Most relationships after a certain age begin with a body or two under the bed. Usually these are ex-lovers, whose legacy manifests tangibly in shoe boxes of old letters and photos, those morbid and sentimental curations that pulse faintly from the closet shelf. In my case, it took the form of a garbage bag full of S&M equipment.
Beth Fertig, a senior reporter on education for WNYC, continues her Reader in Residence series with us this month with her second of four posts about literacy and education in New York. The author of Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read?, Ms. Fertig tackles the issue of federal education funding this week under the Obama Administration’s Race to the Top program.
Welcome to the first installment of Reader in Residence on BrooklynTheBorough.com! Here we will feature contributions by authors, professors, journalists or book enthusiasts – basically anybody with interesting things to say about literature. We started out with the notion that a book club might be appropriate, but we know you probably don’t want, nor have the motivation, to sit through our boring assessments. Instead, we bring you ideas and excerpts from the authors themselves. These author contributions will appear weekly, building on ideas over the course of a month to prolong discussion in a digital space so often overlooked after the refresh button is pushed. Please share your thoughts and comments with us, we want to respond!
And so it is our great pleasure to bring you journalist and author Beth Fertig, a senior reporter on education for WNYC, New York’s NPR affiliate, and the author of Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read?, an appropriate inaugural topic for this feature. Ms. Fertig’s book, out last year on FSG, dissects the successes and failures of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind act through the prism of three NYC public school students. Here she shares a short excerpt preceded by current policy planning efforts.
The Best Book (McSweeney’s, $24.95) takes everything you want from a book and combines it with everything everyone else wants, producing quite simply the single best book of all time.
Well can you believe it, folks, it’s December already. And with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and One Last Chance at Free Shipping Tuesday, it’s already Why Haven’t You Done All Your Shopping By Now Wednesday. So before it’s too late (I’m Already Sick of Hearing About Gifts and It’s Only Thursday), let’s go shopping! (Yay!) For books! (Grumble, grumble…)
Welcome to the first installment of Undusted, a series that will feature interesting but long-neglected or even forgotten pieces of writing that deserve another look. It’s writing that has aged well, even if no one has perused the curves of its S’s in a while. Like the rest of the BtheB literary posts that will constitute the section known as The Read, Undusted items may or may not have anything to do with Brooklyn.*
At any rate, the following interview with Mark Twain appeared in the New York World Sunday Magazine on November 26, 1905, and describes what Mr. Twain, aka Mr. Clemens, was thankful for on this American holiday. Click through to read it in its entirety.
The unofficial present-day Bard of Brooklyn stopped by Greenlight Bookstore last night to christen the borough’s newest independent bookshop. Jonathan Lethem, author of such notable Brooklyn titles as Motherless Brooklyn and Fortress of Solitude, read a portion of his new Manhattan-based novel, Chronic City, to a packed house as latecomers squeezed through the door like rush-hour riders on the 4 train. Watch our exclusive video from the event after the jump.
