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World War II almost killed Animal Farm

Find a list of the best 20th-century novels, and you’re likely to find both George Orwell’s 1984 and his Animal Farm. The former, published in 1949, is such a classic of dystopian literature that it’s hit the top of Amazon’s bestseller lists twice in the last four years. Yet his first tale of dictatorships, Animal […]

Tim October 20th, 2021 | Tags: , , , , , | Category: A Reading Life, History | Leave a comment | |

War booty helped create Oxford’s renowned Bodleian Library

Oxford University’s Bodleian Library is one of Europe’s oldest libraries and one of the world’s eminent research libraries. Yet, some of its books carry a taint of unscrupulousness given the time of its founding. One of its founding collections is plunder from Portugal in 1596.

Between 1584 and 1604, Protestant England and Catholic Spain fought […]

Tim October 12th, 2021 | Tags: , , | Category: A Reading Life, History, Libraries | Leave a comment | |

The politics of Thomas Jefferson’s donation to the Library of Congress

In 1800, the seat of the U.S. government relocated to the District of Columbia. Among final preparations for the move, in April 1800, Congress appropriated funds for what would become the Library of Congress. With the U.S. Capitol as its home, the library’s first books arrived the following year. But in August 1814, the library […]

Tim September 27th, 2021 | Tags: , , , , | Category: A Reading Life, History, Libraries | Comments are closed | |

Panning my favorite books

For years, this blog’s had a page for what I call my Desert Island Books. It’s a take-off on BBC radio’s “Desert Island Discs,” where guests pick the eight recordings they’d want with them if stranded on a desert island.

I’m well aware of how opinions of books can vary. You know, one person’s treasure […]

Tim August 12th, 2021 | Tags: , , , | Category: A Reading Life | Comments are closed | |

Mark Twain’s “ghost” written books

During his life, Samuel Clements (“Mark Twain”) became “the greatest humorist this country has produced,” according to the New York Times. It seems Twain still wanted to write after he died in April 1910. He supposedly “ghost” wrote at least three books.

The first book Twain wrote posthumously was appropriately titled Spirits Do Return. Published […]

Tim July 13th, 2021 | Tags: , , | Category: A Reading Life, History | Comments are closed | |
 
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