<div dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-16bf761f-08b2-dcda-8da6-e02e58c58dfc"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"><i>Welcome to Tuesday Topics, a monthly series covering topics with intellectual freedom implications for libraries of all types. Each message is prepared by a member of OLA's <a href="http://www.olaweb.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=159">Intellectual Freedom Committee</a> (IFC). Questions can be directed to the IFC member who sent the message or to one of the IFC chairs.</i></span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/iIkGUM1MtAS9nkXkBNvnrVoGQRI7kl6Y_WMqeiS76_3ib_WRKCJyFptglpFh_x3JCeb1g3TUl5AiaaPsu9nXvh7soUnkIOzzijD6W33LfPucG1RmD2ooP_JRAfewG6zba6q2YgzI" width="248" height="99" style="border: none;"></span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-weight:700;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"><font size="4"><u><i>Back to the beach! </i></u></font></span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Can professional reading be page-turning? Yes. Here are six books to pack in your beach bag which will make you gasp, sigh, chuckle, and hopefully even think about the importance of intellectual freedoms.</span></p><br><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-weight:700;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">The Idealist: Aaron Swartz and the Rise of Free Culture on the Internet</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> by Justin Peters (2016, nonfiction). Aaron Swartz was a brilliant wunderkind, an Internet entrepreneur, and a passionate voice for copyright reform. He also was indicted by the U.S. government for illegally downloading academic articles and subsequently committed suicide. This narrative nonfiction book tells the story of the historical events and figures (many of them quite colorful) which led to the U.S. copyright laws of today, and it raises questions about how these laws affect all of our intellectual lives.</span></p></li></ul><div><font color="#000000" face="Arial"><span style="line-height:17.94px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-weight:700;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">The Big Green Tent</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> by Ludmila Ulitskaya (2016, fiction). Maybe your summer reading tastes tend towards big Russian novels? Then you’re in luck! This beautifully translated epic is set in the Soviet Union and Russia from the death of Stalin (1953) to the mid 1990s, among a community of people to whom samizdat, underground literature, is the stuff of life. You can read about the author and this book in “</span><a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/12/big-green-tent-and-the-subversive-power-of-books/413137/" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">The Big Green Tent and the Subversive Power of Books</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">” by Leonid Bershidsky, from the December 2015 </span><span style="font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Atlantic</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> magazine.</span></p></li></ul><div><font color="#000000" face="Arial"><span style="line-height:17.94px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-weight:700;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> by David Hajdu (2008, nonfiction). Right now is the perfect time for you to read this fast-paced and fascinating account of the rise of comic books in the middle of the 20th century, and the rise of those who would censor them. Why do you need to read this right now? Because the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art in Eugene is currently hosting an exhibit of artwork from a publisher who stood up to the massive wave of comic book censorship that took place in the 1950s: EC Comics. “</span><a href="http://jsma.uoregon.edu/EC" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Aliens, Monsters, and Madmen: The Art of EC Comics</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">” is on display until July 10, 2016.</span></p></li></ul><div><font color="#000000" face="Arial"><span style="line-height:17.94px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-weight:700;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Americus</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> by MK Reed and Jonathan Hill (2011, graphic novel). This graphic novel takes you to the modern-day, fictional small town of Americus, where  a battle is raging over whether the community's children should be allowed to read the blockbuster fantasy series, “The Adventures of Apathea Ravenchilde.” Meanwhile, awkward teenager Neil Barton is just trying to muddle through high school. </span></p></li></ul><div><font color="#000000" face="Arial"><span style="line-height:17.94px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);font-weight:700;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">The Republic of Imagination: America in Three Books</span><span style="font-style:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> </span><span style="font-weight:400;font-style:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">by Azar Nafisi (2014, nonfiction). Nafisi, author of the bestselling </span><span style="font-weight:400;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Reading Lolita in Tehran</span><span style="font-weight:400;font-style:normal;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">, reflects on the power of books and their relation to freedom, both in her native Iran and in the United States. She envisions a “Republic of Imagination” where there are “no borders and few restrictions, where the villains are conformity and orthodoxy and the only passports to entry are a free mind and a willingness to dream.” Sounds like a library to me!</span></p></li></ul><div><font color="#000000" face="Arial"><span style="line-height:17.94px;white-space:pre-wrap"><br></span></font></div><ul style="margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><li dir="ltr" style="list-style-type:disc;font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;background-color:transparent"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-weight:700;font-style:italic;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Looking for Alaska</span><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> by John Green (2005, young-adult fiction). According to the American Library Association, this was the most challenged book in U.S. libraries in 2015. And of course John Green has a </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69rd-7vEF3s" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">fantastic video response</span></a><span style="vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> to this dubious honor.</span></p></li></ul><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">You can find all these titles, along with last year's picks, on the </span><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/39800860-ola-intellectual-freedom?shelf=if-beach-reads" style="text-decoration:none"><span style="font-family:Arial;text-decoration:underline;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">OLA Intellectual Freedom Committee’s Goodreads page</span></a><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">.</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">Happy reading!</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">-Ross Betzer</span></p><br><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"><i>Information Services Librarian - Multnomah County Library</i></span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height:1.38;margin-top:0pt;margin-bottom:0pt"><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"><i>Member - Oregon Library Association Intellectual Freedom Committee</i></span></p><i><a href="mailto:rossbk@multcolib.org"><span style="font-family:Arial;vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent">rossbk@multcolib.org</span></a><span style="font-family:Arial;color:rgb(0,0,0);vertical-align:baseline;white-space:pre-wrap;background-color:transparent"> | 503.988.5728</span></i></span><br>
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