Tillie Olsen, the feminist, socialist writer whose work focused on
the lives of working-class women, died Monday night. She was 94.
Her titles included Tell Me a Riddle, a collection that contained the well-known short story, I Stand Here Ironing; the novel Yonnondio: From the Thirties; and a nonfiction work, Silences, about the difficulties writers face.
Olsen's texts were particularly popular on campuses, and she was a longtime advisor to the Feminist Press.
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Sadly it's that time of the year: we've learned of several more bookstores that are closing.
Baileywick Books, New Milford, Conn., is shutting its doors at the end of the month, according to the Danbury News Times.
Blanchette Bailey, a retired English teacher and former middle school
administrator who founded Baileywick Books 14 years ago, is 75 and is retiring
for the second time, as she put it.
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Shakespeare Beethoven & Company, Dallas, Tex., has closed--on almost the same day as Black Images Book Bazaar (Shelf Awareness, December 10, 2006).
One of the original tenants of the Galleria, Shakespeare Beethoven
& Company was founded 25 years ago by Vivienne Surtees, who died
earlier this year. Her daughter, general manager Katie Surtees, told
the Dallas News,
"I think after 9/11 people realized it's much easier to buy things off
the Net, and they just stopped coming to the Galleria. I've just seen
such a decline in traffic here, in my end of the mall."
Surtees added that she would like to find another location. "I'm hoping
to open a different version of this store in summer to fall. But I
can't promise. Rents are high everywhere."
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As libraries add more audiobooks, DVDs, computers and other electronic
equipment, pressure to cull books increases. Yesterday on its front
page, the Washington Post browsed the issue, using the Fairfax County Public Library in Virginia as an example.
Relying on a software program that identifies books that haven't been
checked out in at least two years, the library system has culled titles
by Aristotle, Marcel Proust, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway,
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Emily Dickinson, Alice Walker and more at
some branches (although other branches may keep the titles).
"We're being very ruthless," library director Sam Clay told the paper.
"A book is not forever. If you have 40 feet of shelf space taken up by
books on tulips and you find that only one is checked out, that's a
cost."