SEPTEMBER 24  —  OCTOBER 1 is Banned Books Week in America, a week when bookstores and libraries report on which books have been challenged and banned across the nation. Glendale, where I work, has been pulled into a controversy over whether Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood should be added to the school board’ s English curriculum. Members of the PTA and some school board officials have voiced objections to the book, a nonfiction novel about the slaying of a Kansas family in 1956, because of its graphic violence. The English department wants it in because it’s a classic of American literature.

Why such a week […]

FIVE new bookcases and I’ve filled ‘em all already. Amazing. I was hoping they’d hold all my books plus room for more, but no. There is still some space on the bottom left cabinet, but that’s about it. I can get more shelves to split some of the areas up, but that’s going to have to wait, and I can see us having to buy another slim bookcase to go on the right.

Ev came up with a plan  —  “get rid of some books”. I’m not sure what that means as I’ve only got 740 (about 250 of which are unread) so I don’t […]

WE’VE finally got around to buying the bookcases I’ve wanted since we moved in. As my book collection is pushing 800 volumes I wanted something that would hold them all with spare capacity as, contrary to what Ev thinks, I’m not suddenly going to go off reading (I’d have more luck going off breathing). I found what I needed at the IKEA in Cost a Mesa  —  a Billy corner combination consisting of six bookcases held together with brackets. I picked the white one to match the red and white colour scheme of my office.

Billy bookcases have been around for 30 years, and […]

THE inevitable has finally happened. Borders has filed for bankruptcy and will be closing 200 stores across America  —  including the ones I usually go to in Glendale, Cerritos and Long Beach. Bugger. Some $1.3 billion in debt, Borders is blaming the usual suspects for its failure such as Amazon, Wal-Mart, rival bookstore Barnes & Noble and maybe the fact that it couldn’t get its act together online, only launching its own web-based store in 2008, and not getting on the e-book reader bandwagon fast enough. Oh, and let’s not forget that you can sometimes buy three books for less than the price […]

For some reason I recall it as just being me and Bunce. No one else in the compartment at all. Just me, eight years old, and this inexpressibly small dab of misery who told me in one hot, husky breath that his name was Samuelanthonyfarlowebunce.

AND so begins Moab Is My Washpot, the first volume of Stephen Fry’s autobiography which takes us through his formative years in prep and public schools up to his entrance to Cambridge University… and a whole lot more.

Trying to reconcile Stephen Fry  —  British national institution and star of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, […]