(PRWEB) December 22, 2005 — Bard College President Leon Botstein, who stands beside banned authors Chinua Achebe and Toni Morrison, advocated in writing for the banning of a book by Bard alumna Charleen Touchette from a public library on December 19, 2005. Botstein wrote the Bard Community to support Bard Professor Kim Touchette Weiss (1977) in her written request to ban a book at the Woonsocket Harris Public Library in Rhode Island.
The banned book, “It Stops with Me”, a memoir by her sister, Charleen Touchette (1975) was removed from library shelves over three months ago in September 2005 after a challenge by their father. President Botstein, who witnessed none of the events described in the book, advocated “restricting its access.”
Leon Botstein wrote, “If members of a family wish to harm one another, those actions should be kept private and should not draw in others by invoking matters of public policy.”
Charleen Touchette wrote that “President Botstein’s statement is a justification for keeping family violence a secret.”
Read more at www.prweb.com/releases/…
What’s up with this? On the face of it, seems like a strange position for any college President to take. I’ve written the Bard PR office asking for comment.
NG London/News & Features: The National Gallery discovers a new Leonardo:
Recent examination of one of the National Gallery’s most popular paintings has unearthed a remarkable discovery.
The Gallery’s team of experts have used infrared reflectography to find two distinct underdrawings beneath the surface of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Virgin of the Rocks’. Though one drawing corresponds with the final version of the painting, another shows a completely different picture of a kneeling figure. Her downcast gaze and pious gestures suggest that Leonardo’s initial idea was to depict the Virgin in Adoration of the Christ Child. There is no sign of the baby Jesus, but this could be because Leonardo abandoned this idea before he came to include him.
‘It was an extraordinary moment when we pointed the camera on the Madonna’s face – just to get the settings right because the paint was thin there – and instantly we saw a hand which had no place there. We all had to go away and sit quietly for a bit, just to get our thoughts in order.’
Rachel Billinge, Conservator
Following up on Danny Sullivan’s great article about GBS traffic, here is another view on Google Book Search traffic. These are the GBS page impressions for my UNAUTHORIZED HALF-BLOOD PRINCE NEWS, a book of news and analysis about Harry Potter Book 6, and probably pretty representative of high-profile book keyword phrases. As you can see, the Google Books press releases on Nov. 3 and Nov. 17 had enormous power to jolt GBS traffic, and the long-term trends are all good.
With One Link, Google Book Search Becomes Google’s 5th Most Popular Service: “With One Link, Google Book Search Becomes Google’s 5th Most Popular Service
Google Print Is Google’s Ninth Most Popular Service here on the blog last month covered how according to Hitwise, Google Print — since renamed Google Book Search — made the top ten of most used Google services, though usage was only by a tiny 0.4 percent of Google visitors. Since then, a small change by Google has dramatically increased the visits to Google Book search and pushed it into being the fifth most popular service it offers.”
According to these statistics, GBS traffic tripled between Nov. 5 and Dec. 10.
Blog Ma�onnique, le weblog de la Franc-Ma�onnerie:
La Cl�de Salomon
Le 5e ouvrage de Dan Brown, l’auteur de “Anges & D�mons” et du “Code Da Vinci”, aura pour titre “Beyond the Solomon Key” (La Cl�de Salomon). Il aura pour argument central le meurtre de plusieurs personnages politiques en exercice perpetr�s par un criminel li�aux Francs-Ma�ons. Apr�s s’�tre attaqu�aux Illuminati (dans “Anges & D�mons” o�il avait d�j� �gratign�les Francs-Ma�ons”) et �l’Opus Dei (“Code Da Vinci”)Brown va donc s’en prendre �l’Ordre. Il ne manquera pas d’�voquer les liens entre celui-ci et les p�res fondateurs des Etats Unis. Le d�cor de l’action ne sera plus Rome ou Paris mais, cette fois, Washington D.C., ville dont l’architecture serait ma�onnique. Le livre sortira en anglais le 6 avril 2006. Il s’est d�j�publi�un “Guide to Dan Brown’s the Solomon Key” (Greg Taylor) et “The Solomon Key and Beyond” (W. Frederick Zimmerman).
I love it when they talk French about me.
My apologies for the poor handling of accents–Blogger’s fault, I suppose!
BookFinder.com top 10 OOP books:
According to BookFinder.com’s research, the top 10 most sought after US out of print books of 2005 are:
1. Sex (1992) by Madonna — The pop icon’s first book, featuring erotic photos and more
2. Sisters (1981) by Lynne Cheney — Frontier lesbian romance in 19th century Wyoming
3. The Exorcism of Anneliese Michel (1981) by Felicitas D. Goodman — An account of the case that inspired the 2005 film The Exorcism of Emily Rose
4. Where Troy Once Stood (1991) by Iman Wilkens — Posits that the Trojan War took place in England, and that The Iliad and The Odyssey are based on oral histories of a major war between Celtic peoples circa 1160 BCE
5. The Principles of Knitting (1988) by June Hemmons Hiatt — Methods and techniques of hand knitting, the ultimate resource
6. General Printing (1963) by Glen Cleeton — Everything you ever wanted to know about letterpress printing, but were afraid to ask
7. The New Soldier (1971) edited by John Kerry — Vietnam Veterans Against the War’s account of a mismanaged war
8. The Lion’s Paw (1946) by Robb White — An enduring children’s adventure story
9. Dear and Glorious Physician (1959) by Taylor Caldwell — A novel based on the life of Saint Luke, patron saint of painters, physicians, and healers
10. The Book of Counted Sorrows (2003) by Dean Koontz — The suspense novelist brings to life the fictional book of poetry he’s been referring to in all his novels
This is a fascinating list. Some of the books are goofy: Where Troy Once Stood? Some sound as if they’re worth looking up: The Lion’s Paw and Dear and Glorious Physician.
Anirvan’s blog is well worth checking out for any book-lover.
Amazon.com review by John Pombrio answered my question whether I should read this science ficiton novel by veteran writer Alan Dean Foster. No.
Unfortunately, Alan Dean Foster has developed a case of authorial meanderosis. He can’t seem to bring the Pip and Flinx series to a conclusion. Too bad! Flinx is a great character who deserves more narrative structure in his life.
Read more at www.amazon.com/gp/produ…
This is an interesting sign of Google maturing as a company. My former employer, LexisNexis, has had librarian relations groups for decades.
Read more at www.google.com/newslett…
Publishers bet on Brown clones:
I
n the early months of 2006, expect a few novels with some very familiar story lines.
Labyrinth, by Kate Mosse, features a rival sect to the Catholic church and a search for the Holy Grail. In The Templar Legacy, a thriller by Steve Berry, a former government agent attempts to unravel a mystery about an order of knights whose power rivaled the Pope’s. Matilde Asensi’s The Last Cato features the head of the Vatican’s secret archive and his efforts to solve a murder with clues dating back to biblical times.
“It’s hard not to have The Da Vinci Code on our minds, as it has become the cultural phenomenon of our time,” says Rene Alegria, publisher of Rayo, a Hispanic imprint of HarperCollins that is releasing the English translation of The Last Cato.
Nearly three years after it was first published, The Da Vinci Codehas more than 25 million copies in print worldwide, inspired dozens of parodies and critiques and increased interest in religious thrillers, art history, Gnostic texts and speculations about the life of Jesus.
With The Da Vinci Code movie, starring Tom Hanks as symbologist Robert Langdon, due out in the spring or early summer, publishers and booksellers expect yet another surge for the novel by New Hampshire author Dan Brown and for books like it.
“This is the hottest trend out there,” says Barnes & Noble fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley. “I think a large part of the Da Vinci Code audience will go for these new books.”
Publishers are counting on big sales.
I predict they will be disappointed. So far all the Da Vinci code clones that I have seen pretty much suck.
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