The Origins Of A Christmas Carol
BBC got into the spirit with an article on the origins of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. From his views on the wealthy to a visit with his disabled nephew to the sight of impoverished families starving on the street, Dickens’ experiences and post-Industrial Revolution England provided plenty of inspiration and passion to create change. Read the full article to learn more about Dickens and his classic Christmas tale.
NYPL’s Top Checkouts
The New York Public Library reported on the year’s top 10 checkouts. The data collected was system-wide and for The Bronx, Staten Island, and Manhattan. The top three, system-wide, were Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Underground Railroad: A Novel by Colson Whitehead, and Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis by J. D. Vance. The top checkouts in the boroughs were TASC: Test Assessing Secondary Completion: Strategies, Practice, & Review, 2017-2018 by Kaplan for The Bronx; The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood for Manhattan; and The Award by Danielle Steel for Staten Island.
A Working Class Writers Collective
Author Kit de Waal is behind a working class writers’ movement. She voiced a need to see more working class voices in literature, and, in response, a working class writers’ collective has formed, and an Unbound anthology titled Common People, featuring new and published working class authors and edited by de Waal, was launched. Author Carmen Marcus reached out to other writers on Twitter and began the movement after hearing de Waal speak on the lack of diversity in publishing for “Where Are All the Working Class Writers?” a BBC Radio 4 documentary.
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