Parenthetical.net

The subtitle of this book is “The Summer of the Scopes Trial,” which says most of what you need to know. It takes place in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, in the summer of 1925, when Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan famously fought the big battles of religion vs. science and big-city [...]

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When I first read the title of today’s Library Link of the Day, from The Times Online — “The new library fad: borrow a person” — I assumed it was a clever way to structure knowledge sharing sessions. Want to learn to set up an email account or knit a scarf? Borrow one [...]

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The conclusion of Michael Chabon’s essay “Let Me Entertain You”, published today in the L. A. Times:
…[E]ntertainment — as I define it, pleasure and all — remains the only sure means we have of bridging, or at least of feeling as if we have bridged, the gulf of consciousness that separates each of us from [...]

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From the (Environmental Protection) Agency’s Earth Day history page:
EPA was born in 1970 - a time when rivers caught fire and cities were hidden under dense clouds of smoke. We’ve made remarkable progress since then in protecting human health and safeguarding the natural environment.
Remember 40 years ago, when life was like a science fiction movie? [...]

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The Arrival, Shaun Tan: I almost never say this, but you must all go find this book and “read” it now. (Is it reading if there are no words? Parse it? Consume it? Anyway…) My friend Alison of the Wellesley Booksmith showed this off at a teachers-and-librarians event last [...]

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Every year, my library has a Book Fair, where kids can buy their summer reading books and whatever else looks like fun. The books come from Big Corporate Bookstore, which is nice enough to give us a cut of the profits. It’s a pretty good deal for everyone.
Anyway, Friday my boss and I [...]

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E and I agreed: Garden State? Waaay overrated. Zach Braff does “earnest” very well, but he was so earnest (”Dad, how about we just try being who we are?”) that I think I sprained a muscle rolling my eyes.
Also, I am so over the “lonely guy with boring life is saved by adorably [...]

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Gingerbread bills itself as “edgy,” with cover quotes from Teen People, Elle Girl, and Twist magazines rather than other authors, and a cover featuring a punky girl with platform boots. But it’s basically your average finding-yourself novel: Cyd hates living with her mom and stepdad, so she acts like a brat until they send [...]

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Conversation between two of my 7th graders today:
S: I just finished a great book! The Incredible Adventure of…something or other. (I didn’t quite catch the name.)
A: Is it about mice?
S: No, it’s about a rabbit. Why’d you say that?
A: Because those adventure books always have rodents.
The kid’s not wrong!
(Image courtesy of I [...]

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In a recent post I set myself a challenge to read one grown-up book for every 2 or 3 YA books I read this year, to give myself the same chance at a literary lens for adulthood that I had for childhood/adolescence.
For my first meal at the grown-up table, I picked The Abstinence Teacher, by [...]

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