All posts tagged "Literatureandpoetry"

SAN DIEGO — Jimmy Buffett, who died Friday at 76 following a four-year battle with Merkel skin cancer, knew exactly what accounted for his decades of success. "I'm not a great singer, and I'm not a great guitar player. But I'm a good entertainer," the Mississippi-born Buffett said in an in-depth interview with the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2000. (All the quotes in this appreciation are from Union-Tribune interviews with Buffett conducted between 1991 and 2017.) Buffett's tropical-flavored songs, starting with his 1977 breakthrough hit, "Margaritaville," were direct, simple and free of even a ......

In “The Orchid Thief,” author Susan Orlean wrote of a “phantom” flower hidden deep in the swamps of Southwest Florida “so bewitching that it could seduce people to pursue it year after year and mile after mile.” Her best-seller about an obsessive poacher would help make the once-obscure ghost orchid the most famous wild flower in the sprawling Everglades ecosystem. Twenty-five years later, the ghost orchid remains a star attraction during its summer bloom at the Audubon Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, one of the few places where everyday nature-goers can see one without slogging through muck and ch......

Book stackers at a Staten Island library found themselves in the middle of a mystery worthy of a best-selling novel. Librarian Sydel Vergara was putting books away at the Mariners Harbor branch earlier this month when she noticed a thick envelope stuck between the pages of an obscure page turner. She looked inside the unsealed envelope and found more than $1,200 in cash. The city’s public libraries had long ago done away with overdue fines, and although their customer service was good, Vergara knew it wasn’t a tip. So she contacted the branch manager, who reached out to the New York Public Lib......

Barack Obama has shared what he’s reading this season. The former president and bestselling author continued his annual tradition of giving book recommendations with the release of his eagerly anticipated summer reading list. Among them are “The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder,” David Grann’s new nonfiction book about an 18th-century shipwreck ― which is on Amazon’s list of the best books of the year (so far) ― and Jonathan Eig’s new biography of Martin Luther King Jr., “King: A Life.” New Zealand novelist Eleanor Catton’s psychological thriller “Birnam Wood” and Tiffany Clarke H......

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- An unofficial but near-complete print archive of a pioneering LGBT newspaper from Sacramento is spread between two libraries in the region. The paper, Mom Guess What was founded Nov. 1, 1978 by Linda Birner and published until around the end of 2009. Birner approached the Center for Sacramento History around late 2021 to donate some copies of her publication and other items, telling staff not long thereafter that file cabinets with voluminous copies of the paper had been taken and destroyed. The center followed up on her claim by seeking to rebuild the archive for Mom Gue......

ALBANY, N.Y. — Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo is suing New York’s newly formed ethics panel, arguing the watchdog group is unconstitutional as it revives an investigation into his alleged improper use of state staff and resources while writing his pandemic-focused memoir. The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Albany Supreme Court, reveals that the Commission on Ethics and Lobbying in Government has been in contact with Cuomo about the $5.1 million he received from the book deal. Cuomo’s suit argues that the ethics entity, created in last year’s state budget, is inherently unconstitutional since it is tasked......