February
25, 2018 From Philip Jones, editor, the
Bookseller Hardbacks
are still popular. Hardback fiction
brings in about £70m annually (roughly 20% of the printed fiction market),
according to sales data from Nielsen BookScan. Size also matters: hardbacks are bigger than paperbacks, they
take up more space in bookshops and are more visible--whether in window
displays or on bookshop tables. Hardbacks are also more profitable for
publishers: they will often sell at twice the price of their paperback
equivalent but do not cost twice as much to produce. If a hardback becomes a bestseller, the
publisher will often delay the paperback release even though that limits the
book’s sales potential. Last year sales
of hardback fiction grew 11%. When the
ebook arrived 10 years ago, some pundits suggested format did not matter. But they were wrong. A beautiful hardback is a joy, something to
cherish, shelve and pass on, and readers are prepared to pay for that just as
some people still prefer the cinema over television. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/feb/25/book-clinic-why-do-publishers-still-issue-hardbacks
We’re a nation of immigrants. So is our food. Look at the
vast array of produce in the supermarket. Where did all these fruits and
vegetables originally come from? And how
did they get here? According to author
Daniel Stone, we have one man to thank for the diversity of this bounty: David Fairchild. More than a century ago, Fairchild traveled
the world, in search of interesting (and delicious) crops that could be grown
by American farmers. Traveling to every
continent but Antarctica, Fairchild brought back thousands of
possibilities. Among Fairchild’s
greatest hits: the avocado (from Chile),
kale (from Croatia) and the Meyer lemon (from China). Just those three have a huge impact on what
we eat now. The avocado alone “should
qualify Fairchild for sainthood,” Stone quipped. “Fairchild grew up in Kansas. He called them ‘alligator pears.’ Few Americans had seen them before. In Chile, he found what was the ancestor to
the Hass avocado. He shipped back a
thousand of them, hoping some would survive.” That’s just for starters, Stone added. Fairchild brought back soybeans (from
Indonesia), peaches and oranges (from China), pomegranates (from Malta),
nectarines (from Afghanistan), papayas (from Ceylon), red seedless grapes (from
Italy) and hops (from Bavaria). He also
was responsible for introducing dates, mangoes, pistachios and wasabi to the
American table. In all, Fairchild is
credited with more than 20,000 plant introductions to the U.S. Debbie Arrington Find recipes at http://www.sacbee.com/food-drink/recipes/article203553609.html
Most Americans don’t
recognize the name Frank N. Meyer,
but many are familiar with the fruit that bears his name. Long thought to be a simple lemon-orange
hybrid, the Meyer lemon is now believed to be a cross between three of the
original citrus species—citron, mandarin, and pummelo—based on a 2016 genetics study led by French
scientist Franck Curk. Born in the Netherlands in 1875 as Frans Nicolaas
Meijer, Meyer was one of a half-dozen explorers scouring the globe for new and
hardier things to grow under the direction of long-serving agriculture
secretary James Wilson. Their combined
efforts yielded a lot of what we eat today, including avocados, figs, and
mangoes. But Meyer’s unique personality,
combined with the tremendous difficulty of his assignment, made him the group’s
media darling and arguably the favorite of his boss, David Fairchild, head of
the USDA’s Office of Foreign Seed and Plant Introduction. It was his job to think about such things: Meyer worked for the U.S. government as an
“agricultural explorer,” traveling across Asia in search of better food, like
some early-20th-century Anthony Bourdain. The fancy lemon that bears his name is one of
some 2,500 types of plants—including multiple varieties of peach, pear, plum,
and persimmon, to mention only a few of the p’s—that
Meyer picked up during his four long missions to the Far East, braving all
kinds of harsh conditions and violence along the way. Meyer did more than just pick up some
soybeans (over 100 different varieties throughout his 13-year career); he was
also an early advocate for soy as a food source for humans, not just livestock. Chris Shott
https://www.tastecooking.com/a-man-a-plan-a-lemon-china/
As we begin planning for the renovation of the
Toledo-Lucas County Public Library's main branch, we hope all members of the community will take
part in the conversation and process by sharing their input and insight while attending
the following community forums in the McMaster Center:
Forum 1: Wednesday, May 2, 6 - 8 p.m.
Forum 2: Wednesday, May 30, 6 - 8 p.m.
Forum 3: Thursday, June 28, 6 - 8 p.m.
For information and updates throughout the planning and construction process, visit
Forum 2: Wednesday, May 30, 6 - 8 p.m.
Forum 3: Thursday, June 28, 6 - 8 p.m.
For information and updates throughout the planning and construction process, visit
Salmon Mousse, or Absolute Power by Sadie Stein I have been wrestling mightily lately. The
temptation: salmon mousse. Like many Barbara Pym fans, I have long
owned The
Barbara Pym Cookbook, published in 1988 by the late author’s
sister, Hilary, and Honor Wyatt. And
like many Barbara Pym fans, I have never dared cook from it. By the jacket copy’s own admission, this is
“an armchair cookbook,” a collection
of quotations from Pym’s novels and corresponding recipes—they make for
excellent reading, but they don’t excite one to run to the kitchen. While minute meal descriptions are one of the
great pleasures of the Pym oeuvre, many of the novels take place during the
tyranny of postwar rationing. However
enthusiastic and sophisticated a cook she may have been—and by all accounts she
certainly was—Barbara Pym’s recipes are not necessarily calculated to appeal to
the twenty-first-century palate. https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/08/17/salmon-mousse-or-absolute-power/ A treat for devotees of Pym, The Barbara Pym
Cookbook offers a modest selection of recipes, adapted for the American
kitchen, for foods mentioned in Pym's novels. Others, such as ``a bowl of groats, fragrant
as a cornfield and intriguingly surfaced with little pock marks,'' were Pym's
favorites. All are accompanied by prose
morsels taken from the author's corpus. Plain
English food is served in abundance: steak and kidney pie, potted ham, sausage
rolls. https://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-525-24706-7
Barbara Pym quotes
“Of course
it's alright for librarians to smell of drink.” “The burden of keeping
three people in toilet paper seemed to me rather a heavy one.” “Dulcie always found a public library a
little upsetting, for one saw so many odd people there.” “I think just a cup of tea...' There was
something to be said for tea and a comfortable chat about crematoria.”
“If only one could clear out one's mind and heart as ruthlessly as one did
one's wardrobe.”
It was on April 18, in
1944 that the Jerome Robbins-Leonard
Bernstein ballet “Fancy Free” was first danced by the Ballet Theater at the
old Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Bernstein himself conducted, and alongside
Robbins and set designer Oliver Smith, took some 20 curtain calls. “The ballet is strictly wartime America,
1944,” wrote Bernstein, “The curtain rises on a street corner with a lamp post,
a side-street bar, and New York skyscrapers making a dizzying backdrop. Three sailors explode onto the stage. They are on 24-hour shore leave in the city
and on the prowl for girls. The tale of
how they meet first one, then a second girl, and how they fight over them, lose
them, and in the end take off after still a third, is the story of the ballet.”
In a curious parallel to the stage
action described by Bernstein, the ballet had been first pitched to composer
Morton Gould, who said he was too busy, then to Vincent Persichetti, who in
turn suggested Bernstein as a third, and perhaps better choice to produce a
more hip, jazzy, and danceable score. Bernstein made piano four-hand recordings as
he completed each section of the music, and mailed these off to his partners. His piano-bench partner for those
work-in-progress recordings, by the way, was none other than Aaron Copland. Composers Datebook
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 1877
April 18, 2018 Word of the Day tit for tat noun Equivalent retribution; an act of returning exactly what one gets; an eye for an eye.
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