Jerome David Salinger, most famously known for the high-school classic starring Holden Caufield, The Catcher in the Rye, has passed away in his New Hampshire home at the age of 91. Salinger retreated to this farm- house a few years after his most famous work was published, and stayed there for the next 50 years avoiding media and photographers, and staunchly denying screenwriters, actors and authors the rights to adapt the book. He rarely granted interviews, despite repeated requests, and hardly ever explained himself. However, in one of these rare interviews he was quoted as saying

“I refuse to publish. There’s a marvelous peace in not publishing. There’s a stillness. When you publish, the world thinks you owe something. If you don’t publish, they don’t know what you’re doing. You can keep it for yourself.”

J.D. Salinger’s other works that did make it to the publisher include, Nine Stories, a collection of short stories, the novella Franny and Zooey, and a short story that took up almost an entire New Yorker magazine in 1965.

You can check the AFPL catalog here for Salinger’s books. And you can click here for a list of his stories published in various magazines throughout his life time. I can’t say I’ve reviewed this particular site thoroughly, but it does list the story titles, dates, publications and page numbers. Unfortunately since these stories were published 60 to 70 years ago, they won’t be found in the AFPL databases. However, if you are a fan and a sleuth you may be able to find hard copy or microfilm versions in some libraries!

Thank you to NPR and the New York Times for links to articles on Salinger’s life and work.

Business cards are a great self-promotional tool for the self-employed and for the small business owner. If you do not have your own, come to the Learning and Career Center (formerly the Instructional Learning Center ) on the 4th floor of the Central Library.

Creating Business Cards in Publisher will be held on Tuesday, January 26th at 2pm. Please bring a disk or flash drive to save your work. You may call 404.730.1915 to reserve a space, or you may come in person 15 minutes before class time to register.

Several days ago, the literary world lost two important authors. And although the stories each wrote were very different in style and character, the locations in and around Cambridge, MA featured prominently in both their works. Parker’s Spencer novels, named after the main character in this polific series of books, were said to have recreated the American detective novel, while Segal is most often recognized for his best-selling debut novel, Love Story.

AFPL owns many of the titles writen by both of these great authors, and I encourage you to check the catalog here for a few by each. You can find their works in all formats: print, audio CDs, downloadable e-books, and films of their novels on DVD. Below is a list of suggestions to get you started. You can also click here and here, to read or listen to two stories remembering the authors from National Public Radio. Enjoy!

Works by Robert B. Parker