There's a little sticker reading "Sci-fi/Fantasy" on the cover of my library copy of Natalie Babbitt's Tuck Everlasting. Well. I guess this novel, about the inadvertently-immortal family the Tucks, and their run-in with the mortal human world, is a fantasy, but only in the same way Little House on the Prairie and Anne of Green Gables are fantasies. For my beloved little Tuck creates and populates a world — in this case, a small town in the 1880s called "Treegap" — just as surely as those classics do, without aliens, space travel or weird people in trench coats lurking around. I hate to see this gem of a novel get brushed off to a genre audience, for it has much to teach classrooms of young adults.  Continue reading...

That's a lover of the Latin language, of course!

Ad Infinitum: A Biography of Latin

Carpe Diem

Amo, Amas, Amat and More

Keep up to date with the latest advances in electronic books.

TeleRead

The Handheld Librarian

MobileRead

Print is Dead

We've been talking to David Crystal about his new book, Txtng: The Gr8 Db8. In the first and second parts of our interview, Crystal debunked the myths surrounding text messaging and considered how this new form of communication has brought with it new social expectations. Now in the third and final installment, he explains how text messaging can actually improve student literacy and also muses on the future of the electronic medium.  Continue reading...

Who's more villainous: Iago or Cruella de Vil? Check out The Telegraph's list of the 50 greatest literary villains.

Anyone who has had the temerity to write about Jane Austen is aware of facts: first, that of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness.
—Virginia Woolf

We are avid novel-readers in the Lounge and usually have a stack awaiting our attention, but occasionally we enjoy the luxury of browsing the library shelves with the question "What next?" in mind. In such cases we usually make a beeline for the 19th century, and once a year or so we find ourselves picking up one of the novels of Jane Austen.  Continue reading...