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Jane Eyre

Celebrating the woman behind Jane Eyre: Charlotte Bronte turns 200

• AFP, London

 

Jane Eyre was published on 16 October 1847. (Facebook/Charlotte Bronte)

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Britain marked the 200th birth anniversary of Charlotte Bronte on Thursday. The Victorian novelist is best known for her timeless classic Jane Eyre that has haunted generations of readers.
Fans of the celebrated book hosted a birthday party at the house in northern England where Charlotte and her sisters Emily and Anne grew up and wrote books.
 
The anniversary highlights the enduring global popularity of the Brontes, whose works are seen as among the most important ever written by female authors.
A wreath will be laid for Bronte in Westminster Abbey on Friday and a ballet version of Jane Eyre will open next month, while the National Portrait Gallery is hosting an exhibition in her honour.
The Bronte Parsonage Museum in Haworth, a remote village on the edge of moors in Yorkshire, draws tens of thousands of visitors from around the world each year, while the sisters’ books are staples in British bookshops and school curriculums.

Charlotte was the oldest of the three Bronte sisters. (Facebook/Charlotte Bronte)

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte were a clergyman’s daughters who wrote for pleasure and dreamt of becoming published authors but feared they would not be taken seriously because they were women.
They therefore adopted the pseudonyms of Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell when they sent Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Agnes Grey, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to publishers in the 1840s.
Emily Bronte fell ill with consumption and died in 1848, followed by Anne the following year. Charlotte lived for six more years before dying in Haworth in 1855 aged 38.

Dancers Hannah Bateman and Javier Torres, from the Northern Ballet, who will play the roles of Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester, perform a piece from the dance company’s upcoming World premiere of Jane Eyre at the National Gallery in central London on April 20, 2016. (AFP)

Jane Eyre, which has never been out of print in Britain, tells the story of the heroine’s youth as an orphan and how she falls in love with her employer, Mr Rochester, while working as a governess.
Charlotte Bronte’s other works include Shirley and Villette.
Her biographer Claire Harman told the BBC this month that she was someone “who both longed to be ‘forever known’, but clung to anonymity in order to achieve it, a woman much more concerned about truthfulness than personal fame and someone who felt compelled to put into words her own terrible sufferings... as being the only way to deal with them.”

Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/celebrating-the-woman-behind-jane-eyre-charlotte-bronte-turns-200/story-Cp7gg0RDG8k3z0oN5CxXEK.html

Looking beyond Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet

400 years since Shakespeare: Looking beyond Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet

• Sneha Bengani, Hindustan Times, New Delhi

William Shakespeare died on April 23, 1616, in Stratford-upon-Avon, United Kingdom. (Facebook/William Shakespeare)

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The man needs no introduction. His works have continued to charm, thrill and bewitch generations of readers over centuries. He is as relevant today, 400 years after his death, as he was in his own time.
However, William Shakespeare’s immense popularity gives us the illusion that we know him. But do we, beyond his popular tragedies?
To mark his 400th death anniversary, we bring to you five of his lesser-known plays that are no less brilliant, and hence totally worth your time.
Read: The Bard and language: How Shakespeare changed English forever




Antony and Cleopatra
Read it to understand the subtleties of a mature love that isn’t overwhelming or flamboyant. The historical drama depicts in an arresting, earnest way the struggles of a romance that can see beyond itself.

Merchant of Venice
Popularly touted as a problem play, this romantic comedy explores the grey area in human relationships and is best remembered for giving the world one of its most controversial literary characters in Shylock. You can love him or you can hate him but there is no way that you can ignore him.

King Lear
This disturbing tale of filial ingratitude is sure to sear your heart with its brilliant diction and poignant narration. A classic Shakespearean tragedy, it depicts how a man meets his doom through his own weaknesses and follies.

Read: How well do you know William Shakespeare? Find out with this quiz




The Taming of the Shrew
Denounced widely for being misogynistic and offensive, there is a lot more to the taming of wild Katherine than meets the eye. Do not let the comical subplot deceive you. Look beyond the disguised lovers trying to woo a lady.

Henry IV – Parts 1 and 2
The historical drama has given us Falstaff. Do we need to say more? Full of joie de vivre, Falstaff does not just mock the class system, he lives the joke. Read it for him, if nothing else.

 

 Source: http://www.hindustantimes.com/books/400-years-since-shakespeare-looking-beyond-hamlet-romeo-and-juliet/story-uEqlu9QiIPg687J2vxMHoM.html

Google Books decision opens door to create true digital library

Paul Gilster: Google Books decision opens door to create true digital library

 APRIL 23, 2016 12:30 PM

BY PAUL GILSTER

 

I used to haunt libraries as a boy, usually looking for science fiction novels but also mysteries and books about astronomy. Later, as a writer, I learned the craft of research in the stacks and could pull arcane information out of scholarly journals with ease. The work I do now is a different matter, relying on materials accessed on the Internet. You would think a digital library is the ultimate tool for a researcher and columnist, but this turns out not to be the case. Not yet.

Some research journals have no online presence at all. Others offer everything behind a firewall – you’re welcome to pay for the material you need, at a cost of $35 or so for a single article. Books? If they’re current they’re certainly locked up behind copyright. Huge numbers of books from the mid- and later 20th Century are still under copyright though seldom accessed.

Out of this grew initiatives like http://books.google.com/">Google Books, which takes an approach to the online library that relies on the concept of “fair use.” When it began scanning millions of books in 2004 to create its digitized database, Google Books offered users the chance to search by keyword. What the site would display was not an entire book – far from it. Instead, you would see a paragraph or a page that fit your search, and that’s it.

Legal battle over

I found Google Books helpful because I often needed to check what a particular author said about a technological trend or, in my science work, how a particular concept in astrophysics was defined. I could run the search term into the database and quickly cull what I needed.

The Authors Guild has a different take on the matter, arguing that putting an author’s work online undermines a writer’s income. I haven’t found it so, though I don’t exactly know how I would measure this. But my last book is still in print and available through Google Books in the form I mentioned above. You can search it but you can’t read anything other than targeted results.

Ultimately, the Authors Guild asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by a circuit court that found the book scanning Google does falls under the category of fair use. Now the Supreme Court has decided not to hear this challenge, which means that the legal battle has ended, and in Google’s favor. A decade-long controversy thus comes to a conclusion.

What is fair use?

I’m no lawyer, but I know what works for me as a writer and I think this decision will help nurture the resources we use on our computers. Fair use is basic to copyright law, but it is always decided on a case by case basis, which is why this case loomed so large. We want to make material available to researchers while protecting authorial rights. The purpose being served as well as the nature of the work, and the fraction of it made available, all play a role.

I can only go by my own experience. One thing I’ve learned is that a digital database like Google Books invariably leads me to books I didn’t know existed, which expands my research. Amazon also offers a search facility, but by individual books only, and again, what you can see is sharply truncated. Both Google and Amazon and sites like the http://archive.org/">Internet Archive are going to be exploring the boundaries of fair use through their decisions going forward.

So is Google Books “a card catalog for the digital age,” as Google says, or a violation of copyright? I’ll go with something closer to the former. It’s not the optimum tool because of the limitations of its interface, but with the current victory, I think we can expect innovations on that front. One thing is sure: Being able to extract snippets of text eases the burden on anyone researching a complex topic, and brings the dream of a true digital library that much closer.

Paul A. Gilster is the author of several books on technology. 

Reach him atgil...@mindspring.com">gilster@mindspring.com.

 http://www.mcclatchyreprints.com/">LINKEDINGOOGLE+PINTERESTREDDITPRINTORDER REPRINT OF THIS STORY

 Source: http://www.newsobserver.com/news/technology/article73307152.html

World Book and Copyright Day 2016

World Book and Copyright Day 2016 

A book is a link between the past and the future. It is a bridge between generations and across cultures. It is a force for creating and sharing wisdom and knowledge. 

Frank Kafka once said, “a book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.”

A window onto our inner lives, books are also the doorway to mutual respect and understanding between people, across all boundaries and differences. 

Coming in all forms, books embody the diversity of human ingenuity, giving shape to the wealth of human experience, expressing the search for meaning and expression that all women and men share, that drive all societies forward. Books help weave humanity together as a single family, holding a past in common, a history and heritage, to craft a destiny that is shared, where all voices are heard in the great chorus of human aspiration. 

This is what we celebrate on World Book and Copyright Day, in partnership with the International Publishers Association, the International Booksellers Federation and the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions -- the power of books to nurture creativity and advance dialogue between women and men of all cultures. 

I thank Wroclaw, Poland, as the 2016 World Book Capital, for its commitment to spreading this message across the globe. This has never been so important at a time when culture is under attack, when freedom of expression is threatened, when diversity is challenged by rising intolerance.

In turbulent times, books embody the human capacity to conjure up worlds of reality and imagination and express them in voices of understanding, dialogue and tolerance. They are symbols of hope and dialogue that we must cherish and defend. 

William Shakespeare died on 23 April, 1616, preceded by only one day by Cervantes. On this day, I call upon all of UNESCO’s partners to share the message that books are a force to counter, what Shakespeare called, “the common curse of mankind -- folly and ignorance.” 

Message from Ms Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO on the occasion of the World Book and Copyright Day

Source: http://www.unesco.org/new/en/wbcd

World Book Day_April 23

 

 World Book Day is celebrated every year on April 23. UNESCO undertakes the responsibility of the event. With the help of the event, UNESCO aims to inculcate reading habits among people, especially the youth and highlight the various issues surrounding authors, publishers and other related parties. Since Copyright is a big issue in the world of books and writing, there is always a focus on the issue on the World Book Day. That's why, in many parts of the world, this day is also known as the World Book and Copyright Day.

The first ever World Book Day was celebrated on April 23, 1995. The date as decided by UNESCO as it was also the death and birth anniversary of William Shakespeare, a world famous author. 

NCERT books are available for free download on ‘e-paathshala’

• Apr 15, 2016

NEW DELHI: The NCERT textbooks find universal acceptance throughout the entire country. Even the students preparing for the UPSC civil services examinations refer to the NCERT books from time to time.

Keeping their demand in mind, the Human resource Department (HRD) minister Smriti Irani had launched E-paathshala, a mobile app as well as a website portal. As per the report school students are finding it tough to buy NCERT textbooks. 

NCERT has also given rights to 8 state governments to print books as they believe fit to accomplish the requirements of their students said HRD Minister.

For the first time, all NCERT books of class 1 to 12 are available in both English and Hindi on web based application e-paathshala. Smriti Irani said, “We would also put out in public that NCERT has its own sales counter in Ajmer, Bhopal, Shillong, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Bengaluru, Mysore, Kolkata, Guwahati and New Delhi from where schools can buy books in bulk.”

Herr Ministry in July 2015 given a circular which states very clearly that imposing parents and children to purchase too many books is not only unhealthy but unsound practice.

The main advantage of this website is that students would only be required to bear the cost of internet to download these books.

Source: https://www.brainbuxa.com

पुस्तके वाचा ऑनलाईन

भांडारकर संस्थेचा पुढाकार : ५0 हजार पुस्तकांचे होणार डिजिटायझेशन

आपली संस्कृती तसेच तीमध्ये असणार्‍या भाषांची माहिती येणार्‍या पिढीला व्हावी, यासाठी भांडारकर संस्थेमध्ये एक संग्रहालय उभारण्यात येणार आहे. यामध्ये दुर्मिळ वस्तू, ग्रंथ यांबरोबरच सर्वसामान्यांची जिज्ञासा जागृत व्हावी, यासाठी दृक्श्राव्य व्यवस्थाही उपलब्ध करण्यात येणार आहे. हा प्रकल्प १00 ते १२५ कोटींचा असून, त्यासाठी केंद्र शासनाच्या सांस्कृतिक विभागाकडे प्रस्ताव दिला आहे. याबरोबरच, हस्तलिखितांचे एक दालन व डॉ. रा. ना. दांडेकर यांचेही स्वतंत्र दालन करण्यात येणार आहे. - भूपाल पटवर्धन, अध्यक्ष, कार्यकारी मंडळ, भांडारकर प्राच्यविद्या संशोधन संस्था पुणे : भांडारकर प्राच्यविद्या संशोधन संस्थेतील भाषा आणि संस्कृतीशी निगडित पुस्तके आता अभ्यासक व वाचक यांना ऑनलाईन उपलब्ध होणार आहेत. त्यादृष्टीने काम सुरू झाले असून, पहिल्या टप्प्यात संस्थेतील ४0 ते ५0 हजार पुस्तकांचा ठेवा डिजिटल रूपात उपलब्ध होणार आहे. संस्थेत सध्या १ लाख ३0 हजारांहून अधिक दुर्मिळ व ऐतिहासिक ग्रंथ आहेत. त्यांपैकी ४0 ते ५0 हजार पुस्तकांच्या प्रतींचे पुनर्मुद्रणच झालेले नाही. त्यामुळे ही पुस्तके सर्वांसाठी खुली व्हावीत, यासाठी संस्थेच्या वतीने डिजिटायझेशनच्या कामासाठी पुढाकार घेण्यात आला आहे. उद्योगपती जितेन गजारिया यांनी १५ लाखांचा स्कॅनर संस्थेला भेट दिला असून, र्जमनीतून तो येत्या १५ दिवसांत संस्थेत दाखल होईल. त्यानंतर या कामाला प्रत्यक्ष सुरुवात होईल. अशा प्रकारच्या आणखी २ स्कॅनरची संस्थेला आवश्यकता असून, ते मिळाल्यास हे डिजिटायझेशनचे काम लवकरात लवकर पूर्ण करता येऊ शकेल, असे भांडारकर संशोधन संस्थेच्या कार्यकारी मंडळाचे अध्यक्ष भूपाल पटवर्धन यांनी पत्रकारांशी बोलताना सांगितले. पटवर्धन म्हणाले, ''संस्थेतील कोणतेही पुस्तक बाहेर घेऊन जाण्याची परवानगी नसल्याने अनेक जणांना येथील ग्रंथसंपदेचा लाभ घेता येत नाही. त्यादृष्टीने हा डिजिटायझेशनचा प्रकल्प निश्‍चितच आशादायक ठरणार आहे.'' संस्थेला राज्यातील विविध संस्था व व्यक्ती आर्थिक साह्य करीत असल्याने या प्रकल्पासाठी शासनाची मदत घेणार नसल्याचेही त्यांनी स्पष्ट केले. याविषयी प्रभारी ग्रंथपाल मेघना देशपांडे म्हणाल्या, ''पहिल्या टप्प्यातील ४0 ते ५0 हजार पुस्तके म्हणजे २५ ते ३0 लाख पाने ई-लायब्ररीच्या स्वरूपात उपलब्ध होतील.'' ही पुस्तके पीडीएफ फॉरमॅटमध्ये असतील व वाचकांना सशुल्क उपलब्ध करून दिली जातील, असे भांडारकरचे मानद सचिव डॉ. श्रीकांत बहुलकर म्हणाले. (प्रतिनिधी) पुणे, मंगळवार, दि. १९ एप्रिल २0१६ पुणे, मंगळवार, दि. १९ एप्रिल २0१६