To say that we spend time reflecting on our reading experiences would be an understatement. But, when, at the beginning of the month I asked about experiences with audiobooks, everyone was surprised. Like myself, they hadn’t given much thought to their experiences with this medium, though, upon reflection, nearly everybody had something to say about it. For most of us, audiobooks were road trip staples, a necessary part of a family vacation that, in retrospect, seemed as integral to our experiences as the destination itself.
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In which we announce some important changes to The Notebook and begin a new “Required Reading” series. We discuss what we’ve been preoccupied with this past week, weaving in Jane Franklin’s biography, Abigail Adams, Frank Lloyd Wright, Langston Hughes, Sybil Ludington, and even “A Firework’s Point of View.”
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June is National Audiobook Month. If you haven’t heard of it, though, you aren’t alone. This annual celebration of the spoken word was once promoted by the likes of David Sedaris; now it’s hardly even recognized by the Audio Publishers Association. If Audible and the ubiquity of free podcasts are any indication, the spoken word itself is by no means in decline. Perhaps National Audiobook Month, which strategically coincides with summer reading and complements long family road trips seems less exciting, less pertinent, now that we can all listen to, read or watch whatever we want, whenever we fancy. We can entertain ourselves, individually, forever.
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In which we say goodbye to Rachel Burstein, our Academic Director, as she pursues opportunities closer to home (and her young child) in California. Rachel wrote frequently about the program on this blog, and in other venues. In this post, she reflects on special aspects of the Books@Work experience. Please join us in thanking Rachel for her powerful contributions to the growth and development of Books@Work, and encouraging her to keep in touch.
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In which we welcome our new Curriculum and Program Director, Jessica Isaac, to The Notebook and the Books@Work team. As Jessica writes of her passion for literature and culture: “Pursuing undergraduate and graduate degrees in English satisfied my hunger for greater understanding about language and texts and their relationship to culture, but I am happiest when I am sharing that knowledge with others… with people who have felt excluded from the conversation, who haven’t had the time or money or invitation to have discussions about meaning and experiences of awe and delight. And what always happens when I have those conversations is that I see what I have learned completely differently.” How lucky we are to have Jessica on the team – help us welcome her!
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In which we welcome our new Communications and Marketing Director, Cecily Hill, to The Notebook and the Books@Work team. As Cecily writes: “Books@Work is a natural extension of the work I undertook while pursuing my PhD: exploring the impact books and narrative have on life-long opportunities and our interactions with others.” Please help us welcome her to the fold.
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Context is important in understanding works of literature. But readers of literature — particularly those in Books@Work seminars — are not only historians. They read for all sorts of reasons. To hear stories. To encounter the other. To understand the world around them. To hear the beauty of the written word. To escape the familiar. To embrace the familiar. And so even as we acknowledge, unpack and rethink the meaning of works like Günter Grass’ The Tin Drum in light of the author’s past and how he concealed that past, we also continue to read. As you read, how much does the author’s past affect how you perceive the story?
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The festivities surrounding National Poetry Month reminds us that poems can speak to us in ways that few other things can, capturing fleeting moments or complicated emotions on their own terms. A first encounter with a poem can be difficult. But like so much in reading, peeling back the layers of the text to see new things reveals new meanings and new ways of seeing the world. Tight and taut, the poem invites scrutiny, gives space for reading and re-reading, encourages self-examination alongside reading, urges engagement — also the hallmark of the Books@Work learning experience.
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News came last week that the famed literary editor Leon Wieseltier was joining the Brookings Institution, the venerable Washington, DC think tank as the Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy. The announcement shows that policy work isn’t just the domain of social scientists. Whether they involve parsing texts or reflecting on the historical significance of cultural trends, the methodologies employed by humanities scholars such as Wieseltier are rigorous and important and offer a new way of understanding current problems.
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