The New York Public Library released their top-10 most loaned-out books of all-time...

...and the winner is a children's book. The Snow Day by Ezra Jack Keats leads the way.

In fact, most of the list is made up of children's books, which makes sense considering they're a quick read and children tend to mow through books in about five minutes. All the rest of the books on the list are quite short, too, ranging in the 300-page area.

The New York Public Library turns 125-years old in 2020, which means they're looking back at their history. This leads to wondering what books they've loaned out the most in that time. All books on the list are fiction, except one--the 1936 self-help How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie.

That's right--nebbish Dale Carnegie was an influencer long before Instagrammers wooed the masses and hawked moisturizers and salad mixes. The book was a major draw for decades, even leading Time Magazine in 2011 to award it as one of the 100 most influential books.

So, what cracked the top-10?

The Top Ten:

1.)  The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats: 485,583 checkouts

2.)  The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss: 469,650 checkouts

3.)  1984 by George Orwell: 441,770 checkouts

4.)  Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak: 436,016 checkouts

5.)  To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee: 422,912 checkouts

6.)  Charlotte's Web by E.B. White: 337,948 checkouts

7.)  Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury: 316,404 checkouts

8.)  How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie: 284,524 checkouts

9.)  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling: 231,022 checkouts

10.)  The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle: 189,550 checkouts


The Caldecott Medal-winning The Snowy Day was released in 1962, but eight of the ten books listed all came from a window ranging between 1949-to-1969, with only Harry Potter and the aforementioned How to Win Friends as the outliers.

If you're wondering why Goodnight Moon isn't included on the list, not only do you have a curious and discerning taste in children's books, it's because the NYPL's children's librarian Anne Carroll Moore despised the book and refused to have the library carry it for decades. She died in 1961, so by the time the NYPL reaches its 200th anniversary, the book will crack the top-10.

Quitting college and hanging with Nazis isn't helping anyone's brand.

Nick Fuentes, an 18-year old student from the suburbs of Chicago who was about to start his sophomore year at Boston University, has decided to abruptly quit the school before the new semester starts. Why? Because he swung on down to Charlottesville and protested alongside KKK members and Nazis, and apparently folks back in the Boston area haven't been too thrilled with him.

"Massachusetts, and Boston in particular, are among the most left wing states and cities," Fuentes told the Boston Globe. "Probably anywhere I would go would be safer than Boston."

I'm sure some people in Barcelona and Syria might note the hyperbole from Fuentes, but I digress.

Fuentes claims he's received a number of death threats, telling the Globe the area is very dangerous. In a video with Time Magazine, Fuentes explained why quitting Boston University was for the best:





His brand? His brand? I'm fairly certain sometime in Marketing 101 at college they don't suggest the Neo-Nazi or KKK association as a good idea for branding. OHHH, but Fuentes is quitting college, so he might miss that class.

According to the Globe, though:

Fuentes said he thought the event was intended as a demonstration against “immigration, multiculturalism, and post-modernism.”

“The rally was about not replacing white people,” he said.

Public officials handled the event poorly, he said. The police were not allowed to do their jobs properly, making the rally “a total disaster from start to finish,” he said.

That seems to contrast mightily with how Fuentes felt while actually at the rally itself, when he let his thumbs do the talking on Facebook:




Ahh, those "incredible" "disasters."

The same thing could be said of Fuentes' decision-making as of late.

Harvard Law School mistakenly listed Anthony Scaramucci as dead.

Say it with me: Only his political career is, Harvard...only his political career.

Harvard Law School released the latest printed edition of its alumni directory recently, where the former White House communications director has an asterisk beside his name. What does the asterisk mean? That Anthony Scaramucci is dead.

Harvard apologized, telling The Washington Post it was a regrettable "error" and that they'd fix the mistake in future editions.

The one small problem? Before this year, the directory was last printed six years ago. This means The Mooch might have to wait a bit before his resurrection can occur.

Time Magazine and the writers who actually made the cover, 1930s edition

As should be obvious, Time Magazine is a news source, most famous these days for naming their Person of The Year every late December and...not much else. Ask your grandfather what it was like to read Time back in the 1950s. It was something then.

To be on the cover was almost considered an honor years ago when the magazine started in 1923, only for the most noteworthy, notable, and noted individuals in the world. Politicians, religious figures, scientists, dictators, athletes, business leaders, and celebrities the world over all made the weekly cover. And, occasionally, so did writers. It's true! Writers were once famous and important.

Previously, we noted the famous authors, playwrights, and journalists--writers in general--who made the cover of Time in the 1920s and made writing seem important, briefly, during that decade.

So, now, we continue with the 1930s:


1.)  We now know the trivia answer to "What was Willa Cather's middle name?" Apparently it's Sibert, which I didn't see coming. If that's asked at your local bar trivia night, they're going deeeeeeep.

Willa Cather, August 3, 1931

2.)  Making his THIRD cover appearance in under a decade, Eugene O'Neill gets the sketched/drawn treatment, which keeps his typical boyish charm and broad smile apparent  vacant death stare that suggests you better not take a nap around him.

I'm not certain what blackmail material O'Neill had on the editors at Time to warrant THREE covers, but he wasn't done in years to come.

Eugene O'Neill, November 2, 1931

3.)  You know it was the 1930s because men wore pocket squares as big as their head and they could casually smoke a cigarette on the cover, as Noel Coward does here.

Sitting on an end table is timeless, though.

Noel Coward, January 30, 1933

4.)  It's quite possible everyone in the 1930s was simply miserable, as Gertrude Stein sees Eugene O'Neill's general unhappiness and raises him a mild depression.

Bonus points for the sweater vest, though. Stein looks like she's a costar to any Johnny Depp or Winona Ryder movie, circa 1992. She was ahead of her time. (See what I did there?? Ehh??)

Gertrude Stein, September 11, 1933

5.)  While not an author, Alice saw a resurgence in popularity some seventy years after it was first published by Lewis Carroll.

Seeing as it isn't an author, this is as enthusiastic as anyone related to writing gets on the cover of Time in the 1930s.

Alice in Wonderland, December 25, 1933

6.)  Next upon the cavalcade of joy general disdain for humanity is James Joyce, who in the coming years will not only take over Eugene O'Neill's penchant for dourness, but become the dominant face of writers appearing on Time.

Apparently the editors at Time wanted to make sure Americans immersed themselves in lengthy, bleak, gloomy works the whole family could enjoy!

James Joyce, January 29, 1934

7.)  Put up yer' dukes, because Upton Sinclair is ready for some action!

Upton Sinclair, October 22, 1934

8.)  I've always wondered why photos would show posed subjects staring off to the side. Did Virginia Woolf get distracted? Did she just think up another 2,500 word sentence or five page paragraph to write? What's going on here?

Virginia Woolf, April 12, 1937

9.)  I can't tell you why Ernest Hemingway's first appearance on the cover looks like it was a 10th grade art project, or why his face is skinny but his torso looks like he's pushing three bills.

Ernest Hemingway, October 18, 1937

10.)  William Faulkner really wants you to count how many variations on beige you can make out on his cover.

William Faulkner, January 23, 1939

11.)  Admittedly, at first I thought James Joyce's second cover appearance was him asleep while reading, which would have been very laid back of him.

James Joyce, May 8, 1939

12.)  You're probably saying, "Who now?" But regarded by some as "The First Lady of Journalism," Dorothy Thompson was so popular a writer that the Nazis kicked her out of Germany before America became involved, and Katharine Hepburn based one of her most famous movie roles on her.

Anytime you're irking Adolf Hitler is a sign your writing has power. It's a good thing.

Dorothy Thompson, June 12, 1939

13.)  Unless you're a theater snob, you just asked, "Who now?" a second time.

George S. Kaufman was all the rage in theater for a time. In the 1930s he won two Pulitzer Prizes, one for a drama and another for a musical he wrote. Years later, he'd win a Tony Award as director for Guys and Dolls.

This is all to say I just prepped you for that obscure Jeopardy! category someday.

George S. Kaufman, November 20, 1939

14.)  That's a borderline smile I see from Carl Sandburg! I think the lips are slightly curled upward! We're ending the decade with the slightest hint of happiness!!

Carl Sandburg, December 4, 1939

Time Magazine and the writers who actually made the cover, 1920s edition.

As should be obvious, Time Magazine is a news source, most famous these days for naming their Person of The Year every late December and...not much else. Ask your grandfather what it was like to read Time back in the 1950s. It was something then.

To be on the cover was almost considered an honor years ago when the magazine started in 1923, only for the most noteworthy, notable, and noted individuals in the world. Politicians, religious figures, scientists, dictators, athletes, business leaders, and celebrities the world over all made the weekly cover. And, occasionally, so did writers. It's true! Writers were once famous and important.

In the coming weeks, we'll note the authors, playwrights, and journalists--writers in general--who made the cover of Time and made writing seem important, briefly, during various decades

Starting with the 1920s:


1.)  It only took until the sixth issue for a writer to appear! Sadly, it was Joseph Conrad, but we'll take what we can get,

Joseph Conrad, April 7, 1923

2.)  Later in the inaugural year, George Bernard Shaw made the cover, giving his typical creepy grandfather stare.

George Bernard Shaw, December 24, 1923

3.)  Eugene O'Neill popped up in 1924, showcasing his usual perturbed faced that looks like he's five seconds away from lashing out at someone innocent.

Eugene O'Neill, March 7, 1924

4.)  Amy Lowell was one of the few women to make the cover in the 1920s, and she's randomly shown reading in what appears to be the world's most uncomfortable chair. Because, why not.

Amy Lowell, March 2, 1925

5.)  Booth Tarkington offers the least intriguing cover ever in 1925.

Booth Tarkington, December 21, 1925

6.)  In 1926, Time gave us a quick answer to a bar trivia question, telling us H.G. Wells was also known as Herbert George Wells.

H.G. Wells, September 20, 1926

7.)  You can tell it was the 1920s simply because it was common to show people casually smoking on the cover, as Rudyard Kipling does in 1926.

Rudyard Kipling, September 27, 1926

8.)  Sinclair Lewis realizes this might be the most famous he'll get and seems despondent in 1927.

Sinclair Lewis, March 14, 1927

9.)  Michael Arlen was widely famous in the 1920s, but commonly referred to as "Whosa who?" these days.

Michael Arlen, May 2, 1927

10.)  Eugene O'Neill was a hot commodity in the 1920s and made a second cover. As we can see, his temperament didn't change. What a charmer!

Eugene O'Neill, February 13, 1928

Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Bob Dylan was announced as the winner of the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.

And Bob Dylan is a plagiarist.

The Swedish Academy, which votes on the prize, can make their reasons and rationales. They can call Dylan a "great poet in the English-speaking tradition," and suggest Dylan "created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

But Dylan isn't a poet. He's a cult of personality, a creation solely conjured up to captivate the gullible, and a plagiarist who has repeatedly stolen lines and passages from obscure writers and passed it off as his own work.

There was the story in 2003 of Dylan being accused of stealing passages from Japanese writer Junichi Saga's novel Confessions of a Yakuza.

There were allusions in 2006 of Dylan using words, phrasing, and imagery of the relatively obscure American Civil War poet Henry Timrod.

In 2009, people noticed that Dylan's 2004 memoir seemed to borrow heavily from vintage editions of Time Magazine.

There were even questions in 2011 if Dylan's original artwork in a show wasn't actually just direct copies of historical photographs.

There have been other accusations as well--and not all believe Dylan is the stunningly skilled writer the Swedish Academy and his cult of followers believe him to be. His contemporary, Joni Mitchell, has repeatedly called Dylan out. In a 2010 interview, Mitchell let loose. "Bob is not authentic at all," she said. "He's a plagiarist and his name and voice are fake. Everything about Bob is a deception." In a 2013 interview with Uncut, Mitchell continued the feeling. When asked about calling Dylan a plagiarist, Mitchell said, "It's not like I outed him. He stole all of his lines out of a Japanese hoodlum's novel. There was a lawsuit impending, but it got dropped. He told me 'I haven't written a song in years.'"

There's the old, overused adage that good writers borrow; great writers steal, and by that very vague qualifier Dylan is worthy of the Nobel Prize.

By any other metric, by any other definition, by any sense of ethics, Dylan has succeeded only by piggybacking off the backs of people who spent many long days and longer nights trying to craft a beautiful line of poetry, a phrase that instills awe, a piece of art. Dylan is not an artist, he is not a writer, and he is not original.

The 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature doesn't belong to Bob Dylan, although he may claim it. The award belongs to obscure Civil War poets, and Japanese storytellers, and the long deceased writers of Time Magazine of years gone by.

When I was a teenager, I influenced a lot of cupcakes to go into my mouth.

Influence is such a vague term.

Is influence how large a net you cast to the greatest number of people, or the depth of impact you leave on an individual?

Time Magazine released their list of The 30 Most Influential Teenagers. Time's belief seems to be of the casted-net variety.

The list includes a half dozen budding fashion designers, a few Youtube and Vine celebrities, two Kardashians that go by Jenner, a couple political-ish kids who'll probably change their philosophy by the time they're 20, a chef just past puberty who charges $160 for a meal, a few athletes who probably have overbearing parents, a handful of actors, a smattering of singers who are more overdubbed than capable of singing and...one teen who sort of/kind of writes (...on a website about video games mainly).

One.

Out of thirty teenagers in this world, the influence of writing is overshadowed by two Kardashians, fashion designers, and Youtube chuckly-ha-has. Just one kid who writes about video games--but more kids who have appeared on the Disney Channel.

Take Mary Shelley. Take Percy Bysshe Shelley. Take Arthur Rimbaud, Stephen Crane, and William Cullen Bryant.

You know what they had in common? What they had in common with dozens others throughout the years? They all wrote poems or novels before the age of 20.

Although, admittedly, only one--Arthur Rimbaud--would've appeared on the Disney Channel if he was alive today. So fresh-faced and a teen heartthrob!

Time's 100 Most Influential People (...includes five writers, in an upset)

For 2013, Time Magazine deemed only two writers influential enough to crack their list of the 100 Most Influential People on the planet. The two that cracked it? George Saunders and 2013's It-Writer-Of-The-Year Hilary Mantel.

This year's It-Writers, John Green and Donna Tartt, predictably made 2014's list, but Time's editors were apparently on a literary bender, because they included three--THREE! 3! three!--additional writers. Is writing making a comeback with regard to influence on the world?

Not quite. It's usually the writer's other activities that makes them noteworthy.

The three writers in addition to Green and Tartt:

Arundhati Roy 

Best known for winning the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 1998 for her debut novel The God of Small Things, she rarely writes fiction any longer.

Most of her output for the past decade involves political activism covering a wide swath of issues, and that's why Time found her noteworthy.

Barbara Brown Taylor

The writer or editor of thirteen books, Taylor is a renowned Episcopalian priest, professor, and theologian.

Yeah, it wasn't her writing that won Time over.

Binyavanga Wainaina

Best known as a memoirist, Wainaina won the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2002 for his work Discovering Home.

Wainaina is of note for Time not because of his skill with turning a phrase though, but because he announced he was gay after a lengthy list of anti-gay legislation swept across Africa in 2014.






All are worthy reasons of being selected as one of the world's most influential people, all noteworthy, all reasonable and dignified and wonderful.

But for literary merit alone?

No.

So two writers for their writing it is.

Maybe some day.

World's fastest nose typer might be quicker than you using your hands. And with fewer errors, too.

Khurshid Hussein recently set the Guinness World Record for speed typing with his nose, flawlessly entering a 103-character sentence on a keyboard in 47.44 seconds.

This wiped out the previous record of 1 minute 33 seconds, set in 2008 by someone who goes by just one name: Neeta. Much like pop stars and Italian Renaissance painters, nose typers only need one name.

Look at the crowd go wild starting at the 0:37 mark. The excitement is palpable.

Bard College president: SAT is part hoax, part fraud.

No need for a detailed set-up.

So says Leon Botstein, president of Bard College, in an essay to Time Magazine:

"The SAT will continue in its revised form to face challenges. It is part hoax and part fraud, albeit a profitable one. The College Board, however, is not entirely to blame. David Coleman is to be admired for trying to rescue an outdated, sinking ship. The real responsibility for our sorry state of affairs regarding college entrance examinations rests with our colleges and universities themselves. The elite institutions have willingly supported an alliance with the College Board to make their own lives easier, and we Americans seem to have accepted this owing to our misplaced love affair with standardized testing and rankings as the proper means to ensure educational excellence."

And...

"The commonsensical truth is that the only legitimate test is one where a question is put forward and an answer required with no options or hints. The one major reform in the new SAT seems to be the dropping of a required essay. This is ironic because the one thing colleges need to know in their admissions process is how well a student can think, construct an argument, and persuade. Asking a student to sit down and write essays in an examination setting might be an excellent way to discover an applicant’s command of language and thought. This one potentially useful piece of evidence has been made optional."

Everything Botstein says works except praising the College Board's David Coleman. Saying Coleman deserves admiration for preserving what is described as a "hoax" and a "fraud" is like saying you appreciate an artist selling fake Picasso's.

Sure, it looks good in theory, but it isn't real, is it?

Children read books to homeless cats.

At the Berks Country (PA) Animal Shelter, children between between grades 1-8 have taken up reading to the shelter's homeless cats, all part of a reading program called Book Buddies.

The program started around August 2013, when a then-10-year old son of the shelter's coordinator, Kristi Rodriguez, was having trouble reading. She recommended he read to the cats. As Rodriguez told TIME, "The cats aren't going to care if you mess up."







From this sprung up the program. Now participating children can earn rewards for reading often to their feline friends, earning small prizes with every five books they complete.

According to the Berks County Animal Shelter website, the benefits work both ways. "The program will help children improve their reading skills while also helping the shelter animals. Cats find the rhythmic sound of a voice very comforting and soothing."

You'll never seen Mr. Whiskers more comatose than when you read a little Virginia Woolf to him, trust me on that one.




photos: Berks County Animal Shelter

Penguin books agrees to recall book in India, destroy all copies.

Hindu nationalist group Shiksha Bachao Andolan filed a suit in India in 2011 against scholar Wendy Doniger's book The Hindus: An Alternative History, claiming the book inaccurately represented the religion, and did so with largely overt sexual tones. This, the group argued, violated the Indian penal code that bans "deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings or any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs."

After deliberations, Penguin has come to an agreement with the nationalist group, agreeing to withdraw and destroy any remaining copies of the book. This comes on the heels of other publishers in the country removing "offensive" texts, such as Bloomsbury removing The Descent of Air India last month.

And, thus, India has suddenly become the Alabama of Asia.

Wall Street Journal has its fingers on the pulse of sports, confuses LeBron James with middle-aged statistician Bill James

Statistician Bill James is famous for creating a different worldview on how to examine the quality of individual baseball athletes (see Brad Pitt's movie Moneyball, based on the book of the same name). Besides helping revolutionize how baseball is scouted, Bill James is also an historian and writer, and was named to TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World list in 2006.

Bill James is not LeBron James.

LeBron James is a worldly famous NBA superstar who has earned a salary of roughly $129 million in his career, not counting about $42 million annually in endorsements, which Forbes Magazine says makes him the 4th highest-paid athlete on the planet.

LeBron James is not Bill James.

This is where The Wall Street Journal gets confused.

JimRomenesko.com found the Journal story online suggesting LeBron, not Bill, has apparently been writing books with ties to JFK documentaries, as this screen grab shows.

Yeah, but what about Etta James and her countless books on economic theory? Where's the Journal with that?

A book about underpants was the most complained about library book in 2012.

The Captain Underpants series (with peppy titles such as The Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers and the timeless Revolting Revenge of the Radioactive Robo-Boxers) outnumbered all other book titles in requests to be removed from library shelves, according to the American Library Association.

The children's books snatched the top spot, surpassing the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy, which came in fourth place.

Because when it comes to the match-up between sadomasochistic sex and Fruit of the Looms, Americans fear sensible cotton undies more.

Fight like Sherlock Holmes.

Baritsu--a professed form of Japanese wrestling--was mentioned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his 1905 Sherlock Holmes story The Adventures of the Empty House. Yet, for nearly a century no one could verify that baritsu actually existed.

That's because it didn't. According to CNN/Time, Doyle misspelled the word (it's bartitsu--two Ts, not one--because you've never seen a historian crippled to the knees like they are with misspellings), and not Japanese wrestling at all, but a Victorian England creation that incorporated a variety of martial arts styles.

Bartitsu--which consists of boxing, judo, and stick fighting--was largely ignored until Sherlock Holmes junkies started looking into it and developing an exercise routine, and by 2011 led to the Bartitsu Club in New York City.

Says Roxanne Henkle, a practitioner of bartitsu, to CNN, "I thought instead of seeing a show I could learn something and maybe apply it in the real world."

Cracking a rattan cane off someone's throat followed up by a judo chop to the ears--those are everyday applications you can use in the workplace.

Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World

It's like a who's-who of people you never want to invite over a dinner party. Rand Paul, Kim Jong Un, Lena Dunham, LeBron James. The list goes on and on...to 100.

And the writers included? Hilary Mantel and George Saunders, a former film critic and geophysical engineer, respectively.

So the writing industry has that going for it.

The death of print newspapers is causing chaos at puppy shelters.

So says the San Francisco animal control agency which runs a puppy shelter.

The puppies are "poop machines," says Eric Zuercher, supervisor at the facility, to the Associated Press. The formerly abundant supply of old, used San Francisco Chronicle papers have dwindled with online newspaper subscriptions, which has led to a lack of puppy crate liners and, in turn, puppy poop overwhelming the shelter.

Your online subscription to a newspaper is why an abandoned puppy can't poop in peace.

Remember that when you're reading the New York Times book reviews online.

Senior Editor at Time Magazine wants to know why there aren't many female characters in 'The Hobbit.'

Let's cut to Time's Senior Editor Ruth Davis Konigsberg's argument:


The problem is one of biological accuracy. Tolkien’s characters defy the basics of reproduction: dwarf fathers beget dwarf sons, hobbit uncles pass rings down to hobbit nephews. If there are any mothers or daughters, aunts or nieces, they make no appearances. Trolls and orcs especially seem to rely on asexual reproduction, breeding whole male populations, which of course come in handy when amassing an army to attack the dwarves and elves.


'Asexual reproduction' and 'biological accuracy.'

Two phrases I always think of regarding The Hobbit.

And the Oxford English Dictionary's Word of the Year is GIF.

As in the compressed file format.

Guess it was a slow year for words.

India school holds record for most students. 39,437, to be exact.

The newest edition of the Guinness Book of World Records claims City Montessori School in Lucknow, the capital city of India's most populous state Uttar Pradesh, as the biggest in the world, The school also has 2,500 teachers and over 1,000 classrooms spread out over a campus which fosters to children from ages 3 to 17, all of whom wear uniforms. While a bit cramped, classes average around 45 students, which isn't that terrible when put into context.

And by context I mean it's better than being taught in Texas, so they have that going for themselves.




photo: Getty/AFP