The Last Hundred Days is Wales Book of the Year in English language

"A novel set in a Romania undergoing massive changes in 1989 has been announced as the English-language Wales Book of the Year winner. Patrick McGuinness's The Last Hundred Days shows a city struggling to survive an intense moment in its history."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-18822473

Talk Like Jane Austen Day - 30 October 2012

"Always refer to your close family members as "my" mother, father, sister, brother even when speaking to one of them.  For example, Elizabeth might speak to Jane saying, "My mother has been nervous the whole day." (Whereas we contemporary English speakers would most likely say "our" mother. (Note the use of "the whole day" rather than all day long or a more contemporary phrase)."

http://www.talklikejaneausten.com/talklikejaneaustenday.html

World Oral Literature Project

"An urgent global initiative to document and make accessible endangered oral literatures before they disappear without record

For many communities around the world, the transmission of oral literature from one generation to the next lies at the heart of cultural practice. Performances of creative works of verbal art - which include ritual texts, curative chants, epic poems, musical genres, folk tales, creation tales, songs, myths, legends, word games, life histories or historical narratives - are increasingly endangered."

http://www.oralliterature.org/

Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers

"Dan Cohen and Fred Gibbs, the two historians of science at George Mason University who have created the project, have so far charted how frequently more than two dozen words — among them “God,” “love,” “work,” “science” and “industrial” — appear in British book titles from the French Revolution in 1789 to the beginning of World War I in 1914."

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/04/books/04victorian.html

Literature Wales

"Literature Wales (formerly Academi) is the National Company for the development of literature in Wales. Literature Wales includes Yr Academi Gymreig / The Welsh Academy - the society for writers in Wales, and Tŷ Newydd Writers’ Centre.

Literature Wales’ many projects and activities include Wales Book of the Year, the National Poet of Wales, Writers on Tour funding scheme, writing courses at Tŷ Newydd, Translators’ House Wales, the BayLit and Tŷ Newydd festivals and Young People’s Writing Squads. It also has fieldworkers working specifically to develop literature activity in the south Wales valleys and north Wales."

http://www.literaturewales.org/home/

Standing right next to Dylan Thomas

"There is an undeniable fascination with the tracking of places and paths important to the great and the good who have gone before. Seeing the world they saw increases our understanding of what they did. Standing at their desks or in their houses allows us to locate their works."

http://peterfinchpoet.blogspot.com/2009/05/standing-right-next-to-dylan-thomas.html

Mario makes way for Shakespeare on Nintendo DS in HarperCollins deal

"Nintendo, the Japanese video games company that brought us Donkey Kong and Mario the Plumber, is to announce a deal with the publisher HarperCollins today to make literary classics available to read on its DS portable games consoles.

The 100 Classic Book Collection ranges from Shakespeare and Dickens to Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters. It will cost about £20 and will be available initially only in Britain. "

 http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/gadgets_and_gaming/article5303730.ece

Glorious Nonsense - Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky, of course, is a poem from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There. Despite the Alice books being often thought of as children's books, I didn't get around to reading them until I was 22. When I did, I was spellbound.

I was reading away, with quiet enjoyment, when I came across Jabberwocky. I read it, paused, and read it again. Pondered for a while, then read it again. Jabberwocky beautifully skates the thin edge of being understood and being nonsense. But such glorious nonsense! As Alice put it,

"It seems very pretty," she said when she had finished it, "but it's rather hard to understand!" (You see she didn't like to confess even to herself, that she couldn't make it out at all.) "Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas--only I don't exactly know what they are! However, somebody killed something: that's clear, at any rate---"

http://www.jabberwocky.com/carroll/jabber/

Read Print

"Our website offers thousands of free books for students, teachers, and the classic enthusiast."

http://www.readprint.com/