It killed me to have to let Ken have the last word in the debate started this past week on Crime and Punishment. To see that string, click here.

But in the interest of some fresh opportunities to exercise our wit and toss around some more literary allusions and bad puns, I’m positing another subject for [...]

This is just in from the New City Library:

Want to avoid fines when taking library materials on your vacation? At the New City Library, we try to accommodate our Clarkstown cardholders and their travel plans. Vacation loans are good for a maximum of three months and are easy to request at the Circulation desk. These [...]

Here’s a copy of a press release from the  Ramapo Catskill Library System about the browser that launched late last week:

RCLS will launch AquaBrowser Library® as the new online catalog user platform on July 1.

AquaBrowser Library® is a multilayered search tool that serves as a “one-stop shop” for all library users search activities.  Using this [...]

I first became a fan of The Saint — Leslie Charteris’ fictional adventurer/thief — by watching Roger Moore in the role on my television screen.

But after being hooked, I sought out the originals (like any other bibliophile) to enjoy at my leisure. I’ve managed to acquire a half-dozen books and recently acquired a particularly moldy [...]

Reporter Ken Valenti and I held an email discussion this week about Holden Caulfield, the art of literature and how times have changed.

Here’s how the conversation started. This is from Ken’s message to me:

There was an essay in the NY Times yesterday about Catcher in the Rye. Apparently teens and young adults hate the book [...]

My youngest asked me for help with an English paper the other day. She needed to find someone who wrote in a regional voice, but they had to have done their writing between, say, 1890 and 1918.

My first thought was to drag out a book about/by Kin Hubbard, because Old Abe certainly spoke in dialect. [...]

I attend two large library book sales in my general  neighborhood over the summer, and the first one is planned for July 11 through 15 at a middle school in Newtown, CT. Their information, which you can find here, says that they’ll have about 120,000 used books and other media for sale, and except for [...]

Just received this e-mail from the LIU graduate campus here in Sparkill. Thought it might generate some interest.

Orangeburg, — A Books for Children drive organized by students at the Rockland Graduate Campus of Long Island University has bolstered the library at an elementary school in the Nyack school district.

More than 300 books were donated to [...]

I was holding an e-mail conversation with Ken Valenti, who is one of the people we’re hoping to entice to post on this blog since he’s a struggling author in addition to being a fine Journal News reporter, and I was bemoaning the youth of the reporter who sits next to me who had never [...]

The first celebration of National Children’s Book Week was in 1919. This year’s 90th annual event is being celebrated in schools, libraries, book stores, clubs and wherever books and kids meet.

“Our local libraries provide a wonderful environment and resource for facilitating and encouraging reading,” said Randall Enos, youth sales consultant for the Ramapo Catskill Library [...]