This quirky and imaginative book celebrates individuals’ potential for creativity and libraries as vital and vibrant...
Librarians Damon-Moore and Batykefer show how libraries are more than just places to shelve books.
Founders of the Library as Incubator Project in Madison, Wis., the authors conceive the library as “a one-stop shop—a place where a broad variety of creative lifelong learners, artists of all kinds, and librarians could gather to share ideas about programs that support hands-on creativity.” The Incubator Project believes that “a library isn’t just about things—like books, databases, magazines, and free tax forms—it’s about people.” Their ideal library would welcome knitters, crafters, musicians, filmmakers and photographers, as well as readers, all of whom would be nurtured by the special ambience. Interviews with poets, teachers, actors, researchers and artists working in a variety of media are followed by exercises that encourage readers to think imaginatively: “The library is alive, and you are listening to its heartbeat. Record your ideas in a notebook.” Mostly, Damon-Moore and Batykefer focus on public libraries geared to general-interest readers, but their project is applicable to specialized and university libraries, as well. One artist, working at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, finds historical artifacts there that she interprets in her drawings. Recently, for example, she discovered 18th-century medallions commemorating the voyage of Capt. James Cook. “I am interested in how events and ideas of the past have influenced and persist within current cultural preoccupations,” she says. Another artist decided to illustrate every page of Finnegan’s Wake, a book, he decided, “that would really benefit from illumination.” Besides inspiring particular artists, libraries can serve as showcases for the arts: mounting exhibitions, hosting readings and book signings, staging performances and concerts, and providing a communal space for artists to work collaboratively.
This quirky and imaginative book celebrates individuals’ potential for creativity and libraries as vital and vibrant community resources.Pub Date: May 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-56689-353-4
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Coffee House
Review Posted Online: March 10, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2014
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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