Things fall apart

A student was doing research on this book by Chinua Achebe. Found some interesting material.

A reference question

Finally, a question with substance, not for the location of the bathroom or for a paper clip or a telephone number.

A student needing to write a comparison between CS Lewis's The lion, the witch and the wardrobe and L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz. I directed him to the volumes Twentieth Century Literary Criticism and of Contemporary Literary Criticism. I also showed him how to search for the topics in the OPAC:
Baum, L. Frank (Lyman Frank), 1856-1919 -- Criticism and interpretation. : Moore, Raylyn.
Lewis, C. S. (Clive Staples), 1898-1963 -- Criticism and interpretation. (4 entries; 1 by Harold Bloom, whom I praised and recommended.)
The land of Narnia : Brian Sibley explores the world of C.S. Lewis A children's book, a type that can often be helpful even for adults.

But Always Meeting Ourselves

Sometimes one story can be enough for anyone: it suffices for a family, or a generation, or even a whole culture — but on occasion there are enormous holes in our histories, and we don’t know how to fill them.

I had brought an old copy of “Ulysses,” James Joyce’s masterpiece that takes place in the back streets of Dublin on June 16, 1904. I wanted to read it cover to cover. I have been dipping into the novel for many years, reading the accessible parts, plundering the icing on the cake, but in truth I had never read it all in one flow.

I've never gotten even that far.

The messy layers of human experience get pulled together, and sometimes ordered, by words.

The book carried me through to the far side of my body, made me alive in another time. I was 10 years old again, but this time I knew my grandfather, and it was a moment of gain: he was so much more than a forgotten drunk.

This is the function of books — we learn how to live even if we weren’t there. Fiction gives us access to a very real history. Stories are the best democracy we have. We are allowed to become the other we never dreamed we could be.

Colum McCannis the author of the forthcoming novel “Let the Great World Spin.”

Shakespeare in any language

A patron came over to the Information Desk and tried phrasing her question, saying she was not sure how to say it. She wanted to read Shakespeare; well, not Shakespeare himself, but about Shakespeare, so that she could understand it.

"I read it in school many years ago," she said, easily seventy years of age. "But I don't recall much of it."

I did a quick search, simply to be sure I gave her the right information -- though I knew that Shakespeare is at 822.3: just a couple of days ago I went to the stacks to search for Shakespeare's Trolius and Cressida, after finishing the Tunney biography (Trolius and Cressida was the Champ's favorite Shakespeare work), and I remembered 822.3.

"Now I know why I don't understand Shakespeare," she told me in an accented voice. "I grew up in Hungary, in Budapest, and I read Shakespeare in Hungarian."

Antigone

A patron asked for the play Antigone, then wondered: is that by Shakespeare? I knew it was not by the Bard, and guessed that perhaps it was Euripides. No; turns out it was written by Sophocles.