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Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Protocol for One and All

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

    Etiquette.  We love to make fun of it – from the character Rose Maybud in Gilbert & Sullivan’s “Ruddigore” who is constantly consulting her tiny etiquette book (“It’s manners out-of-joint, to point!”) to Vincent Price lecturing his creation “Edward Scissorhands” in the movie of the same name: “Etiquette tells us just what is …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

A Book (Festival) With a Happy Ending

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

The 2012 Library of Congress National Book Festival closed up shop Sunday evening – leaving more than 200,000 delighted book-lovers thrilled to have heard from and met their favorite authors, stoked up with new titles to read, and exhilarated by two days of gorgeous fall weather there on the National Mall. One couple even got …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

NBF … This Just In …

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

Author Bob Woodward will join the lineup for the Library of Congress National Book Festival, speaking at 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 23 in the History & Biography Pavilion about his new book “The Price of Politics.” More about the two-day, free-and-open-to-the-public National Book Festival at www.loc.gov/bookfest.   .    

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Countdown to Book-Stravaganza

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

Just days stand between the book-lovers of the USA and the Library of Congress National Book Festival! But don’t just stare at the countdown clock on the Festival website … check out the speaking and book-signing schedules for our 125 authors, or listen to the podcasts already available from some of this year’s authors.  That …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

So — What Books Shaped You?

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

In conjunction with the Monday launch of an exhibition at the Library of Congress titled “Books That Shaped America” as part of its overarching Celebration of the Book, the Library of Congress is making public a list of 88 books by Americans that, it can be argued, shaped the nation over its lifetime. It’s not …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Literate Critters

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

When it comes to priceless art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has quite a bit, including a trove of Raphaels. But the Library of Congress (on its National Book Festival site, now live at www.loc.gov/bookfest) has a new Rafael López National Book Festival poster for 2012 that’s priceless, too – because you …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Ray Bradbury and Pogo

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

Ray Bradbury, the towering writer of science fiction, died today at age 91. Talk about an author who will be missed … In the United States, our lives have been steeped in science fiction, from the days of “Buck Rogers” and the cheesy B-movies of the 1950s to the phenomena of “Star Trek,” “The Matrix” …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Like a Phoenix, From the Ashes

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

Two hundred years ago today, President James Madison set pen to paper to write a message to Congress.  His intent was to talk them into making the nation’s first formal declaration of war – on Great Britain, which was squashing U.S. exports as a side effect of a British naval blockade against Napoleon’s France. But …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

The Excitement Will Be In Tents

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

Here’s what you book fiends have been waiting for – the author lineup for the 2012 Library of Congress National Book Festival, Sept. 22 and 23 on the National Mall. Authors will include towering American novelist Philip Roth and Nobel Prize-winner Mario Vargas Llosa; the irrepressible T.C. Boyle (some of you know him as T. …