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An obsessive stalker, an impotent husband, a lover of young boys... to some, the creator of 'Peter Pan' was an evil genius; to others, a misunderstood ingenue. Ever mindful of the J.M. Barrie 'curse', Justine Picardie investigates 'May God blast anyone who writes a biography of me,' declared J.M. Barrie, in a curse scrawled across the pages of one of his last notebooks. Since his death in 1937, this dire warning has not prevented a slew of writers taking him on, the latest of which is Piers Dudgeon, whose book Captivated is subtitled The Dark Side of Never Never Land,...

Pop Quiz by: Bethany Stotts, July 15, 2008 How much do American high-schoolers know about their literary heritage? A non-profit group called Common Core surveyed 12,000 17-year-olds this year in order to answer just that question. Barely over half (52%) of the surveyed teenagers knew that 1984 was about “a dictatorship in which every citizen was watched in order to stamp out all individuality,” reports Frederick Hess, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). Hess authored the Common Core study. Far more prevalent was knowledge of civil-rights-related literature such as To Kill a Mockingbird and Uncle Tom’s Cabin,...

OK everyone, it's time for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread. I like finding out what Freepers are reading lately. It can be anything...a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel, an old classic...in short, anything! Please do not defile this thread by posting "I'm Reading This Thread". It became very unfunny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm close to finishing "The Last Valley" by Martin Windrow. It's about the siege/battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Well, what are you reading now?!

FReeps have such great taste! So, I thought I would put this out there. One of my favorite things to do during the summer months is read to my children before they go to sleep. Actually, I do this year round, but particularly enjoy reading to them during the summer months. At times we get carried away with some of the great children’s lit available ~ with Mom finally coming up tho the bedrooms at 10:30 to shut down the evening's activities. At which point we may have to get real quiet and me straining my eyes. It’s great to...

[Book review] Excerpt: Mr. Riemen's Nobility of Spirit is intended as a meditation on the forces that threaten civilization and, no less important, on the forces that are desperately needed to sustain it... The originality of Mr. Riemen's argument resides less in its defense of universal values than in its analysis of the assault they have suffered for so long. If so many intellectuals today find it difficult to utter words like "truth," "beauty," "piety" or "goodness" without mockery or ironic derision, the cause may be traced, in large part, to the abuse of those terms by philosophers and social...

Valley of the Diverse by: Malcolm A. Kline, June 02, 2008 In a recent essay, English professor David Trinidad shows us how the teaching of literature has evolved using Jacqueline Susann’s 1967 novel Valley of the Dolls as a window on the culture. “What would an academic have said, then, about Valley of the Dolls?” he posits in the May 30 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “It has no literary merit,” is the reply he envisions. By way of contrast, Trinidad suggests, pedagogues can now say, “It’s trash, and I love it. And I’m going to teach a...

JERUSALEM: Shakespeare was actually a Jewish woman who had disguised to get her work published in Elizabethan London where original literature from women was not acceptable, an expert has contended. The woman, Amelia Bassano Lanier Bassano, was of Italian descent and lived in England as a Marrano. She has been known only as the first woman to publish a book of poetry ( Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum in 1611) and as a candidate for "the dark lady" referred to in the sonnets, daily Ha'aretz reported. The theory rests largely on the circumstances of Bassano's life, which John Hudson, an expert...

There must be a lot of SF fans here. Who are you favorite authors or books? What are you currently reading?I enjoy SF books that focus on character development over hard scifi themes. Robert Silverberg, IMO, is about the best there is. I also enjoy Gardner Duzois' short stories--some gut-wrenching stuff. Jack Vance's are also very entertaining. Orson Scott Card is pretty good too.I am currently reading Altered Carbon, by Richard Morgan...it's kind of slow and hard to follow. Not likely to read his other novels.I have enjoyed some, but not all, of Niven and Pournelle's works.

ERNEST Hemingway and Hollywood had a tempestuous relationship - but his utter hatred of the movies made from his famed novels is now just coming to light. In "The Good Life According to Hemingway," out next month, A.E. Hotchner, who traveled the globe with him, bares a series of never-before-published slaps Hemingway took at the film business. When producer David O. Selznick crowed that his wife, Jennifer Jones, was starring in "A Farewell to Arms" and he'd pay Hemingway a $50,000 bonus from any profits, the novelist wrote back: "If by some miracle, your movie, which stars 41-year-old Mrs....

Pope's cat writes purrfect book BY STEPHANIE GASKELL DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER Sunday, April 20th 2008, 4:00 AM There's one very unusual biography of Pope Benedict - a children's book, supposedly written by his cat."Joseph and Chico: The Life of Pope Benedict XVI as Told by a Cat" is a 36-page illustrated book that chronicles the life of Benedict through the words of his cat, Chico. "I'm meeting you in the pages of this book to tell you a story about my very best friend, a wonderful man with whom I've shared so many happy times," Chico says. "I...

When I was about 18, I went to a science-fiction bookstore in Berkeley, Calif., to attend a book signing by Harlan Ellison. I had a couple of well-thumbed paperback collections for Ellison to sign, and was totally unprepared for the long line of fans, many of them bearing 10 or 15 pristinely preserved hardcover books. The college-age woman in front of me had just such a pile, but was carrying something else too. When she got to the front of the line, she cleared her throat and thrust something toward Ellison. "Mr. Ellison, I wrote a story and you're in...

.....I wrote a play about politics (November, Barrymore Theater, Broadway, some seats still available). And as part of the "writing process," as I believe it's called, I started thinking about politics. This comment is not actually as jejune as it might seem. Porgy and Bess is a buncha good songs but has nothing to do with race relations, which is the flag of convenience under which it sailed. But my play, it turned out, was actually about politics, which is to say, about the polemic between persons of two opposing views. The argument in my play is between a president...

'Wolf woman' invents Holocaust survival tale By Bruno Waterfield in Brussels  Last Updated: 4:14pm GMT 29/02/2008     A woman's best-selling account of how she lost her parents to the Holocaust and survived by living with wolves in the forests of Europe has been exposed as a fabrication.   Mrs Defonseca's book became a runaway bestseller   "Surviving with Wolves", first published 11 years ago, has been translated into 18 languages and was recently turned into a film. But in a statement issued by her lawyers, Misha Defonseca, who was born Monique De Wael, confessed that while her parents, members...

Looking for FR book recommendations.

The convictions of five young Muslim men jailed over extremist literature have been quashed by the Appeal Court. Freeing the men, the Lord Chief Justice said there was no proof of terrorist intent. The lawyer for one said they had been jailed for a "thought crime". A jury convicted them in 2007 after hearing the men, of Bradford University and Ilford, London, became obsessed with jihadi websites and literature. The Home Office said it would study the judgement carefully. 'Serious threat' It said it understood the Crown Prosecution Service was considering whether to appeal against the ruling, which it must...

Groundhog Day Curriculum by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 01, 2008 Somewhat like the character Bill Murray plays in the film Groundhog Day, college administrators rarely achieve real reform in resolving the crises in higher education because they keep on doing the same thing over and over again. “In class, many students are ready to talk, but they want to talk about themselves or about large-scale public themes, independent of the books they are supposedly reading,” Robert Newman, Dean of the College of Humanities at the University of Utah notes in a U-Utah publication from last year. “They are happy to...

Polar Fiction by: Bethany Stotts, January 22, 2008 Chicago, Ill.— Assuming the verifiable truth of global warming, some academics wish to circumvent the climate change debate and start teaching college students about importance of combatting this imminent disaster. Just as some environmentalists have co-opted the polar bear as a symbol for the predicted ecological crisis, Britt Rusert, a doctoral candidate at Duke University, visualizes polar exploration literature as a new outlet for this discourse. “How, I wonder, might such a polar canon help us conceptualize and historicize ecological crises, specifically the master discourse of global warming and their contemporary moments?,”...

Mass-market adaptations make Great Books go bad. Or so conventional wisdom would have it. But every so often, plundering and pillaging a canonical text for the sake of entertainment gives it the kiss of life. Take “Beowulf” and “Paradise Lost.” The unpalatable truth is that both originals are now virtually unreadable. “Beowulf” is written in Old English, an inflected Germanic tongue that looks a lot less like our language than one would hope. As for Milton’s epic, it’s in “normal” English, but its blank verse is so densely learned, so syntactically complicated and philosophically obscure, that it’s almost never read...

Nabokov wanted his final, unfinished work destroyed. Should his son get out the matches? Here is your chance to weigh in on one of the most troubling dilemmas in contemporary literary culture. I know I'm hopelessly conflicted about it. It's the question of whether the last unpublished work of Vladimir Nabokov, which is now reposing unread in a Swiss bank vault, should be destroyed—as Nabokov explicitly requested before he died. It's a decision that has fallen to his sole surviving heir (and translator), Dmitri Nabokov, now 73. Dmitri has been torn for years between his father's unequivocal request and the...

It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" inquiry. I'm always curious as to what Freepers are reading and what they're recommending to others. It can be anything...a classic novel, a scientific journal, a magazine, a cheap pulp novel...anything. Do not deface this thread with a smart-ass answer like "I'm Reading this Thread". It became very un-original a long time ago. I'll start. I'm reading "The Great Deluge: Hurrican Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast" by Douglas Brinkley. This is a full account of Katrina striking the Gulf Coast. The book starts 48 hours before...

PC publishers ban dragon from breathing fire in children's book... because it's too dangerousBy KURT BAYER and JAMES TAPPER - More by this author » Last updated at 00:35am on 18th November 2007A leading children's author was told to drop a fire-breathing dragon shown in a new book - because the publishers feared they could be sued under health and safety regulations. It is just one of the politically correct cuts Lindsey Gardiner says she has been told to make in case youngsters act out the stories. As well as the scene showing her dragon toasting marshmallows with his...

What Every Parent Should Know About "The Golden Compass" Interview With Pete Vere and Sandra Miesel INDIANAPOLIS, Indiana, NOV. 14, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The film "The Golden Compass" isn't simply about using fairy-tale magic to tell a good story, it corrupts the imagery of Lewis and Tolkien to undermine children's faith in God and the Church, says Catholic author Pete Vere. In this interview with ZENIT, Vere and Sandra Miesel discuss the movie adaptation of the fantasy novels written by Philip Pullman. The film, staring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, will be released in the United States in early December. Vere...

Reagan and the Historians By Steven F. Hayward Posted November 5, 2007    Books discussed in this essay: Ronald Reagan: Fate, Freedom, and the Making of History, by John Patrick Diggins The Education of Ronald Reagan: The General Electric Years and the Untold Story of His Conversion to Conservatism, by Thomas W. Evans The Reagan Diaries, by Ronald Reagan, edited by Douglas Brinkley The Crusader: Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism, by Paul Kengor The Judge: William P. Clark: Ronald Reagan's Top Hand, by Paul Kengor and Patricia Clark Doerner Transforming America: Politics and Culture During the Reagan Years, by...

Alive and safe, the brutal Japanese soldiers who butchered 20,000 Allied seamen in cold bloodBy NIGEL BLUNDELL - More by this author » Last updated at 17:53pm on 3rd November 2007  The perpetrators of some of the worst atrocities of the Second World War remain alive and unpunished in Japan, according to a damning new book.  Painstaking research by British historian Mark Felton reveals that the wartime behaviour of the Japanese Navy was far worse than their counterparts in Hitler's Kriegsmarine. According to Felton, officers of the Imperial Japanese Navy ordered the deliberately sadistic murders of more than 20,000...

HALTOM CITY -- The Birdville school district superintendent will apologize in writing to a student offended by a lesson on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and teachers will get cultural sensitivity training. Those were the agreements reached Wednesday after a 90-minute meeting between school officials, 17-year-old Ibrahim Mohamed, his parents and a coalition of activists offended by the teacher's repeated use of a racial slur that is in the text of the classic 1884 Mark Twain novel. The school district has removed the book from the Richland High School student's class and has allowed him to enroll in a different...

'Huckleberry Finn' pulled from classes after parent complains Associated Press  TAYLOR - Mark Twain's classic "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" has been pulled from high school classes after a parent of a black student complained that a teacher had students read portions aloud.There is only one black child in the English class where the book, which contains racial slurs, was read aloud and acted out, The Detroit News reported Thursday.The book will remain on the shelves at Taylor School District's high schools. The district's curriculum committee will recommend to the school board whether the book should have a future...

'Hate literature easily found at UK mosques' By Toby Helm, Chief Political Correspondent Last Updated: 1:13am GMT 30/10/2007 Extremist literature that encourages hatred of gays, Christians and Jews can be easily found at many of Britain's mosques, according to a new survey. The London Central Mosque's bookshop is not run by the mosque, as it is a franchise Researchers for the centre-Right think tank Policy Exchange claims it found the literature in a quarter of the 100 mosques and Islamic institutions they visited. Many of the publications allegedly called on British Muslims to segregate themselves from non-Muslims and for unbelievers...

Philosopher: Potter is a lefty26/10/2007 16:21  - (SA)    Paris - Harry Potter is a left-winger and the seven books by JK Rowling are a diatribe against Thatcherite Britain, a French philosopher said on Friday on the day of the last novel's publication in French. "It must be said from the start that Harry Potter is deeply political and that the books speak of today's England," Jean-Claude Milner told the left-wing newspaper Liberation. "Reading it, one can see that JK Rowling - like many cultured English people - believes there was a real Thatcherite revolution, that it was a disaster, and that...

J.K. Rowling, author of the world-wide best-selling Harry Potter series, met some of her American fans tonight and provided some surprising revelations about the fictional characters who a generation of children have come to regard as close friends. In front of a full house of hardcore Potter fans at Carnegie Hall in New York, Rowling, sitting on the stage on a red velvet and carved wood throne, read from her seventh and final book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," then took questions. One fan asked whether Albus Dumbledore, the head of the famed Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft,...

WHILE we have seen the apparent death of Communism, ways of thinking that were either born under Communism or strengthened by Communism still govern our lives. Not all of them are as immediately evident as a legacy of Communism as political correctness. The first point: language. It is not a new thought that Communism debased language and, with language, thought. There is a Communist jargon recognizable after a single sentence. Few people in Europe have not joked in their time about “concrete steps,” “contradictions,” “the interpenetration of opposites,” and the rest. The first time I saw that mind-deadening slogans had...

Doris Lessing, the Persian-born, Rhodesian-raised and London-residing novelist whose deeply autobiographical writing has swept across continents and reflects her engagement with the social and political issues of her time, on Thursday won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Literature. Announcing the award in Stockholm, the Swedish Academy described her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with skepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilization to scrutiny.” The award comes with a 10 million Swedish crown honorarium, about $1.6 million. Ms. Lessing, who turns 88 later this month, never finished high school and largely educated herself through voracious...

STOCKHOLM (AFP) — British writer Doris Lessing on Thursday won the Nobel Literature Prize for five decades of epic novels that have covered feminism and politics, as well her youth in Africa.Lessing, who will be 88 on October 22, is only the 11th woman to have won the prize since it was first awarded in 1901.The Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny."Lessing was out shopping when the prize was announced and only learned the news several hours later when she returned...

It's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread! It can be anything...a NY Times bestseller, a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel...in short, anything! DO NOT answer by saying "I'm Reading This Thread". It stopped being funny a long time ago. Here's what I'm reading. I'm just about finished with "Street Without Joy" by Bernard Fall. It's about France's war in Vietnam from 1946-1954. Very interesting and tragic. So, tell me. What are you reading now?

HARTFORD, Conn. -- Author Madeleine L'Engle, whose novel "A Wrinkle in Time" has been enjoyed by generations of schoolchildren and adults since the 1960s, has died, her publicist said Friday. She was 88. L'Engle died Thursday at a nursing home in Litchfield of natural causes, according to Jennifer Doerr, publicity manager for publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux. The Newbery Medal winner wrote more than 60 books, including fantasies, poetry and memoirs, often highlighting spiritual themes and her Christian faith. Although L'Engle was often labeled a children's author, she disliked that classification. In a 1993 Associated Press interview, she said she...

An angry parent has blasted the East Penn School District for requiring its students to read books he said are "full of filthy vulgarity." Richard Jones of Upper Milford confronted the school board Monday about some of the books on his 15-year-old son's 10th-grade summer reading list at Emmaus High School, saying they're trash. Following its standard practice, the board limited Jones to three minutes and didn't respond to his criticism during the meeting. But later, board President Ann Thompson said, "We listened carefully and it is being investigated carefully."

Politically Incorrect Literature by: Mary Kapp, July 23, 2007 At a time when fewer and fewer English professors can actually answer questions about literature, college students in search of America’s literary tradition are more likely to find it in books such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature than they are, say, at the Modern Language Association annual convention. “Culture is actually more important than politics,” is the philosophy of Elizabeth Kantor, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature. At the Eagle Forum Collegiate conference on June 22, Kantor recognized the small political...

There is an experiment I'd love to conduct. I'd like to survey a cross-section of Americans and ask them how many active NBA players, Major League Baseball players, and "American Idol" finalists they can name. Then I'd ask them how many living American poets, playwrights, painters, sculptors, architects, classical musicians, conductors and composers they can name. I'd even like to ask how many living American scientists or social thinkers they can name. Fifty years ago, I suspect that along with Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax, most Americans could have named, at the very least, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg,...

OK, it's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now? post! I like to do this gauge what Freepers are currently reading and what they're recommending to friends, family, etc. This can be anything...a trashy pulp novel, a technical journal, a NY Times bestseller, a great classic work of literature. Please don't defile this thread with dumb answers like "I'm Reading This Thread!" I'll start with what I'm currently reading. I'm reading "An Uncommon Man: The Triumph of Herbert Hoover" by Richard Norton Smith. This book is a little different from your standard biography in that it primarily...

Suspension Over the 'V-Word' CROSS RIVER, N.Y. (AP) -- A Westchestr public high school has suspended three girls who disobeyed officials by saying the word ``vagina'' during a reading from the play ``The Vagina Monologues.'' Stay tuned to WCBS 880 on air and online for more on this story from Reporter Catherine Cioffi Their stand is being applauded by the play's author, Eve Ensler, who said today that the school should be celebrating the three juniors. Ensler asked ``don't we want our children to resist authority when it's not appropriate and wise?'' The students, Megan Reback, Elan Stahl and Hannah...

ROMA, January 15, 2007 – His book about Jesus was announced at the end of November, and will be on sale next spring. But a week does not go by without Benedict XVI preaching about the book’s protagonist: Jesus “true God and true man.� It is as if Pope Joseph Ratzinger himself were already focusing on the book’s publicity campaign. A year ago, he did the same thing with the encyclical “Deus Caritas Est�: before its publication, he repeatedly spoke out to illustrate its essential contents, increasing the anticipation each time. The last time Benedict XVI referred to his...

"Did I mention that I'm a high school dropout? Not that it has been much of a problem: I do have a bachelor's and some other degrees. After 10th-grade, I entered Simon's Rock Early College, affiliated with Bard, where students start college work at age 15 or 16. I missed the prom, thank God, and learned to drive a little late, but otherwise I'm doing pretty well. The report on reforming our school system just released by the New Commission on the Skills of the American Workforce urges that my experience be less unusual for American students. One of its...

A Russian literary expert says the U.S. secret service oversaw the publication in Russian of Pasternak's novel "Doctor Zhivago," paving the way for him to win the world's most coveted literary prize. PRAGUE, December 14, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- In 1958, Boris Pasternak, the great Russian poet and novelist, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature for what the Nobel committee described as his "important achievement both in contemporary lyrical poetry and in the field of the great Russian epic tradition." Best known in the Soviet Union for his poetic verse, it was his "epic" novel "Doctor Zhivago" that gained him...

I'm gonna list what I consider to be the Greatest Weaknesses of Modern Authors, their writings, worldviews, methods of working, work produced, etc. 1. Little or No Real World Experience: Too many modern authors, writers, screenwriters (not to mention artists of all kinds) have little or no real world experience. They go to school to learn how to write, they spend their lives obsessing over writing, they spend most all of their free time writing or learning to write. Yet they never lived and have nothing to write about except what is spawned within their own imaginations. They spend all...

Amicus Brief A review of Friendship: An Exposé by Joseph Epstein By William F. Buckley, Jr.Posted November 13, 2006 Joseph Epstein remarks that there aren't many books written on the subject of friendship. Two hundred and seventy pages later, we might be tempted to think, Score one more for the marketplace! But of course you wouldn't be tempted to say any such thing after completing this book. Joe Epstein appears to have promised himself, 17 books back, that he would never be tedious, and this latest book is certainly a validation of that oath. In particular because a book...

Its funny how God works sometimes. If you listen to things the way they are meant to be heard you'll catch an awful lot that you used to miss. Today in my Brit. Lit. class we were talking about Tennyson. Specifically we were discussing "The Lotos Eaters" and "Ulysses". It's quite remarkable when I consder the feelings I've been experienceing the more I listen or read about the past election. I try to focus on what I'm doing but instead I keep coming back to the depression that encompasses what is becomming a staggering loss. Then it happened. The words...

Ernestine Gilbreth Carey, whose lighthearted memoir, "Cheaper by the Dozen," detailed the frenentic life of a family with 12 children and inspired several films, has died. Carey died Saturday of natural causes at St. Agnes Medical Center in Fresno, her son Charles Carey Jr. said. She was 98. "Cheaper by the Dozen," which Carey co-wrote with her brother Frank Gilbreth, became a best seller when it was published in 1948. The book documented the adventures of the Gilbreth clan, which included six sons and six daughters and parents Lillian Moller Gilbreth and Frank Bunker Gilbreth, management experts who focused on...

Margaret R. Soltan, an English professor at George Washington University, said voters should not regard Webb's novels as indicative of his views, any more than voters in England should have been deterred by some of Winston Churchill's more shocking writing. "To think along those lines exposes you as a person who has no culture," she said..........Allen campaign officials provided excerpts from the books -- some of them depicting acts of incest and graphic sexuality -- to the Drudge Report Web site Thursday night. Matt Drudge's Internet blog often breaks or promotes stories with sensational angles, most recently the scandal involving...

Subject: Why English teachers die young? Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit their collections of actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. These excerpts are published each year to the amusement of teachers across the country. Here are last year's winners..... 1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master. 2.. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. 3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like...

Oriana Fallaci (1929 - 2006) was called a leftist. Oriana Fallaci was called a fascist. I do not believe in the Left or the Right. I believe in the wet grass under my stockened feet soaking my skin. That is very much reality; that is not the symbolism of semantics. Labels are what men and women pin on each other as they seek to define the truth in their own minds. Fallaci was very much herself, whatever she believed in, and like most of us, her beliefs likely changed over time, with the ebb and flow of crisis and chaos,...

College administrators may have inadvertently found a way to replenish the dwindling ranks on their campuses. “For the past ten years, I’ve been teaching along with other volunteers—college professors like myself, probation officers, judges and people from the community—in a program called ‘Changing Lives through Literature’ serving the Dorchester District Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Taylor Stoehr writes in Radical Teacher. “Our students are probationers of the Court, and after completing the ten-week course, they receive six months off their probation time.” “I work in the men’s group (there is a women’s group too), which averages twelve or fifteen...