Robert Anderson, Librarian, Literature & Fiction Department

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Collage of audio recordings of plays

Are You Missing Live Theatre? Try Listening to a Play!

August 11, 2020

The majority of professional theatre companies across the country have now canceled their performance seasons through at least the end of this year, so it appears that it will be a minimum of six months before any of us sees the inside of the Mark Taper Forum, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Geffen Playhouse,


Collage of ten novels that influenced Alfred Hitchcock's best films

Ten Novels That Inspired Alfred Hitchcock

June 09, 2020

Forty years after his death, film director Alfred Hitchcock is still known as “the master of suspense”, and his movies retain their popularity and critical acclaim.


Collage of great operas adapted from classic books

Music and the Words That Inspired It: Compare These Operas With Their Literary Sources

May 18, 2020

Many of the world’s great operas have been adapted from or inspired by, classic and popular works of fiction, poetry, and drama. In some cases, an opera’s librettist follows the source material’s plot closely, while other adapters take considerable liberties with the story as originally written.


Book covers of other books to read than Huck Finn and Moby Dick

Beyond Huck Finn and Moby Dick: Some 19th-Century American Novels Worth Exploring

April 29, 2020

All of us who went through school in the United States have read at least a few American novels published before 1900.


Book covers

What Novels Were We Reading 100 Years Ago?

April 09, 2020

Like the current year, 1920 was an eventful one for the United States. The “Spanish Influenza” epidemic of the previous two years, which we’ve heard a lot about recently, had taken 675,000 American lives, including more than half of the 116,000 who died while serving in World War I.


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