The Wizard of Oz

Students at University of the Arts In Philadelphia design some very nifty bookcovers. (via)

The Edgar Award Winners

If you keep clicking on "more nominees" at the bottom, you'll see all the categories. Link.

Writers reading

A posting including Truman Capote reading from Breakfast at Tiffany's. An earlier posting from the same site featured Ernest Hemingway, which you also might want to check out. Link.

How Animal Farm almost didn't get published

A classic today, it got off to a shaky start. "He rejected the book on the grounds that it seemed too 'Trotskyite.' He also told Orwell that his choice of pigs as rulers was an unfortunate one, and that readers might draw the conclusion that what was needed was 'more public-spirited pigs.' This was not perhaps as fatuous as the turn-down that Orwell received from the Dial Press in New York, which solemnly informed him that stories about animals found no market in the US. And this in the land of Disney . . ." More...

Rudyard Kipling interviews Mark Twain

Link (via the Huffington Post). I love this quote regarding Twain's high regard for facts: "Get your facts first, and then you can distort 'em as much as you please."

Servicing the prisons

A library volunteer works at Rikers Island. We delivered books to both solitary confinement and two different "houses," which are the names of blocks within the building. The inmates in solitary confinement are allowed to request books off a list, so we filled these requests from the "library" within this particular building, which was really just two tall shelves of paperback books in the back of the Chaplain's office. More... (Via HufPo)

How well do you know Mark Twain?

He died a hundred years ago. The Guardian celebrates with a quiz.