Posts by Jenny Baum

Color perception changes with how different people view different wavelengths of light, and depending on where you live and when you live/lived, you may have a very different experience.

Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary was more than just an exciting novel, it set a standard for novels, and created a buzzword about having a glamorized, exaggerated conception about oneself.

Literature provides ample inspiration to scientific fields, as these examples show—and vice versa.

Critical reception and further reading from the author, Jill Lepore.

This week, let's take a look at the cultural impact and uses of Wonder Woman through these resources for further reading.

The outfits, accessories, and weaponry of our wonderful superheroine.

Welcome to the March 2015 Reader's Den! This month we'll be reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman by feminist historian Jill Lepore. Lepore details the life story of Wonder Woman's creator, William Moulton Marston.

Suzanne Collins's book Mockingjay has been split into two films. Here's a list of fiction titles to tide you over until Part Two comes out in November, or until you get a chance to see Part One.

Bars, hotels, library branches, and other, more unexpected haunts.

The houses are full of horrors in these selected titles.

Just as the music CD Jock Jams inspired a generation to "Move It, Move It," many books and movies that focus on sports can be motivational, even if the reader or viewer is not interested in that particular activity.

In honor of the Sesame Street exhibition at the Library for the Performing Arts, I thought I'd write a bit about some other Jim Henson productions that have stayed with me.

In “In Praise of Art Forgeries” Blake Gopnik argues that muddying the ability to authenticate art works, as Warhol’s Factory artists did (sometimes attributed to him, sometimes not) can help to bring positive attention to works themselves, rather than their purely monetary value. As many letters to the editor in response suggested, this article may well have been mostly tongue-in-cheek. I suspect that he is questioning the role of the authenticator. This questioning of the role of art authentication is in some ways similar to the artists' questioning of the role of the Academy in "The 

Other recommended works:

The Girl Who Loved Camellias by Julie Kavanagh The fascinating history of Marie DuPlessis chronicles the life of the courtesan who inspired Alexandre Dumas fils’s novel and play La dame aux camélias, Giuseppe Verdi’s opera La Traviata, George Cukor’s film Camille, and Frederick Ashton’s ballet Marguerite and Armand. Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Greta Garbo, 

About the Author: The critically acclaimed author of Brunelleschi's Dome, Leonardo and the Last Supper, and Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power, King is a native of Canada who has lived in England since 1992, currently outside Oxford.

Welcome back to the Reader's Den! This month we'll be looking at The Judgment of Paris by Ross King, about a turbulent era in art history.

"Epistolary" is one of those words that just fun to say or think about, like the word "condensation". An epistolary novel is simply a novel consisting of correspondence between characters. This is one of those rarely used writing devices, I assume because it's difficult to sustain throughout a novel.

This Wednesday, February 26 from 6-7:45 p.m. at Jefferson Market Library, come to an evening of memory, protest and plans. Here's some information about the upcoming speakers.

It's that time of year again, when Halloween book and media picks are falling like harvest leaves. Here's a small, but spooky, selection.