Gleeditions

Gleeditions is taking a "break" to post more fiction and nonfiction e-texts and video adaptations on the site for you. Meanwhile, you're invited to enjoy the host of currently available titles. Higher-ed users, please log-in to the site via your academic library for full access to all features.

https://www.gleeditions.com

For the first time, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (announced May 8, 2023) goes to not one but two novels: Barbara Kingsolver's Demon Copperhead and Hernan Diaz's Trust. The two focus on life in America, as described here: https://www.pulitzer.org/prize-winners-by-category/219

Hear Anthony Doerr, author of All the Light We Cannot See, synopsize and relay the impetus for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. If still unread, it's one there's sufficient time to digest before the release of Netflix's upcoming four-episode miniseries (November 3, 2023).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYBK3Lsx7aI&t=15s

Remarkably Shakespeare's date of birth, celebrated April 23rd, coincides with his date of death. Gleeditions commemorates his lifetime with online access to a collection of acclaimed performances (speeches and films) of his plays. If your campus library provides access to Gleeditions Academic, view them through it to see the concise video summaries too. https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

The 17th-century writer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac was born on this day in 1619. Two centuries later French dramatist Edmond Rostand popularized Cyrano’s life in his famous play Cyrano de Bergerac. The work appears on Gleeditions in multiple formats, including an annotated e-text and video adaptations. https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

This month we honor Black History Month and playwright August Wilson with his Pittsburgh Cycle (also known as the Century Cycle), a play series that details Black life in 20th-century America. You can find both performances of the plays and Wilson in conversation at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts on our website.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp?vid=1864

A new-old genre has come into its own in 2022—spoken-word poetry. This fall saw the first international World Poetry Slam Championship in Brussels. Poets from 37 countries recited lyrics on personal and social concerns today. Gleeditions brings you a West African contestant, who recites his lyrics in French (with English subtitles). https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

Along with the titles of last month's 1922 National Book Award Winners, find summaries for four of the winners and the fifth one mentioned here.

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/winners-of-the-2022-national-book-awards-revealed/

Reviewers characterize Netflix's new adaptation of the WW1 novel All Quiet on the Western Front (1929, by Erich Maria Remarque) as an antiwar drama. Watch the trailer below to see why.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDac2vsqa7k

This election week, the American political divide prompts a look at The Founders' Speech to a Nation in Crisis, an imaginative, instructive read by Steven Rabb. Roughly 150 pages, the patchwork quilt of a narrative addresses Americans today. Get an overview and taste of it from the Goodreads review:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55745629-the-founders-speech-to-a-nation-in-crisis

Previews begin Friday, October 28, 2022, for Broadway's debut of a musical spinoff on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. The show's title, & Juliet, clues us in to the focus. See a clip here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdSSfa1Oz5w

On October 17, Shehan Karunatilaka won the Booker Prize 2022 for The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida, about an ace photographer and the Sri Lankan civil war. Killed, the photographer, Maali, returns from the afterlife to retrieve and expose some shockingly revealing photographs. He has seven moons (one week) to do so. For more details, read this review.

https://www.litromagazine.com/usa/2022/09/book-review-the-seven-moons-of-maali-almeida/

In tribute to the October 11 passing of Angela Lansbury, Gleeditions posts a clip of her Tony and Olivier award-winning performance in Noël Coward's comic masterpiece Blithe Spirit. See her here as spiritual medium Madame Arcati, who inadvertently evokes the ghost of the dead first wife of Charles—a novelist in pursuit of knowledge about the occult. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om1X2QOn5zY

October 2 saw the opening of Tom Stoppard's moving new play, Leopoldstadt, on Broadway. In this clip, from London's National Theatre production, get a quick grasp of the family at the heart of a play that brings us four generations (1899-1955) of assimilated Jews in Vienna, Austria.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

September's Hugo Award for best science-fiction novella of 2022 goes to A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers. Featuring two separate societies—one of robots, the other of humans—living on a moon called Panga, the novella centers on a single robot and a tea monk. The monk travels the environs, tailoring teas to people; the robot is tasked with finding the answer to, "What do people need?" For more details, read the following review: https://www.bookpage.com

This year's Banned Books Week (September 18-24, 2022) brings us Penn America's list of School Book Bans July 1, 2021-June 30, 2022. Its inclusion of works by prize-winning authors (e.g., Maya Angelou) raises thoughts on the divisiveness of society today. For titles, authors, and locations, see the published spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hTs_PB7KuTMBtNMESFEGuK-0abzhNxVv4tgpI5-iKe8/edit =1171606318

With the rest of the world, Gleeditions mourns Queen Elizabeth II, paying tribute to her passing with a clip from The Queen, a film portrayal (by Helen Mirren) of which she approved.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

On September 6th, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released its digital version of Where the Crawdads Sing, the 2022 film adaptation of the best-selling novel by Delia Owens. Like the novel, the film centers on sharp, resilient Kya (played by Daisy Edgar-Jones), who raises herself in the marshes of North Carolina and becomes embroiled in a murder mystery. View the trailer for story basics and a quick look at the film:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoSHYfCqgK0&t=8s

Available online now, in hardcover this fall, is a gripping read by nonfiction virtuoso Ben Macintyre—Prisoners of the Castle: An Epic Story of Survival and Escape from Colditz, the N***s' Fortress Prison. A maximum security prison, with serious structural "flaws," it fostered many attempted escapes by Allied officers, whose fates unfold by the end. For more detail, read a contents summary and brief excerpt.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/612488/prisoners-of-the-castle-by-ben-macintyre/

Gleeditions commemorates Juneteenth with Smokey Robinson's rendition of a song that pays tribute to four American lives and brings to mind all the others lost in a 157-year struggle for civil rights that continues today. A White House performance, the rendition can be heard and seen here:

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

Texas University Press brings us one of the finest nonfiction reads on U.S. mass shootings: From a Taller Tower: The Rise of the American Mass Shooter by Seamus McGraw (2021). For a summary of this title and more on gun violence in the U.S., see the reviews posted here:

https://www.npr.org/2022/06/02/1101494064/5-books-that-try-to-help-explain-the-unexplainable-the-u-s-gun-violence-epidemic

On May 30, 2022, the Lincoln Memorial turns 100. In the structure is a copy of the Gettysburg Address, performed and shown in the video linked below. It features (as originally delivered) an address that speaks to us now, given the threats to democracy in the world today.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

Gleeditions shares a concise video overview of Ukrainian literature today from one of its foremost writers, Andrey Kurkov. Interview excerpt (8 minutes) courtesy of The Conduit, a collaborative community.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

Congratulations to American writer Patricia Lockwood, winner of the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize, awarded to an exceptional English-language writer under the age of 40. A poet, an essayist, and a novelist, Lockwood won for her debut novel No One Is Talking About This, about the effects on a writer's mind of social networking and the internet. A summary of the storyline follows: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/03/patricia-lockwood-no-one-is-talking-about-this/617798/ .

Spring 2022 brings us the already best-selling debut novel Memphis, by Tara Stringfellow. For a brief description of both novel (a family saga) and author, link to the summary featured here.

https://www.lemuriabooks.com/Memphis-Tara-M-Stringfellow-p/9780593230480.htm

In celebration of Shakespeare's birthday (April 26, 1564), Gleeditions posts his Sonnet 104 and applies its content to him.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

In celebration of Charlotte Brontë's birthday, April 21, Gleeditions shares a scene between governess and employer from Jane Eyre (Ruth Wilson plays Jane; Toby Stephens, Mr. Rochester). Brought to life by the actors is an almost palpable romantic energy between the two.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

Photo: Charlotte Brontë, partial image, circa 1834. By Branwell Brontë. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

Born 119 years ago, on April 13, Samuel Beckett brought us Waiting for Godot, about the purpose of human existence. Gleeditions pays tribute to his legacy with a clip from a masterful production that foregrounds the dark humor of the still haunting play.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

In honor of National Poetry Month, Gleeditions brings you "Blood-Light" by 2021 Pulitzer Prize winner Natalie Diaz, from Postcolonial Love Poem. Diaz, born and bred on the Fort Mojave Indian Reservation, herself reads the verse, inspired by a brother of her own. Listen to its rhythm and imagery. Discover the harsh reality of life for the speaker's brother and the consequences for family from the reading heard here:

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp?vid=1886

Find here the poem "Resistance" by UK Poet Laureate Simon Armitage, in support of beleaguered Ukraine. Last in a listing of "Poet Laureate Poems" by Armitage, the verse leads easily to more of his works. https://www.simonarmitage.com

Pictured is an image of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers taking shelter under a bridge in Kyiv.

Just announced Thursday, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction goes to Honorée Fanonne Jeffers for her book Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois. The novel is about several generations of African Americans from the perspective of one young Black girl in central Georgia. See the link for a book preview https://preview.aer.io/The_Love_Songs_of_WEB_Du_Bois-NDAzMDc4?social=1&retail=1&emailcap=0

Academy Awards, March 27, 2022: This year's nominees for the Best Original Screenplay include Belfast by Kenneth Branagh, based on a slice of the actor-writer's life. See the trailer below to discover the film's family focus, wartime setting in late 1960s Ireland, and winning bits of humor. Beyond a simple memoir, Belfast brings to mind the plight of Ukrainian families today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C658p987SQI

So what does the conflict in the Ukraine have to do with the Western world? In a "prescient" 2018 read—The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America—history professor Timothy Snyder tells us:

https://www.timothysnyder.org/books/the-road-to-unfreedom-tr/the-road-to-unfreedom-hc

This Presidents’ Day week, Gleeditions shares a one-minute video on two Shakespeare speeches that Abraham Lincoln memorized (from Hamlet, Act 3, Sc. 3 and Richard III, Act 1, Sc. 1).

Professor James Shapiro of Columbia U identifies the two speeches in the video posted here. What, one wonders, do they suggest about Lincoln's thoughts?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0ShDdSoiJA

This February 14 week Gleeditions shares the sight and sound of one of the most memorable love sonnets of all time, written by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, before she and Robert were secretly wed.

http://gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

Announced February 1, the UK and Ireland's Costa Award for most enjoyable First Novel of 2021 goes to Caleb Azumah Nelson for Open Water, about the love of a Black British photographer for a dancer and the challenges that confront them. The Award for most enjoyable Novel of 2021 goes to Claire Fuller for Unsettled Ground, about adult fraternal twins jarred into unpacking a web of family secrets. For other winners and more details, go here:

https://www.costa.co.uk/behind-the-beans/costa-book-awards/book-awards

Read overviews of the two winners of the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, followed by the shortlist of finalists in each category.

https://www.ala.org/rusa/awards/carnegie-medals

Lady Macbeth has just died. In a literal minute, in a newly released, webwide production, watch Denzel Washington make the role of Macbeth his own as he delivers a familiar yet freshly performed speech in reaction to her death.

https://www.gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

Listen to Martin Luther King Jr. deliver his final speech (43 minutes). Hear his anticipation of assassination, as well as the prodigious show of faith in his words. Statue photo by Tom LeGro/PBS NewsHour—CC BY-NC 2.0.

http://gleeditions.com/video_index.asp

In a two-minute speech from Walter in A Raisin in the Sun, get Gleeditions tribute to the passing of Sidney Poitier on January 6, at the age of 94. The focus here is on the dignity and outspokenness of the character and of Poitier himself as a lifelong champion of racial equality. Paste link in browser to watch.

http://gleeditions.com/video_index.asp?vid=1878