Author: GR

Posted on by

‘A Noble Madness: The Dark Side of Collecting from Antiquity to Now’

James Delbourgo’s “A Noble Madness” is a brilliant, droll study in the shifting profile and consistent obsession of the stop-at-nothing, buy-or-die collector. Mr. Delbourgo, a history professor at Rutgers University, finds that the collecting mentality, like most things, divides into ancient and modern. The ancients believed that those who loved too much were possessed by gods; Suetonius wrote that Caligula, who believed he was a god, once ordered his troops to fill their helmets with seashells, the “spoils of the ocean.” We moderns, Mr. Delbourgo argues, have gone from theories of “demonic possession to accusations of superstition, obsession, sexual neurosis, and pathological greed down to the recent invention of the medical term ‘hoarding disorder.’” Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Historic Libraries Bring Modern Comfort To Book Lovers and History Buffs in New England

The more than 200-year-old institution [the Boston Athenaeum] is one of only about 20 member-supported private libraries in the U.S. dating back to the 18th- and 19th-centuries. Called athenaeums, a Greek word meaning “temple of Athena,” the concept predates the traditional public library most Americans recognize today. The institutions were built by merchants, doctors, writers, lawyers and ministers who wanted to not only create institutions for reading — then an expensive and difficult-to-access hobby — but also space to explore culture and debate. Many of these athenaeums still play a vibrant role in their communities. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

A Smuggled Book Changed His Life. Now He’s Built 500 Prison Libraries.

Reginald Dwayne Betts carjacked a man who was asleep in his car in a parking lot in Fairfax County, Virginia. Betts, who was 16 at the time, was tried as an adult and spent nearly a decade in state prison, much of that time in solitary confinement. Books weren’t allowed in “the hole.” But the men in the prison devised a pulley system using torn sheets and pillowcases to pass books from the general population to people in solitary. “Imagine yourself as a teenager, 17 years old, in solitary confinement, and you’re just calling out, ‘Yo, somebody send me a book,’” Betts said. “Somebody sent me Dudley Randall’s “The Black Poets,” and it radically changed my life.” Betts started writing every day and reading anything he could get his hands on. Books transformed him, he says, revealing that other ways of living were possible. When Betts got out, he earned his bachelor’s degree, then a law degree from Yale Law School. He became a poet and an advocate for prison reform, as well as a MacArthur “genius grant” recipient for his work with his nonprofit Freedom Reads, which installs libraries in prisons across the country. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Vajra Chandrasekera Has Won the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction

Today, the Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation announced Vajra Chandrasekera’s Rakesfall as the winner of the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, which seeks to reward books that represent the legendary writer’s literary, moral, and aesthetic ideals… Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

Guillermo del Toro’s ‘Frankenstein’ Gets Limited Theatrical Release

Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation. Watch trailer

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

‘Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat To) the Modern Dictionary’

While obviously appealing to word nerds and writers, Fatsis’s narrative is more broadly relevant to anyone who speaks, reads, and writes in American English. It provides a thorough, thoughtful history of dictionaries and the language they both shape and record, while championing the dictionary’s continued relevance in the 21st century. Lively, well-researched, and often entertaining, Unabridged is an essential resource for anyone interested in understanding how language evolves. Read more

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)

Posted on by

‘ORWELL 2+2=5’ Documentary Is in Theaters Now

George Orwell was one of the most visionary authors of the 20th Century, whose novels 1984 and Animal Farm foretold a chilling, all-to-believable authoritarian future. Acclaimed director Raoul Peck (Academy Award-nominated I Am Not Your Negro), working in collaboration with the Orwell Estate, seamlessly interweaves historical clips, readings from Orwell’s diary, cinematic references, and dynamic modern day footage to craft not only a definitive portrait of the writer himself, but an entirely fresh take on how remarkably relevant and prophetic his work has become. Watch trailer

(We earn a small commission if you click above and buy the book at Bookshop.org)