Let Them Eat Books

Today was our library's 7th annual Edible Books Festival! It was my first, though. It was great.

If you're not familiar with the concept, please note: we don't eat the books. (Please don't eat the books.) Instead, members of the community make or bake things that are book-related. We then take a day to judge them - that was today - and then, the next day (tomorrow), we eat them. 

I am very much looking forward to the eating part.

This was my first time participating, and here was my entry:

Aw, poor lemon cake... Don't worry - it'll all be over soon.

If you're not familiar with the book, The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, you should go pick up a copy and read it. It's the delicious story of Rose, a young lady growing up with a magical gift - or perhaps it's more of a curse: she can taste the emotions of those who prepare the food she eats. In the novel, we see how difficult it can be to love those you know the best, while growing to understand the interdependence we all rely on to live life. 

Also, my cake made a really nice bookface.

Links!

• Library Land
• Happy National Library Week!  State of America’s Libraries 2017 "Today the American Library Association (ALA) released The State of America’s Libraries, an annual report released during National Library Week, April 9–15, that captures usage trends within all types of libraries. The report finds that library workers’ expertise continues to play a key role in the transformation of communities through access to services that empower users to navigate our ever-changing digital, social, economic, and political society." 
• Related: Sunday Sweets BRINGS CAKE To The Library! "It's National Library Week this week, so who's ready to sink your teeth into a good book or two?" Me! I am! "Now, who wants to go to the library? Remember to thank a librarian while you're there!" Don't forget to bring us cake. 
• 2017 Pulitzer Prizes So much goodness on this list, including The Underground Railroad, which I reviewed earlier this year. It is amazing. If you haven't read it yet, you should do so.
• Evicted by Matthew Desmond review – what if the problem of poverty is that it’s profitable to other people? "What if the dominant discourse on poverty is just wrong? What if the problem isn’t that poor people have bad morals – that they’re lazy and impulsive and irresponsible and have no family values – or that they lack the skills and smarts to fit in with our shiny 21st-century economy? What if the problem is that poverty is profitable?"
• 'The Little Prince' becomes world's most translated book, excluding religious works "The cult classic by Antoine Saint Exupéry, originally written in French, has been translated into its 300th language -- Hassanya -- a North African variant of Arabic, reports Livre Hebdo, citing the Antoine de Saint Exupéry Youth Foundation. This makes 'Le Petit Prince' the world's most translated book, excluding religious works."
• Let’s Make The Copyright Office Less Political, Not More "The Register has gone from being a neutral expert to a political player. In theory, the bill would help mitigate this effect by making this Register more accountable to the public – after all, under the current regime the Register answers only to the Librarian of Congress. In practice, though, we fear it’s designed to do something else: allow powerful incumbent interests to use their lobbying power to control this increasingly politicized office.  No president is going to select an appointee that will be shot down by special interests. And while the Librarian of Congress still oversees the Copyright Office, the Librarian of Congress would not be able to remove the Register no matter how poorly they perform their job."
• Health, Science, & Technology
• The ecological disaster that is Trump’s border wall: a visual guide
  

  There’s a long debate over whether physical barriers on the border actually curb the illicit flow of people and drugs. The Border Patrol, which is backing Trump’s plan, says they’re a “vital tool.” Migration experts say they’re more symbolic than effective.

  But what is undeniable is that the 654 miles of walls and fences already on the US-Mexico border have made a mess out of the environment there. They’ve cut off, isolated, and reduced populations of some of the rarest and most amazing animals in North America, like the jaguar and ocelot. They’ve led to the creation of miles of roads through pristine wilderness areas. They’ve even exacerbated flooding, becoming dams when rivers have overflowed.

  And while we don’t yet know exactly what path Trump’s new wall would take, the Department of Homeland Security has been eyeing unfenced areas in an east Texas wildlife refuge that conservationists consider some of the most ecologically valuable areas on the border — home to armadillos and bobcats. If a wall were to slice through these ecosystems, it could cause irreversible damage to plants and animals already under serious threat. 

   
• This mortal coral: new bleaching at the Great Barrier Reef – in pictures "Aerial surveys of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef conducted in late 2016 and early 2017 show the Unesco world heritage site has suffered severe coral bleaching for the second year in a row. According to Prof Terry Hughes, who conducted the surveys, the bleaching is caused by ‘record-breaking temperatures driven by global warming’." The pictures are beautiful - even if the outlook isn't good. 
• International
• Nearly 300 bodies pulled from rubble of Mosul airstrike "Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend, the top U.S. general commanding the fight against Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, has said that there was 'at least a fair chance' that the U.S.-led coalition was responsible for the strike, but if so, it was 'an unintentional accident of war, and we will transparently report it to you.'"
• Egypt's Christians bury victims of bombings as Israel closes border at Sinai "Instead of making him feel more secure, he said the state of emergency threatened to take Egypt 'back to the Mubarak presidential period,' an era of repression under longtime President Hosni Mubarak that ended with Arab Spring protests in 2011."
• U.S. Navy strike group to move toward Korean peninsula "A U.S. Navy strike group will be moving toward the western Pacific Ocean near the Korean peninsula as a show of force, a U.S. official told Reuters on Saturday, as concerns grow about North Korea's advancing weapons program." Related: North Korea says Syria airstrikes prove its nukes justified "The North called the airstrikes 'absolutely unpardonable' and said they prove its nuclear weapons are justified to protect the country against Washington's 'evermore reckless moves for a war.'"
• Schiff says Russia is absolutely 'complicit' in Syrian chemical attack "'Absolutely they're complicit,' Rep. Adam Schiff of California told ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos on 'This Week' Sunday. 'Russian intelligence may not be as good as ours, but it's good enough to know the Syrians had chemical weapons, were using chemical weapons.'"
• U.S. News
• 2 dead in shooting at San Bernardino's North Park Elementary "Two adults died in a shooting Monday in a classroom at San Bernardino, California's North Park Elementary School, in what is believed to be a murder-suicide, San Bernardino police said." Two students were also injured, and are in critical condition.
• Update: Teacher, 8-year-old student killed in San Bernardino special-ed classroom shooting, officials say "San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said during a news conference Monday that Karen Elaine Smith, 53, a teacher, was killed inside a classroom at North Park Elementary School by her estranged husband, Cedric Anderson, 53. Anderson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.  The chief said Jonathan Martinez, 8, was airlifted to a hospital, where he died. Burguan said a 9-year-old child, whose name has not been released, remains in stable condition at a hospital."
• Sessions orders Justice Dept. to end forensic science commission, suspend review policy "Attorney General Jeff Sessions will end a Justice Department partnership with independent scientists to raise forensic science standards and has suspended an expanded review of FBI testimony across several techniques that have come under question, saying a new strategy will be set by an in-house team of law enforcement advisers." After all, how often does the forensic evidence actually get overturned later?  "In 2015, the department and bureau reported that nearly every examiner in an elite hair analysis unit gave scientifically flawed or overstated testimony in 90 percent of cases for two decades before 2000. The cases include 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison." Ouch. 
• Spain has arrested a Russian hacker at the US’s request "A US arrest warrant accused Pyotr Levashov, arrested in Barcelona on Sunday while on vacation, of participating in a Russian cyber-espionage campaign to aid Donald Trump’s campaign..."
• Throwing Bombs "For the Revolutionaries who forged America, war was a means to an end. And that end was a new and better nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle … well, maybe they fell a little short back then but, yeah, that. They were nation builders.  Two and half centuries later, we have become a nation of bomb throwers. Literally and figuratively.  For us, war is no longer a means to an end, it is the end. It’s what we do, endlessly."