New books on our shelves

Monday, May 24th, 2010

A few new titles, as selected by Collections Librarian, Simon Gallo.

The Invention of Paris: A History in Footsteps by Eric Hazan – A historically rich tour through the construction of Paris, exploring the places and struggles that have marked its growth.

Living Opera by Joshua Jampol — A collection of 20 interviews with the preeminent opera professionals working on or behind the stage today. Including Renée Fleming, Placido Domingo and Seiji Ozawa.

The Cambridge Companion to Schumann by Beate Perrey – An accessible introduction to Schumann: his time, temperament, style and his oeuvre. The author is a member of the Library!

A History of Egypt: From Earliest Times to the Present  by Jason Thompson — The first one-volume work to encompass Egypt’s 5,000-year history. “Fluidly relates thousands of years of time.” –Booklist

Find these books on the new nonfiction shelf at the Library.

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The Library at 90

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

Ninety years ago today the American Library in Paris was incorporated. Some two million books had been sent from American libraries, through the Library War Service, to American servicemen joining the allied effort in the war. American expatriates in Paris decided to build a library around the core of that collection, and under the auspices of the American Library Association, the American Library in Paris was born. The Library will be celebrating its nine decades of service throughout this year.

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The Second Sex, a second time

Monday, May 17th, 2010

Today’s guest bloggers, Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, will present their new translation of Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork, The Second Sex, at the Library on 19 May, 2010 at 19h30.

The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir, the seminal study of woman that continues to resonate and inspire, has just come out in its first complete translation in English. Le Deuxième Sexe was published in November 1949, by Les Editions Gallimard. Simone de Beauvoir once said in her youth that literature had the quality of assuring her an immortality that would make up for lost eternity.  Indeed, if ever a work would assure immortality, The Second Sex – first translated into English in 1953 – would be that work.  

The sublime and daunting task of re-translating this great work fell to us. We have both been living for over 40 years in Paris, teaching literature and American civilization in French universities and writing English grammar and other books for French speakers. We saw the rise of the feminist movement in France recalling for us our 60’s college-years feminism blossoming into a full-grown social movement. Certainly one of Simone de Beauvoir’s many attractions for us was her interest in the USA just at the time of writing The Second Sex. She was fascinated by American women and racial issues: She met and became friends with Richard Wright, Nelson Algren, and was reading Myrdal’s book on America, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (1944). The Second Sex is full of references to America and American women and men. She saw in action what it meant to be the Other, came face to face with the master-slave relationship and other fundamental issues from probing into American society. Her gaze on American culture and the way she extracted ideas from it for The Second Sex, coupled with our own experience and knowledge of the two cultures and languages, informed our approach to the translation. Simone de Beauvoir’s masterwork weaves together history, philosophy, economics, biology, and a host of other disciplines. 

This book is not about the past. Today, more than ever, The Second Sex is relevant and essential reading.

–Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier

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‘Men don’t read books’?

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

“If you’ve worked in publishing, you’ve heard the tired old maxim: Men Don’t Read. Try to acquire or sell a book aimed predominantly at men, and odds are you’ll be told Men Don’t Read. …  If you keep telling yourself something, regardless of its validity, eventually you’ll begin to believe it. So because publishers rarely publish for men and don’t market towards men, somehow that equates to our entire gender having given up on the reading books. Hence the mantra ‘Men Don’t Read.’ THIS MUST END.”

So writes  Jason Pinter in Huffington Post drawing on his experiences as a thriller writer and an acquiring editor in book publishing — where editorial meetings, he guesses, are dominated 3-1 by women.

Pinter’s Andy Rooney-ish screed drew a lot of flak in the blogosphere, summarized by Laura Miller in Salon thusly:

“… the pointlessly anecdotal refutations (’My husband reads books, so lots of men do!’); the desperate straw-snatching (’This is why no one will publish my masterpiece, “Rock Meteor and the Lector of G.R.I.M.E.”!’); the flaming gender paranoia (’Evil feminists are trying to castrate us with their rosebuds-and-doilies book jackets!’); the reasonable but shortsighted rejoinder (’If you can’t find something you like in the 700,000 books published every year, it’s your own fault!’); and so on. One blogger made the Möbius-strip-like argument that if today’s men were truly manly they wouldn’t be scared away from reading by its reputation for unmanliness.”

Miller thinks it’s worth asking “why there are so few men in publishing. Could it be the low pay, low status and ridiculous hours?” Book publishing, she says,  “increasingly resembles those ‘caring professions,’ nursing and teaching, where the joy of laboring selflessly on behalf of a noble cause — in this case, literature — is supposed to make up for the lack of profits and respect. And we all know who does that kind of job, don’t we?”

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Sunday best

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

A rainy Sunday afternoon. Twilight of the vacances. A perfect time to stop by the Library to check out the magazines or study for exams or bring the children to a story hour. In this photo gallery, volunteer Katherine Thompson (left) and chief Sunday children’s room volunteer Kate Price entertain the young customers. A dad and his stroller in the periodicals area. Serious Sunday study in the reading room. And, at circulation desk, volunteer Anne Raynaud (left)  listens to Sunday team leader Anita Castanho of the Library staff.

Next Sunday, consider a Library getaway.

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