GET YOUR READ ON THIS SUMMER!

Spring is here and summer is on the way!

For all of you bookworms and other's alike, it's time to update that booklist!

Remember to choose titles that challenge your reading ability and that will enable you to learn something new. 

Reading is a great way to enhance your communication and social connections.  Once you start, I promise you won't want to stop:)

For all of my "mommies" out there, don't forget to get books for the kids.  If money is tight, then hit up your local salvation army or goodwill to purchase books.  Those places along with other thrift stores normally have kid books between $1-$6. 

Trust me it's well worth the gas to trek over to get your little ones the books they need.

All in all, don't forget to have fun this summer and definitely have super fun getting your read on.



Literary Barbie
*Get Your Read On*

HAPPY HOLIDAY AND NEW YEAR!!

Literary Barbie wants to wish all of you a happy holiday and safe new year!!

Thank you to all the readers who have supported us throughout the year!

Next year will be big and we are definitely excited!




*Literary Barbie and Family*

Irving explores bisexuality in latest best seller

(Reuters) - Author John Irving's latest book, "In One Person," is his most politically charged novel since his 1980s best sellers, "The Cider House Rules" and "A Prayer for Owen Meany."

Irving's 13th book is about a bisexual boy from rural Vermont named Billy Abbott who has crushes on the wrong people, including his town's transgender librarian. He learns to navigate his relationships in a world that consistently views him as suspect.

After its release last month, "In One Person" quickly became a best seller and earned praise from Vanity Fair and The New Yorker.
Irving, 70, spoke with Reuters about the politics of his latest novel, bisexuality and recurring themes in his work.

Q: LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) issues are a hot political topic right now, but the discourse doesn't touch much on the "B" or "T" as frequently. Why choose to write Billy as bisexual and include several transgendered characters?

A: "For many gay men of my generation, the bisexual man was disbelieved. He was perceived for the most part as a gay guy who lacked the courage to come all the way out of the closet. I think young gay men today are far more accepting or tolerant of the bisexual man than many gay men of my generation were. It was purposeful on my part to make Billy a bisexual so that he would feel the sting of that solitariness and be aware of the distrust of his gay and straight friends alike.

"That was a deliberate choice, just as it seemed only logical to me for a character like Billy that he would find these two transgender women at either end of his life - of different ages and from different eras - very sympathetic if only because he recognizes that they are as marginalized and distrusted by society as he is.

They are as you say the "BT" part the "LGBT" abbreviation, but they get a little less attention - that's all. I was very conscious of making that choice for exactly those reasons. If you're going to test the waters of our tolerance for sexual differences, well let's really test it."

Q: "In One Person" takes place over Billy's lifetime, so he is about your age when he is looking back and retelling things. From that perspective, how do think the plight of sexual minorities has changed over that time?

A: "I guess you could say that our tolerance for sexual differences is better or different than it was in the late 1970s when ‘The World According to Garp' was published. But if I felt our tolerance of sexual differences was perfect, I don't think I would have had this novel on my mind for 10, now almost 12 years, or I wouldn't have written it at all. So I wouldn't say that our tolerance of sexual differences is what it should be.

"Witness the Republican Party, witness the lineup of clowns who are indulging in righteous gay-bashing, right up to (Mitt) Romney's ascendance to the throne, and Romney has subscribed in kind. His position on gay rights issues is lamentable, to be kind."

Q: In the book you draw a lot on plays and novels - "Madame Bovary," Norwegian playwright Ibsen, Shakespeare. Why?

A: "It seemed that the childhood of this character was fortunately imaginative. He had some preparation from the world of theater and the world of books for the sexual difficulties he would face. I think literature is a support system for many people who find themselves in a sexual minority. It isn't just that he has the support or encouragement of a good, albeit unusual librarian, and that he has the love of an unusually good stepfather. In Shakespeare, in Ibsen, he finds some pretty powerful testimonies for sexual differences."

Q: Certain themes surface repeatedly in your novels - some politically-tinged issues, unusual sexual relationships, absent parents, wrestling, New England, etc. Why these common threads, and what motivates you to return to them?

A: "Many of the so-called common things you mention to me are kind of superficial landmarks, like the landscape of northern New England.

"I would say a more common thread that doesn't often get mentioned to each of my novels is an element of predetermination, an element of fate. Where they are going is something the reader can see from very early on, this novel being no exception - a story that begins in the 1950s and '60s and you're already listening to the voice of an older man as you have in 'In One Person.'

"It's the story of a bisexual boy, and you're meeting various gay friends and lovers. I'm not giving anything away, but the reader knows an AIDS epidemic is coming, and many of these characters you're meeting are not going to get through it. There's always an element of that kind.

"Everyone from Sophocles to Shakespeare to Thomas Hardy to Nathaniel Hawthorne - their most interesting work was about challenging sexual relationships. I don't think there's anything new about it.

Hamlet is a sex story. Othello is a sex story. Macbeth is a dysfunctional marriage story. I didn't invent these things, I read about them in so-called classical literature. People have found sexual relationships the most trying and important parts of their lives since before Shakespeare."

Mistress Tells Her Side Of John Edwards Affair In book

(Reuters) - Rielle Hunter, John Edwards' former mistress, writes in her new book that the two-time presidential candidate told her he had at least two previous affairs and also fabricated three other relationships so she would not become too attached, ABC News reported.

Hunter's book, "What Really Happened: John Edwards, Our Daughter, and Me," is set to be released on June 26. It follows Edwards' federal trial in North Carolina, which ended in May with an acquittal on one campaign finance charge and a mistrial on five others after the jury deadlocked.

The Justice Department announced last week that it would not re-try the former U.S. senator.

Edwards, 59, was accused of seeking more than $900,000 from two wealthy supporters to conceal Hunter and her pregnancy with his child from voters during his unsuccessful bid to win the Democratic presidential nomination four years ago.

At the time, Edwards' wife, Elizabeth, was battling cancer. She died in December 2010.

ABC News said it had obtained a copy of Hunter's book, in which she defends John Edwards' innocence in the criminal case while also revealing that he had affairs with at least two other women prior to 2004.

Hunter said Edwards made up three additional mistresses - supposedly in Chicago, Los
Angeles and Florida - during the early part of their relationship, which began after they met at a New York City hotel in February 2006, because he did not want Hunter to become too attached to him.

She said Edwards told her he had broken up with the fake mistresses before conceding that he had fabricated them.

Hunter wrote that Edwards confessed to having the other affairs but that he led her to believe that she was the last.

Hunter blames Elizabeth Edwards for driving John Edwards to cheat. She describes Elizabeth Edwards in unflattering terms, calling her "crazy," "venomous," and a "witch on wheels."

Hunter said she regretted allowing John Edwards' political aide, Andrew Young, to publicly claim paternity for the daughter Edwards had fathered.

"Of all the things that happened in my relationship with Johnny the thing that I regret the most is going along with this stupid idea and allowing this lie to go public," Hunter wrote, according to ABC News.

Edwards eventually admitted the child was his.

Hunter later sued Young over ownership of a video of her having sex with Edwards, which in her book she says she filmed at Edwards' request while traveling with him in Uganda.

Hunter said she wrote the book to provide her now 4-year-old daughter, Frances Quinn, with a truthful public account of "how she came into the world."

She writes that Edwards is involved in their daughter's life but does not shed much light on the current status of their relationship.

"I really have no idea what will happen with us," she wrote, according to ABC News. "The jury is still out. But I can honestly say that the ending is of no concern to me anymore. The love is here. And as sappy as it may sound, I love living in love."

Twitter co-founder to publish life lessons in "old media"

(Reuters) - Twitter co-founder Biz Stone is planning to dish up some life lessons that will need more than 140-character bursts.

Stone, 38, is working on a book about creativity called "Things a Little Bird Told Me" that will relate stories from his life and career and encourage others to be think outside the box, Grand Central Publishing said on Monday.

"I've found that my experiences resonate with a very wide array of individuals at different stages in their lives," Stone said in a statement. "I'm excited to create a physical artifact to share the lessons I've learned."

Grand Central's executive editor Ben Greenberg said the book would "reveal how his creativity works and will help readers apply those principles to their own lives."

Stone co-founded Twitter with Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey in 2006, creating a micro-blogging service that allows users to send messages of up to 140 characters and which now has some 140 million active users.

Stone also helped to create and launch social networking site Xanga, blog publishing service Blogger, and most recently, The Obvious Corporation, which aims to help people work together to make the world smarter and healthier.

The Twitter co-founder has previously published two books on blogging, 2002's "Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content" and "Who Let The Blogs Out" in 2004.

"Things a Little Bird Told Me" is due for publication in April 2014.

JK Rowling's first adult novel will be "blackly comic"

(Reuters) - J.K. Rowling's first book for adults will be a "blackly comic" novel set in an idyllic English town where all is not what it seems, its publisher said on Thursday.

The title of the closely guarded 480-page novel by the prolific "Harry Potter" author will be "The Casual Vacancy." It and will be available worldwide in English on September 27 in hardback, e-book and in audio form, Little, Brown and Company said in a statement.

The publisher promised it will be "blackly comic, thought-provoking and constantly surprising," and offered some general plot details.

Rowling's foray into the adult fiction world begins when a character called Barry Fairweather dies unexpectedly, leaving a town called Pagford in shock, before readers will realize that behind Pagford's facade is a town at war, according to the publisher.

"Rich at war with poor, teenagers at war with their parents, wives at war with their husbands, teachers at war with their pupil ... Pagford is not what it first seems," said the statement.

"And the empty seat left by Barry on the parish council soon becomes the catalyst for the biggest war the town has yet seen. Who will triumph in an election fraught with passion, duplicity and unexpected revelations?"

When the novel was first announced in February, Rowling, 46 said the successful "Harry Potter" series had given her the "the freedom to explore new territory." The seven-book series sold 450 million copies worldwide and resulted in eight top-grossing movies.

"The Casual Vacancy" is the British writer's first novel directly aimed at the adult market.

Jazz musician Herbie Hancock to pen memoir

(Reuters) - Jazz musician Herbie Hancock will reveal intimate details of his career in a memoir due for release in fall 2014, Viking Press said on Tuesday.

Hancock, 71, has become a pioneering force in the jazz and blues music world, earning 14 Grammy awards and an Academy Award over his five-decade career, and seeing many of his songs become music staples.

"There are few artists in any genre who have had a career as rich and influential as Mr. Hancock's, and his memoir promises to be not only the record of a remarkable life and career but a singular chronicle of one of the most fertile periods in the development of jazz," said Clare Ferraro, president of Viking Press.

The pianist and composer, from Chicago, rose to fame in the 1960s playing with trumpeter Miles Davis in his "second great quintet," and composed hits such as "Watermelon Man," "Chameleon" and "Cantaloupe Island."

Hancock is currently an ambassador for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), pledging to use music to cross cultural boundaries and promote literacy and creativity among youth around the world.