Back before Frankenstorm Sandy took over the air-waves, academia met its demise. Well, not academia as it is today–we are all still here, obviously!–but academia as it existed in the […]
How NOT to treat our books
Don’t you love to sit down with a good book, or better yet, a book that’s crucial to your research, and find that someone before you has treated it like […]
The Hobbit
As you’ve no doubt heard, The Hobbit (first published in 1937) will soon be coming to a theater near you. Not once, but three times. Each of J.R.R. Tolkien’s three […]
What is the Bibliotheca Fictiva?
From antiquity to current times, there have always been writers devising literary forgeries of all kinds, either copying an existing book from the classical period or simply creating a fake […]
Autumn Light
As we settle into the new semester, the oppressive heat of the summer sun has eased as we rush past the autumnal equinox, and our wobbling top of a planet […]
Introducing Mo Yan
The Nobel Prize in Literature 2012 was awarded to the Chinese author, Mo Yan. Mo Yan is perhaps best known to the Western audience through a successful film adaptation of […]
Getting EBL E-books
What’s EBL, and why should I care? EBL (Electronic Book Library) is one of the JHU libraries’ e-book “packages” that we buy so that you can have access to many, […]
Happy 101st!
The world of 20th-century Irish literature can feel dominated by certain giants looming over the rest; Joyce, Beckett, Yeats, and Heaney have, and deserve, their impressive positions. Nonetheless, certain names […]
Dolls Sold Separately: Planning a Dream House
Looking for plans for the ultimate luxury home? Are you dreaming of gourmet kitchens, sweeping staircases, elegant chandelier-lit foyers, and/or roaring fireplaces that keep you cozy in a posh bedroom […]
China in Ten Words
How is it possible to summarize a country as complex as China in ten words? Yu Hua, a renowned novelist in China, did just that. In his first work of […]