A misspelling in the news:
Hundreds of fake bottles of best-selling Australian wine Jacob’s Creek have been seized by trading standards officers in England and Wales. . . .
The bottles appear identical to the real thing, apart from a tell-tale misspelling on the label on the back, where Australia is spelt Austrlia.
Fake Jacob’s Creek wine seized (BBC News)
The American Library Association has released its Top Ten List of the Most Frequently Challenged Books of 2010. Number one: Justin Richardson’s and Peter Parnell’s And Tango Makes Three,
an award-winning children’s book about the true story of two male Emperor Penguins hatching and parenting a baby chick at New York’s Central Park Zoo. The book has appeared on the ALA’s Top Ten List of Frequently Challenged Books for the past five years and returns to the number one slot after a brief stay at the number two position in 2009. There have been dozens of attempts to remove And Tango Makes Three from school and public library shelves. Those seeking to remove the book have described it as “unsuited for age group,” and cited “religious viewpoint” and “homosexuality” as reasons for challenging the book.The logic of book-banners would seem to dictate that the Penguin House itself be closed to children, no? If a story about the penguins is “unsuited for age group,” how much more so the penguins themselves.
[I]f a parent wishes to prevent her child from reading a particular book, that parent can and should accompany the child to the Library, and should not prevent all children in the community from gaining access to constitutionally protected materials. Where First Amendment rights are concerned, those seeking to restrict access to information should be forced to take affirmative steps to shield themselves from unwanted materials; the onus should not be on the general public to overcome barriers to their access to fully protected information.Amen.
To mark the arrival of The Pale King, Broadcastr has invited readers to record brief appreciations of David Foster Wallace’s work. If you’d like to listen, here’s mine. You’ll need Flash, and you should put the volume up high:
Allston, Brighton, East-Central Illinois (Broadcastr)
[I’m up to page 104 in The Pale King. Making slow progress!]
Jonathan Lopes has built a Brooklyn of Legos.
Correction: “of LEGO® blocks.” See Comments.
Thanks, Seth!
Actor and comedian Stephen Fry on pencils: “I love pencils. No, I really do. Pencils. We don’t hear enough about them.”
Amazon has introduced a cheaper Kindle with Euphemism. Because we never get tired of looking at [euphemism]. I wonder how many people will decide that saving a mere $25 is worth a device-lifetime-supply.
[The Kindle with Special Offers: ads, ads, ads.]
Van Dyke Parks will soon release six 7"-vinyl singles on the Bananastan label. Two singles will drop (as they say) in the first week of May, with four more to follow in the summer. Downloads for the digital crowd from iTunes.
[Design by Art Spiegelman. Click for a larger view.]
The Los Angeles Times reports that in 2012 Little, Brown will publish a book of John Lennon’s letters, edited by Beatles biographer Hunter Davies. From the publisher’s announcement:
Pen and ink were his medium. John wrote letters and postcards all of his life; to his friends, family, strangers, newspapers, organisations, lawyers and the laundry — most of which were funny, informative, campaigning, wise, mad, poetic, anguished and sometimes heartbreaking. . . . many of the letters are reproduced as they were, in his handwriting or typing, plus the odd cartoon or doodle.[I haven’t thought of Hunter Davies in years. Anyone else remember this book?]
Caroline Alexander on the National September 11 Memorial and Museum and a line from Virgil:
The impulse to turn to time-hallowed texts, like the classics or the Bible, is itself time-hallowed. In the face of powerful emotions, our own words may seem hollow and inadequate, while the confirmation that people in the past felt as we now feel holds solace. And the language of poets and great thinkers can be in itself ennobling.
But not in this case. Anyone troubling to take even a cursory glance at the quotation’s context will find the choice offers neither instruction nor solace.
Out of Context (New York Times)
