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Three mysterious signatures on pages of parchment bound in leather and kept under lock and key may prove the theory that William Shakespeare was a secret Catholic who spent his “lost years” in Italy. An exhibition at the Venerable English College, the seminary in Rome for English Catholic priests, has revealed cryptic names in its guest books for visiting pilgrims, suggesting that the playwright sought refuge there. “Arthurus Stratfordus Wigomniensis” signed the book in 1585, while “Gulielmus Clerkue Stratfordiensis” arrived in 1589. According to Father Andrew Headon, vice-rector of the college and organiser of the exhibition, the names can be...

Over the past few weeks, Ayn Rand’s classic, Atlas Shrugged, has been mentioned in articles in the Wall Street Journal and among conservative and libertarian bloggers. Two questions are being debated by those who have read the book. Are we living in a time line that follows the book? What chapter are we in? Besides those who have read the book, there are FReepers with little awareness of Rand and her work. Some are turned off by the length of her works of fiction. Some of a more religious bent have problems with Rand’s atheism. Some wish she had left...

Perhaps the most anticipated popular fiction offering of the year for readers of this column is Heart of the Assassin, (Scribner, $25.95) Robert Ferrigno's final volume in his trilogy about a future America split by civil war and dominated by Islamic rule. http://frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=36278#disqus_thread

Tags: Israel News, Jewish World "And the Rat Laughed" is an exquisitely wrought meditation on the present and future of Holocaust memory in Israel after the survivors are gone. Integrating story, legend, poetry, dream, science fiction and diary, Semel's novel begins in 1999 and pivots on testimony given by a nameless Tel Aviv grandmother to her 12-year-old granddaughter interviewing her for a school project. When she was 5, the grandmother was hidden in a potato pit by an anti-Semitic Polish couple who were paid to do so. The eponymous rat whom she befriends is her sole companion in the darkness...

I thought I would start a thread for all of you Science Fiction and Fantasy readers. I know it has been done in the past, but it seemed like a good time to run it again. If you have any favorite books or stories to recommend post it for others to share. I have received some excellent advice on some good reads. Maybe you have a good title or author to recommend.

The 400-year-old mystery of whether William Shakespeare was the author of an unattributed play about Edward III may have been solved by a computer program designed to detect plagiarism. Sir Brian Vickers, an authority on Shakespeare at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London, believes that a comparison of phrases used in The Reign of King Edward III with Shakespeare’s early works proves conclusively that the Bard wrote the play in collaboration with Thomas Kyd, one of the most popular playwrights of his day. The professor used software called Pl@giarism, developed by the University of Maastricht to...

OK everyone, it's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" survey. I always ask this because I consider most Freepers to be extremely well-read, possibly some of the more well-read groups on the Web. What you are currently reading can be anything - a technical journal, an NY Times bestseller, a classic novel, in short anything. Please do not defile this thread by replying "I'm reading this thread". It became un-funny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm reading "The Approaching Fury: Voices Of The Storm (1820-1861) by Stephen Oates. This book covers the major controversies and...

Just finished a headlong dash through the 11 novels of C.S. Forester's legendary Horatio Hornblower series, and even as the addled mud of my mind swirls with cannon fire and sea mist and the epic clash of British ships against the brooding tyrant Napoleon Bonaparte (that cruel diminutive first draft of Hitler), I pause to contemplate the pleasures of reading series of books, the parades of linked stories that ultimately compose vast novels of thousands of pages. Are there not many subtle pleasures in series prose? The realization, at the end of Book One, that you have stumbled on a...

William Golding, the author of Lord of the Flies, the allegorical novel about childhood, admitted that he had once tried to rape a girl. He confessed to the incident in an unpublished memoir which he wrote for his wife in an effort to explain how his own “monstrous” character had developed. The attack is among the revelations about the Nobel prize-winning novelist in a new biography. It also turns out that when he was a school-teacher, Golding would pitch the boys in his care against each other in a real-life forerunner of his famous work. John Carey, the literary critic...

Well, it's time again for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread. I do this thread to gauge what other Freepers are reading. As all of you know, Freepers are probably some of the more well-read individuals on the Internet and I'm always curious as to what we're reading. It can be anything, a classic work of fiction, a NY Times bestseller, a technical journal, a trashy pulp novel...in short anything. Please do not ruin this thread by replying "I'm reading this thread". It become un-funny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm about halfway thru "The Horrid Pit:...

"There ain't no such thing as a free lunch" (Tanstaafl, get it?) originated way back in the late 1800s, when saloons offered free lunches to the homeless. All they had to do was buy one drink. How could they do this? Well, the drinks were higher priced than other saloons, perhaps, or maybe rooms were more expensive. One way or the other, the cost of those free meals would have to be recouped. If they weren't they would have to eventually go out of business. Wikipedia actually has a great article on the history of the phrase, but TANSTAAFL is...

... A mountain of research points to a central lesson: Pry your kids away from the keyboard and the television this summer, and get them reading. Let me help by offering my list of the Best Children’s Books — Ever! So here they are, in ascending order of difficulty, and I can vouch that these are also great to read aloud. 1. “Charlotte’s Web.” The story of the spider who saves her friend, the pig, is the kindest representation of an arthropod in literary history. 2. The Hardy Boys series. Yes, I hear the snickers. But I devoured them myself...

A nephew of mine is doing some project/study work on the Great Depression. I have tons of history books, but very little on economical history and the Great Depression. I'd like him to avoid Roosevelt adulating propaganda. What do you consider the authorative and most relevant books on the Great Depression and the (etatist) measures certain States (particularily US and Europeans) have taken against it? Thanks for your help.

The InsideCatholic Summer Reading List 2009 Summer is in full wilt, and that means it's time for the InsideCatholic Summer Reading List. We've asked bloggers, staff, and writers to suggest a few titles they've recently enjoyed. They've obliged. Have a look at the list -- you'll find something for every interest -- and then add your own recommendations in the Comments section below.

How can you tell that conservatives have responded to the Obama presidency by retrenching rather than reflecting? By what they apparently are reading in droves. The Ayn Rand Institute this week announced that sales of the novel "Atlas Shrugged" by the eponymous high priestess of capitalism have tripled in the first four months of 2009 compared to the same period last year — all but guaranteeing a new annual record to top last year's benchmark of 200,000. That this turgid, tedious novel, published in 1957, has continually found fellow travelers on the right is a great oddity of American intellectual...

She lives in the pages of her books. Model-actress Nethra Raghuraman, who hit the screen in 1999 with Govind Nihalani's Takshak, says her role model is the rebel architect Howard Roark from Ayn Rand's bestseller The Fountainhead who built skyscrapers in the US 75 years ago. "I want to be like Howard Roark - he is an epitome of a person who has no malice towards anyone, no hatred. He loves his work and loves his woman. I want to have a love like him, which demands possession and ownership," Nethra told IANS, when queried about her other big love...

No other writer has had as much influence on pop music as JG Ballard. His dystopian vision and sense of fear have held artists entranced and inspired bands across the decades... ...For as anyone with even a passing interest in post-punk or new rave will know, Ballard was a huge inspiration to musicians. In fact, when critics described Klaxons' debut album as "Ballardian" – an epithet now recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary – most of us had an idea of how it might sound. There were other influential modern writers before him – William Burroughs, for example – and...

Literary agent Carmen Balcells said she doesn't expect to see any more books from Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez. "I don't think that Garcia Marquez will write anything else," said Barcells in an interview with the daily La Tercera in which she added that the Colombian writer represented 36.2 per cent of her literary agency's billing. Echoing Balcells was Briton Gerald Martin, the writer of the only authorised biography of Garcia Marquez. "I don't believe either that Gabo will write any more books, although it doesn't seem very regrettable to me because as a writer it was his fate to...

Some liberal idiot in a DC area radio & TV industry blog is challenging me saying that Nancy Pelosi's book has sold more copies than Joe the Plumber's book. I beg to differ. How do I find book sales & stats? HELP!

OK everyone, it's time for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now" survey. I do this to gauge what Freepers are reading these days. Amongst many Internet sites, I find Freepers to be some of the most well-read. It can be anything...an old classic, a trashy pulp novel, a technical journal, etc. Please do not defile this thread by replying "I'm reading this post". It became extraordinarily un-funny a long time ago. I'll start. I'm two pages into "Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanmo Bay" by Gordon Cucullu. It looks to be quite interesting. Barack Obama...

The Lord of the World by Rev. James V. Schall, SJ    3/09/09   In 2001, St. Augustine's Press published a new edition of Robert Hugh Benson's 1907 novel, The Lord of the World. A friend of mine in Vermont recently urged me to read it, and I did.   Ralph McInerny, in a brief introduction, writes: "The novel wonderfully conveys the flatness and boredom of a world without God. Boredom becomes a condition for recognizing our need for something more than this -- a few more decades of life and then a total void."   This novel is...

You may or may not be aware that Harry Potter, The Anarchist Cookbook and Stephen King books have been banned from schools around the country. But where do we draw the line? We want to protect our children, but what about freedom of speech, artistic expression, etc.? It is pretty strange to consider Shakespeare has not only been banned from public schools over sexual themes, but that censored editions have been out since the 1700s. Was there offensive material in them? Yes, but there is offensive material in Walmart too, not to mention offensive odors. Did Lolita make me sick...

LUFKIN, TX (KTRE) - It's raising concerns of segregation, but may end up benefitting students at one East Texas school. We revisit Lufkin High School and their push for a course offered only to African American females. "First of all you have to be Black and second of all but equally as important, you have to be female. It's only for Black female students" says John Mitchell, the Language Arts Facilitator of LISD. You heard it yesterday...and you're hearing it again today... ..."And it will always be only for Black females," confirms Mitchell. The pilot Black Female literature course, only...

Reading Between the Studies by: Bethany Stotts, February 11, 2009 David Kipen, representing the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), travelled to this year’s Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention in San Francisco to promote The Big Read, a NEA program which combats declining reading habits by enlisting members of the community to read a piece of literature simultaneously. Previous studies, including the NEA’s “To Read or Not to Read?,” have shown rates of pleasure reading dropping among American citizens. According to the 2007 NEA study • 57% of all adults read a book “not required for work or school” in...

Drugs, artillery emplacements, napalm, prostitution - sometimes it seems like the best things in life are illegal. For some reason, the fascists who control this country don't believe in your God given right to smoke meth and man a 155-millimeter Howitzer. Luckily for us, there are a lot of awesome things out there that Uncle Sam amazingly hasn't taken away from us yet. Read this article, and then go and pick up one of everything while you still can!

Shakespeare’s Feminist Critics Bethany Stotts, February 06, 2009 The tragedy of too many college courses on William Shakespeare these days is that students may be learning more about literary criticism than the Bard himself. “The fact is, even if you sign up for a course with ‘Shakespeare’ or ‘Faulkner’ in the title, there’s absolutely no guarantee that you’re going to be taught English or American literature,” argued Dr. Elizabeth Kantor in her 2006 Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature. “On the contrary, the professor is all too likely to make use of the literature to indoctrinate you in...

Animalistic Shakespeares Explored by: Bethany Stotts, February 03, 2009 Not only did the Bard speak to human nature and love, but he also spoke to philosophy, epistemology, and sociology, according to four Modern Language Association (MLA) scholars speaking at a panel arranged by the Division on Shakespeare. They argued at this year’s MLA Convention that Shakespeare used complicated ecosystemic imagery to evoke concepts of Atomism, to delineate a continuum of animals, to explore nature’s indecipherability, and to comment on power struggles between social groups. Hamlet. The reflections of the melancholy protagonist Hamlet reflect the tenets of atomism, argued North Carolina...

Some years ago, I subscribed to an "on approval" book club called The Classics Club, originally published by Walter J. Black in the 1940s. I've got over thirty of the titles, and have found a number of others, but have never been able to locate a complete list of titles for this series. I AM SEEKING THIS INFORMATION AND WOULD LIKE TO COMPLETE THIS COLLECTION AS LONG AS THE NUMBER OF VOLUMES IS REASONABLY FINITE. Alas, Walter J. Black went out of business in the 1980s. Here is the list of titles and authors that I either have or have...

Jorge Luis Borges visited Israel twice. The first trip came at the invitation of Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. It was in recognition of his philo-Semitism, and, in particular, his positive views on Israel. Borges had been active in Casa Argentina en Israel-Tierra Santa, a project that sought to build an Argentine cultural center in Jerusalem. He also had been the first to write about Israel in the prestigious intellectual magazine Sur in 1958. In the 1970s, in an autobiographical essay published in The New Yorker, Borges stated:Early in 1969, invited by the Israeli government, I spent ten very exciting days...

Edgar Allan Poe reaches his second century mark today. The young United States was a strange place for literary genius to develop, and Poe’s career was relatively short (he died at 40, on Oct. 7, 1849), but through his works he inspired generations of writers throughout the world, and there has been no letup in the 21st century.

Reporting from Ridgefield, Wash. -- John Foley figures he has pretty much maxed out on explaining to African American mothers why it's OK to call a black man the N-word -- as long as it's in a novel that is considered a classic. For years, English teachers have been explaining away the obvious racism in Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn." And for years, the book that perhaps best explains Americans' genetic predilection for hitting the road, only to later find themselves, has stayed near the top of many high school reading lists. However, with an African American about...

As the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe is celebrated, fans should be thanking him for his invention of the modern detective genre, writes crime fiction author Andrew Taylor. Bestseller lists and library lending figures tell the same story - crime and detective stories are more popular than ever, and their success has spilled over into film and TV drama. It's remarkable how many of the genre's classic elements can be traced back to the feverishly fertile imagination of one man, Edgar Allan Poe. Once you start looking, the clues are everywhere. Born 200 years ago, on 19 January 1809, Poe...

Jonathan Bate's eloquent evocation of the man from WarwickshireAt last we have a new kind of biography of Shakespeare. Starting from Ben Jonson’s description of Shakespeare as “Soul of the Age”, and shunning “the deadening march of chronological sequence that is biography’s besetting vice”, Jonathan Bate selects only the material that, he believes, will help to reveal Shakespeare’s cultural DNA. Structuring this loosely around the theme of the Seven Ages of Man from Jaques’s speech in As You Like It, Bate sweeps majestically backwards and forwards in time, moving between history and criticism, appropriating whatever best brings together Shakespeare’s life,...

BY JOHN J. MILLER On a snowy night toward the end of his life, Edgar Allan Poe delivered a lecture on the origins of the universe. It was an unusual topic -- Poe was always more interested in death than birth -- and the reviews were mixed. Frustrated by the response, Poe announced that 2,000 years would pass before his work was properly admired. His remarks were soon published as "Eureka: A Prose Poem." The book sold a few hundred copies and then slipped into obscurity, forgotten except for the fact that its author went on to become a giant...

Hi everyone! And a Happy New Year as well! ity's time for my quarterly "What Are You Reading Now?" thread. I do this to gauge what Freepers (who by the way, are a very well-read group) are reading right now. It can be anything...a best seller, a technical journal, an old classic, even a trashy pulp novel. Please do not defile this thread by replying "I'm Reading This Thread". It became very unfunny a long time ago. Serious replies only, please. I'll start. I'm about 5 pages into "One Day In September" by Simon Reeve. It's about the disaster involving...

How the Catholic Church Built Western CivilizationTHOMAS E. WOODS, JR.From the role of the monks to art and architecture, from the university to Western law, from science to charitable work, from international law to economics, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization delves into just how indebted we are as a civilization to the Catholic Church, whether we realize it or not. By far the book’s longest chapter is "The Church and Science." We have all heard a great deal about the Church’s alleged hostility toward science. What most people fail to realize is that historians of science have...

Two years after publishing The Jung Cult (Princeton University Press), which demonstrated that Jung deliberately founded a new religious movement, Noll is back with The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of C. G. Jung (Random House), which presents even more explosive revelations detailing Jung's obsession with overthrowing orthodox Christianity....

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. It remains one of the great books of the English Catholic revival in the last part of the 19th and early 20th centuries, even though it was written before Chesterton’s conversion to Catholicism in 1922 and is a counterpart to an earlier book titled Heretics....

Book of homilies by Pope Benedict available soon in Spanish and English Rome, Dec 3, 2008 / 04:01 pm (CNA).- “Omelie,” the new book of homilies by Pope Benedict XVI published in Italian, will soon be available in Spanish and English, according to the publishers of the work.After the General Audience last Wednesday, the Holy Father greeted the book’s publishers—who also publish the largest financial daily in Italy, ‘Il Sole 24 hore”—and Vatican analyst Sandro Magister, who selected the homilies and wrote the prologue for the book.During the exchange, Magister was accompanied by his wife Anna and his daughters Sara...

Remember the Universal Translator? Peter Wood, in like manner, provides a useful guide to translating regular English prose into the style of Nobel-prizewinning author Toni Morrison, probably the most frequently assigned writer on US college campuses. The basic rules: Misuse common phrases Embrace inconsistency Omit words to create more forceful expression Mix up parts of speech Chop in self-conscious micro-sentences He provides some wonderful examples. For instance, this office memo: Just to remind you, I will be out of the office Tuesday to meet with our supplier, Acme Explosives. Please finish your work on the 2Q budget and let the...

Independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader apologized for using the phrase “Uncle Tom” in reference to president-elect Barack Obama. “It was totally inappropriate,” Nader admitted. “The Uncle Tom of literary fame was a noble, hard-working man. Obama is nothing like that.”

STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - The man who announces the Nobel Prize in literature says the United States is too "insular" and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing. In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Horace Engdahl said Tuesday that "Europe still is the center of the literary world."

STOCKHOLM, Sweden—Bad news for American writers hoping for a Nobel Prize next week: the top member of the award jury believes the United States is too insular and ignorant to compete with Europe when it comes to great writing.

Freeps. My son is a tremendous fan of history and devours books and media on the subject constantly. Today, while rummaging through some sale items at my local library I acquired a copy of "The Hornet's Nest" by former US president Jimmy Carter. The book is a fictionalized account of events in the south during the American Revolution. It is read by Edward Herrmann. I would not have purchased the CD had it been read by Carter. Has anyone read this book, or know anything about it? I'd like to just spin it up and listen to the story with...

Here are some wince-inducing excerpts, characterized by interminable tangents and inane prose, from the 26th annual Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest, a literary parody contest sponsored by San Jose State University. Winner: "Theirs was a New York love, a checkered taxi ride burning rubber, and like the city their passion was open 24/7, steam rising from their bodies like slick streets exhaling warm, moist, white breath through manhole covers stamped 'Forged by DeLaney Bros., Piscataway, N.J.'" _ Garrison Spik, Washington

A German newspaper editorialized, "The time may come when we date the beginning of the collapse of the Soviet system from the appearance of Gulag." Diplomat George Kennan said that this "greatest and most powerful single indictment of a political regime" would stick in "the craw of the Soviet propaganda machine . . . with increasing discomfort, until it has done its work."

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...