This autumn, the highly respected television network C-SPAN is launching America’s Book Club, a weekly primetime TV series hosted by David M. Rubenstein. C-SPAN will tape America’s Book Club before live audiences at major public libraries and cultural landmarks, including the Library of Congress, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the Enoch Pratt Library, and the National Archives.
Rubenstein is an author, lawyer, co-founder of the Carlyle Group, principal owner of the Baltimore Orioles, former chairman of the Kennedy Center, chairman of the National Gallery of Art and the Council on Foreign Relations, a TV and podcast host, among other positions. He will interview “leading authors, policymakers, business innovators, and cultural figures–exploring the ideas that shaped America’s past, challenge the nation’s present, and inspire our future,” C-SPAN noted. Guests and historic venues for the initial season include:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett at the Library of Congress
John Grisham at the Library of Congress
Henry Louis Gates at the Library of Congress
David Grann at the Folger Shakespeare Library
Arthur Brooks at the Library of Congress
Walter Isaacson at the National Archives
Stacy Schiff at the National Archives
José Andrés at the Library of Congress
“Books provide the foundation of American ideals, progress, and vision,” said Rubenstein. “Since I was a youngster growing up in Baltimore, books have fueled my imagination and knowledge. I look forward to sharing these ideas with others.”
“C-SPAN is taking an ambitious step forward with America’s Book Club,” said CEO Sam Feist. “We are proud to launch a flagship series featuring guests of the highest stature in American letters and public thought, interviewed by David Rubenstein, a lover of history and an engaging interviewer. This program is a landmark cultural initiative designed to inspire, inform, and engage viewers with the ideas and thought leaders shaping our nation’s future.”
Senior executive producers of America’s Book Club are Peter Slen, who has been senior executive producer of Book TV for nearly two decades; and Marie Arana, author, former editor of the Washington Post Book World, as well as inaugural literary director of the Library of Congress. Brian Rokus, a 25-year CNN veteran, is senior producer on the program.
HAZARD RESPONSE
Tom Clark
As in that grey exurban wasteland in Gatsby
When the white sky darkens over the city
Of ashes, far from the once happy valley,
This daze spreads across the blank faces
Of the inhabitants, suddenly deprived
Of the kingdom’s original promised gift.
Did I say kingdom when I meant place
Of worship? Original when I meant
Damaged in handling? Promised when
I meant stolen? Gift when I meant
Trick? Inhabitants when I meant slaves?
Slaves when I meant clowns
Who have wandered into test sites? Test
Sites when I meant contagious hospitals?
Contagious hospitals when I meant clouds
Of laughing gas? Laughing gas
When I meant tears? No, it’s true,
No one should be writing poetry
In times like these, Dear Reader,
I don’t have to tell you of all people why.
It’s as apparent as an attempted
Punch in the eye that actually
Catches only empty air—which is
The inside of your head, where
The green ritual sanction
Of the poem has been cancelled.
What makes a book a book? Is it just anything that stores and communicates information? Or does it have to do with paper, binding, font, ink, its weight in your hands, the smell of the pages? To answer these questions, Julie Dreyfuss goes back to the start of the book as we know it to show how these elements came together to make something more than the sum of their parts.
I highly recommend this video history lesson from TED Ed: The evolution of the book.
In case you were wondering, yes I’m still captivated by all things Japan. The marvelously atmospheric video below was inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved film Princess Mononoke. Last year, director Steve Atkins took a hike through Yakushima’s forest, which is known to be inhabited by spirits. That walk resulted in this remarkable film of a moss-covered wooded landscape with ancient cedars in abundance. The haunting soundtrack is Rob Martland .
Note: If the video doesn’t open in your browser, click HERE .
A big tip of the hat to TBTP subscriber Joe Coffee (not their real name) who sent this list of book and reading related terms to follow-up the recent post titled “Destroyer of Books”. My fav comes from the late, great Douglas Adams.
ABIBLIOPHOBIA: The the fear of running out of things to read.
BALLYCUMBER: Coined by writer Douglas Adams, “One of the six half-read books lying somewhere in your bed.”
BIBLIOBIBULI: “The sort of people who read too much,” created in 1957 by H. L. Mencken.
BIBLIOGNOST: One who has comprehensive knowledge of books.
BIBLIOKLEPT: One who steals books.
BIBLIOLATER: One overly devoted to books.
BIBLIOPHAGIST: An avid or voracious reader.
BIBLIOPOLE: A dealer especially in rare or curious books
BIBLIOSMIA: An unofficial term for the aroma of a book.
BIBLIOTHERAPY: The practice of using books to aid people in solving the issues they are facing.
BOOKARAZZI: Slang for someone who takes photos of their books and posts them online.
BOOK-BOSOMED: Attributed to Sir Walter Scott, meaning someone who carries a book all the time.
BOOK SHELFIE (and library shelfie): A self-portrait with books that is shared on social media.
EPEOLATRY: The worship of words.
HAMARTIA: Aristotle introduced the word in Poetics to describe the error of judgment which brings about a tragic hero’s downfall.
LIBROCUBICULARIST: A person who reads books in bed.
LOGOMACHIST: One given to disputes over or about words; one given to logomachy.
LOGOPHILE: If you’re a logophile, you already know this means a lover of words.
OMNILEGENT: Reading or having read everything, characterized by encyclopedic reading
PANAGRAM: A short sentence that contains all 26 letters of the English language, as in: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.
SCRIPTURIENT: Having a strong urge to write.
TSUNDOKU: And our favorite, a Japanese word describes piling up books to save for later … even if you’ll never actually read them.
There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag — and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty — and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you.
When the light goes out, and the book is set down by the bedside, it all comes flooding in: the story you are reading; the story of the day; the understanding that it is a story, the day now past, those ahead, the clock-hand sweep of time; that you are the hero of your own story; that it will end in death but along the way come triumphs, misadventures, nuptials, tears; that the story contains several plots and connects to countless others; that you will never read all the books collected on your shelves but as long as you breathe the hero lives, pages will be turned; that stories keep us alive; that stories end—the tale of the drunken shoemaker, the tale of humankind—all stories, however beautiful, ingenious or corrupt; that fables are forgotten, myths corrode, gods vanish with the languages that named them; that darkness swallows the world, as in legend, but night in turn is vanquished by dawn; that even the sun, whose radiance authored life’s unpaginated complexity, will someday dwindle to extinction. Or so the story goes.
“You have traveled far, but the hardest part of a journey is always the next step.”
― Jackie Morris
I grew up reading battered old copies of the fabulous early twentieth century collections of children’s stories, some of my flea market finds were even bound in gold-toothed vellum and had beautiful embossed covers. Many leading artists of the day including Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac were commissioned to illustrate them. One of the finest creations to emerge from this golden age of illustration was an edition of East of the Sun and West of the Moon which boasted twenty-five color plates and many more monochrome images by Kay Nielsen, a young Danish artist who had studied in Paris before moving to England in 1911. The volume consists of fifteen fairy tales gathered by the Norwegian folklorists Peter Christen Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Engebretsen Moe on their journeys across mid nineteenth-century Norway. Translated into English by George Webbe Dasent (1817–1896), the stories — populated by witches, trolls, ogres, sly foxes, mysterious bears, beautiful princesses and shy country lads turned heroes — were praised by Jacob Grimm himself for having a freshness and a fullness that “surpasses nearly all others”.
The 90-minute video below demonstrates the making of a batch of woodblock prints “from blank paper to finished print” from the printer’s POV. It is a fascinating look at the complex process. In the video below, Tokyo-based printmaker Dave Bull shows the entire process of making a batch of woodblock prints from blank paper to finished print – in PPOV style (Printer’s Point Of View) – with each of the impressions happening in an uncut, unedited, uninterrupted flow, of ten sheets per color. The viewers can get a very good feeling for the rhythm of the process, and can see just how the pigment/paste balance is controlled along the way.
Bull is a Canadian-born artist who heads the Mokuhankan studio in Asakusa, Tokyo, and is known for his traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques, as well as collaborations like Ukiyo-e Heroes with illustrator Jed Henry. He produces prints through his publishing venture, Mokuhankan, and shares the process through platforms like his YouTube channel .”
NB: If the video fails to open in your browser, please click here.
Travel Between The Pages 