Read, Listen, Watch

Staff Picks and Suggestions

Meet journalist Christina Asquith, author of Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq

On Thursday, journalist Christina Asquith is giving a talk and book signing on her accounts, Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq. Her book is available at Snell Library.  Visiting her website,  I was interested to see her experience as education reporter who spent a year teaching in Philadelphia’s worst performing school, and then wrote a book about her experience. Her talk will be held this Thursday, January 28 @ 2:30 pm, in the Alumni Center, 716 Columbus Avenue. To download an event flyer, click here.

Spring Author Series Announced

Each semester at the Library we host a diverse group of writers as part of our Meet the Author series. For me, it’s always an interesting opportunity to learn more about a subject I’m interested in, or sometimes one I know very little about. (For our Fall Football event in 2008,  I read Mark Bavaro’s Rough and Tumbleand came closer to learning what the life of an NFL player is like, adding another layer to watching professional football games).  This semester is no exception, and there are some great authors who are coming to Northeastern: Sisters in War: A Story of Love, Family, and Survival in the New Iraq Christina Asquith Thursday, January 28 @ 2:30 pm Alumni Center, 716 Columbus Avenue Asquith’s book is the story of four women—two Iraqi sisters, one U.S. soldier, and a U.S. aid worker—whose narratives explain the choices and challenges women face in the new Iraq. Asquith spent from 2003 to 2005 reporting from Baghdad. As a journalist whose living situation grew more imperiled, she moved in with an Iraqi family and gained an intimate look at how the war affected their lives. The Death and Life of American Journalism Bob McChesney and John Nichols Tuesday, February 2 @ Noon 90 Snell Library In their new book, communications scholar Bob McChesney and award-winning journalist John Nichols explore the current crisis of journalism. They claim that journalism today can easily be overrun by commercialism and special interests and in many ways has strayed far from its earlier purpose as a tool for public service, made possible by government subsidies. McChesney and Nichols founded the nonprofit Free Press in 2003 with the intention to create a strong, public outlet for journalism. The Death and Life of American Journalism makes for riveting reading on public discourse and the informed citizen. Anna In-Between Elizabeth Nunez Friday, February 5 @ Noon 421 Snell Library Nunez’s colorful work of fiction focuses on Anna, a successful New York City editor who hails from an upper-class Caribbean family. When Anna returns home, she finds her mother has been diagnosed with breast cancer and has no intentions of traveling to the United States for medical assistance.  Her mother believes that, as a black woman, she will receive inferior medical care.  Throughout the book, Nunez beautifully illustrates the bond between family members and a community.  Nunez is Provost at CUNY’s Medgar Evers College and has written seven novels.  A Tiger’s Heart: A Memoir Aisling Shen Tuesday, February 23 @ 6 pm 405 Ell Hall Born in China’s Yangtze River Delta into a community of impoverished rice farmers, Shen was the first person from her village to attend college. Deeply dissatisfied with her government-issued teaching job, she left for the special economic zones of southern China in search of happiness and success in the business world. In 2000 Shen immigrated to the U.S. and graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College in 2005. She currently works as an equity research associate in an investment management firm in Boston.  In her unflinching memoir, Shen’s personal story also reflects the early days of China’s economic boom and illustrates the massive economic and social changes that have taken place in the country over the past several decades. Click here to see the full press release.

Announcing: The Hub

The Hub is a new fab space for everyone to come hang out in, meet friends, and browse stuff deemed cool and noteworthy by our unbeatable library staff. Starting Spring 2010 semester, as soon as you walk through the front doors of Snell Library you’ll find a new, better-than-ever browsing collection with selected bestsellers, literary fiction, graphic novels, DVDs, and prize-winning non-fiction all in one central place. We hope this new area becomes your first stop when you need a change of pace or are searching for that special book to challenge you, expand your horizons, or simply entertain you. The name of this new area was chosen from a pool of over 100 student entries, and the winner, Corina Medley, received a $100 gift certificate donated by the NU Bookstore. While The Hub will include a selection of the most interesting new books, you can see a full list of every new book coming into the library via our online New Titles lists. Come visit us soon!

What to Read and Logicomix

Laura Miller is a great book reviewer for Salon.com, so I was excited to read her thoughts on the changing (and disappearing) landscape of book reviews, and the creation of a new feature: What to Read. It’s aim is to showcase a recently published book that the writer can genuinely gush over and recommend each week.  I am particularly looking forward to her promise to publicise different genres. So I was doubly excited that her first profiled book was LogicomixAuthor Christos Papadimitriou spoke at the Library in October. It’s a beautiful book (and one that’s available at Snell). You can also watch his talk here:

Happy Birthday Beethoven!

Today’s Beethoven’s birthday, and a great opportunity to forget about the daily grind and be mindful of incredible and beautiful and passionate music that’s resonated for generations–and the person who created it. NAXOS has some nice recordings, if you want to listen to Beethoven online.  I’ve been foisting the famous Furtwangler/Berlin Philharmonic wartime recording of the 9th Symphony on my colleagues today (yes, I’m in a cubicle), plus some Kreisler recordings of the Violin Sonatas, Brendel playing the Piano Concertos, and the soundtrack to Immortal Beloved, (available to borrow from our collection in VHS if you still have one of those), the film about his life starring Gary Oldman. Other videos in our collection include Clockwork Orange which makes famous use of the 9th Symphony, and the DVD of Daniel Barenboim leading the 5th Symphony at the Ramallah Concert in the West Bank–a very moving event.  For pure listening, on the second floor you can find a lot of CDs too. I guess I know all the things everyone knows about Beethoven: his brilliant pianism, his moods and passions, the fact that he became deaf, which we always learn about as children and then kind of take for granted, but on serious reflection is almost incomprehensible considering he was a musician and composer. Anyway, aside from those cliché things, I don’t know that much about him.  Fortunately, there’s a biography and analysis in Oxford Music Online (formerly Grove).  I’m thinking about borrowing Maynard Solomon’s biography from the library, although at 500 pages, it’s kind of a big commitment–luckily there’s a long winter break coming up!