]]> http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/19/neil-himself-takes-a-sabbatical/feed/ 0 http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/18/happy-birthday-paul/ http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/18/happy-birthday-paul/#comments Tue, 18 Jun 2013 12:00:03 +0000 Mary Louise http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/?p=14135

Happy 71st birthday to Paul McCartney! Thanks for being a part of my life since 1963.

]]> http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/18/happy-birthday-paul/feed/ 0 http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/17/last-james-joyce-to-be-published/ http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/17/last-james-joyce-to-be-published/#comments Mon, 17 Jun 2013 14:01:15 +0000 Mary Louise http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/?p=14120

From The Guardian: “A small Irish press is publishing what it is calling ‘almost certainly the last undiscovered title by James Joyce’ – 10 short pieces by the author, written six months after he completed Ulysses – igniting a row over the author’s intentions.”

The trailer for the forthcoming movie “Diana” starring Naomi Watts has been released. Click on the image below to watch it.

A volatile storm system is active today and tonight in the Midwest. Click on the image from Weather.com to learn more.

From PRI’s The World: Ireland’s new postage stamp features a 224-word short story. Click through to find a link to the audio version of the story.

Today’s Google doodle animation in honor of Maurice Sendak is very fun! If the animation doesn’t move for you, try Google Chrome or Firefox. For more information, visit Slate.

]]> http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/10/google-animates-sendak/feed/ 0 http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/07/all-about-dad/ http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/06/07/all-about-dad/#comments Sat, 08 Jun 2013 02:00:25 +0000 Mary Louise http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/?p=14075

Here’s a link to the latest “One for the Books” column, It’s All About Dad.

“Blessed Stars, please make this world into a place where we will never again be forced to kill an enemy whom we cannot hate.”

— from the soldier’s letters in
“A Tale for the Time Being” by Ruth Ozeki

Two of the world’s largest publishers, Random House Inc. and Penguin Group, expect to complete a planned merger next month.

Parent companies Bertelsmann and Pearson announced Monday that the merger had been cleared by anti-trust authorities in China, among the last countries to give approval. The new publishing house, Penguin Random House, will be 53 percent controlled by Bertelsmann and 47 percent by Pearson.

Penguin Random House will include top-selling authors such as Dan Brown and Ken Follett and a vast back catalog ranging from John Steinbeck’s “The Grapes of Wrath” to Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”

“To enter Olivia’s home was to experience a quirky smorgasbord for the eyes. In every corner, on every shelf, and behind every door, something offbeat was waiting to be discovered. A person could spend days wandering through the rooms and still not see everything.”

– from “Looking for Me” by Beth Hoffman

How cute is this? A baby practices CPR on a dummy. (Click on photo.)

Here’s a link to the latest “One for the Books” column on Family Secrets.

Have you seen this video? The woman thought she’d lost her dog in the Oklahoma tornado, but found it during the CBS interview. Prepare to cry.

From the New York Times:

Forty years after being written, an unpublished novel by Pearl S. Buck, the Nobel laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, will be released this fall, her publisher said on Tuesday.
The manuscript was stumbled upon in a storage unit in Texas and returned to the Buck family in December in exchange for a small fee, said Jane Friedman, the chief executive of Open Road Integrated Media, the publisher.
Buck, the first American woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, is believed to have completed the manuscript for the book, “The Eternal Wonder,” shortly before she died of cancer in 1973, said her son Edgar S. Walsh, who manages her literary estate. … (click photo for more of story)

A Shih Tzu dog carries a five-week old kitten back into a pillow at the Anderson County P.A.W.S. shelter. (SHNS photo by Ken Ruinard / Anderson Independent Mail)

From Scripps:

ANDERSON, S.C. – A dog found lost and hurt in South Carolina was discovered to be caring for some precious cargo — a tiny, nursing kitten.
When Anderson Animal Control Officer Michelle Smith climbed down a steep embankment to rescue a yelping dog, she saw a black-and-white Shih Tzu- mix curled in a tangle of bushes and briars.
But when she blinked and looked again, she spotted a tiny kitten nestled next to the dog, suckling milk from her.
“I didn’t know what to think,” she said. “I was shocked and surprised and then of course, awww.”
The dog and kitten received the same reaction when Smith took them to the animal shelter. Volunteers marveled at the way the dog, which is at least 5 years old, looks out for the 5-week-old kitten.
Jessica Cwynar, director of the shelter, says such behavior is natural for mammals.
“It would be like one of us seeing a neglected or abandoned child and taking it under our wing,” she said.
Neither the dog nor the kitten has a known name, so shelter volunteers call them “Girl.”
Though they are far from being related, from a few feet away they match with a mix of black, white and gray fur between them. … (click here for more of the story and more photos)

“Stephen King fans hoping to download his new novel will be disappointed, following a decision by the bestselling horror writer to support the print version of the book.
Joyland, published on June 4 in the US and June 7 in UK, will only be available in print format, a radical decision for an author widely thought of as a digital pioneer. In 2000, he made one of his short stories, Riding The Bullet, only available as an ebook, priced at $2.50. The decision by such a high profile author was considered to be a turning point in e-publishing.
Speaking of Joyland, King told the Wall Street Journal: ‘I have no plans for a digital version. Maybe at some point, but in the meantime, let people stir their sticks and go to an actual bookstore rather than a digital one.’ …”

]]> http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/05/21/king-says-no-for-now-to-new-e-book/feed/ 0 http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/05/20/preschool-reads/ http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/2013/05/20/preschool-reads/#comments Mon, 20 May 2013 15:09:18 +0000 Mary Louise http://blogs.dixcdn.com/shine_a_light/?p=11633 From Education.com: 50 books your child should read before kindergarten

“Stories are where you go to look for the truth of your own life.”

– from “The Last Storyteller” by Frank Delaney

From Flavorwire: 10 Great Movies Based on Poems

“Do not think that time simply flies away. Do not understand “flying” as the only function of time. If time simply flew away, a separation would exist between you and time. So if you understand time as only passing, then you do not understand the time being. To grasp this truly, every being that exists in the entire world is linked together as moments in time, and at the same time they exist as individual moments of time. Because all moments are the time being, they are your time being.”

—Dögen Zenji, Uji, found in Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being”

“That’s what it feels like when I write, like I have this beautiful world in my head, but when I try to remember it in order to write it down, I change it, and I can’t ever get it back.”

— from Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being”