Caribbean, and the Pacific regions) are available to read online here.

For those of us who are fans of Anne Fadiman's The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, here is an obituary for/story about Lia Lee, the young girl at the center of the book.

A wonderful story from the Phillipines. I doubt any of us on LT could do this with our books!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19547365

>5 akeela:: Wow. I've often commented that I have enough books to open my own public library, but I must confess it never occurred to me to actually do it.

Love that story!

I also liked this essay about practicing medicine in Antarctica by Gavin Francis.

The Orange Prize for fiction will now be known as the Women's Prize for Fiction at least for 2013.

Got to imagine this is rather anti-climatic surprise considering all the big name sponsors Kate Mosse has been talking about for almost a year. But it's good that it will live another year with private funding (or public depending on your definition).

A bibliomaniac's take on the paper-borne disease...

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/bookshelf-avalanc...

The literary historian James Carey, going against the critical grain, has suggested that "the book was the culminating event in medieval culture", and "an agent of the continuity of medieval culture rather than its rupture". If so, we are living in the Middle Ages still. -- I knew there was some reason I was/am a medievalist!

Interesting interview with Michael Grunwald, author of The New New Deal:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2012/08/the_new_ne...

College Is Dead. Long Live College!

http://nation.time.com/2012/10/18/college-is-dead-long-live-college/

Does anyone else find this worrisome? Will all those great footnotes disappear?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/oct/29/penguin-random-house-book-publisher

I read yesterday that some other company (one even worse than Random House, but I can't remember which) was going to buy Penguin and was terrified. Definitely worried about the footnotes and introductions too.

>14 rebeccanyc: - it was Rupert Murdoch's publishing arm but Random Penguin (great name regardless of the disaster that awaits mid-list writers) looks like it has the go-ahead.

Very worrying, nonetheless. Might be the time to stock up on obscure Penguins.