Some of the Best Commencement Addresses by Authors

In honour of the 2,100+ VUW students who have graduated this week, here are a few of our favourite commencement addresses by famous writers.  Congratulations graduates!

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie at Kalamazoo College

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Neil Gaiman at The University of the Arts

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John Green at Butler University

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J K Rowling at Harvard University

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David Foster Wallace at Kenyon College

Books and Coffee

A Pictorial Tribute to the Perfect Combination:

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The Beautiful and the Cute

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Advice and Mantras

The Great Gatsby — Ready to Get Reaquainted

With Baz Luhrmann’s new take on The Great Gatsby soon to hit screens, the internet has exploded with all things Gatsby. Here’s a few of my favourites (Some Spoilers Included):

Boats Against the Current: A Great Gatsby/Arrested Development Mash-up

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Bluths in the Jazz Age: Another Great Gatsby/Arrested Development Mash-Up

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45 Wonderful Fan-Designed Covers for The Great Gatsby

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US National Public Radio interview with Baz Luhrmann

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Growing up in the US, we all read Gatsby in high school, a task which certainly wasn’t a chore, but which I suspect meant missing out on finer points of the novel which I would hope to pick up on had I read it at a less tender age. While I have every confidence in teenagers’ abilities to read complex novels closely and intelligently, my faded memory of Gatsby, as compared with other novels I read at that age, suggests that, at least where Gatsby was concerned, I was not one of these teens.

With the New Zealand Listener Book Club (as well as Oprah’s Book Club, BBC World Book Club and cOlbert’s Book Club) reading Gatsby before the film’s release, I feel a strong compulsion to pick the book back up and discover what my fifteen-year-old self may have missed. Or perhaps, with Luhrmann’s film on the horizon, I’m simply looking to re-familiarize myself in order to take advantage of my favourite, oft-times true, book nerd stock phrase:

Either way, Fitzgerald and I have a date with a cup of tea.

If, like me, you also feel caught up in the Gatsby whirlwind, you’re sure to enjoy the New Zealand Listener Book Club’s Gatsby Content as well as Young Adult author John Green’s excellent 2011 Gatsby Book Club video blog (see below for the episode covering Chapter One).  Happy Reading.

Liz Gillett

Bookish Videos — Part 2

Bookish Spaces

Inside the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum

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Inside an Oxford University Press Distribution Centre

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One Amazing Private Library

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Virginia Woolf’s House and Writing Studio

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Literary Short Films

The Last Bookshop

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Play by Samuel Beckett

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Lady Lazarus–1991 Experimental Film Featuring the Work of Sylvia Plath

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For More of the Above, Check Out Bookish Videos — Part 1

Literary News and Bookish Potpourri — April 28, 2013

Awards and Honours

The Orphan Master’s Son Wins Pulitzer for Fiction

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Huo Yan wins NZ’s Rewi Alley Writing Fellowship

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CBCA 2013 Book of the Year Awards

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Craig Childs Wins 2013 Orion Book Award

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Carrie Tiffany Wins Stella Prize for Women Writers

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LA Times Book Prize Winners Announced

(click through to read samples of the winners)

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Hilary Mantel

George Saunders

2 Authors on 

Time’s “100 Most Influential People“

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ABA Indies Choice and E.B. White Award Winners

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“Staggeringly Strong” Women’s Prize Shortlist

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International Prize for Arabic Fiction 2013

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‘Best Of Young British Novelists’ Announced

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Recent Losses to Literature

Auckland poet Sarah Broom died April 18 

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Children’s Book Author E. L. Konigsburg died April 19

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Quizzes

Which Classical Character Are You?

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Opening Lines Book Quiz

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Authors’ Real Names

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Books and TV

7 Reasons The Doctor is a Literary Hero

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The Simpsons’ Literary References

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Book-Loving TV Characters

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Bookish Videos — Part 1

Why, In Some Ways, Paper will Always Trump Digital

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Animated Leonard Lopate interview with David Foster Wallace

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The Doctor…I mean David Tennant, reads Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18

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Picture Book Classic Goodnight Moon Re-imagined as a Horror Film

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Phantom Tollbooth Documentary On the Way!

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Lego Book Safe

Literary News and Bookish Potpourri — April 14, 2013

Awards and Honours

NZ Post Children’s Book Awards Finalists

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3 NZ writers on Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist

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Storylines Book Awards Winners Announced

2013 Notable Books List also Announced

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2013 Royal Society of NZ Science Book Prize Shortlist

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NZ poet on 2013 Hippocrates Prize Shortlist

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Voting open for Children’s Choice Award 2013

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Prime Minister’s Awards for Literary Achievement:

     Nominations Open

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Recent Losses to Literature

Nigerian author Chinua Achebe died March 21, 2013, age 82

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NZ author Barbara Anderson died March 24, 2013, age 86.

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More Sad News

Iain Banks diagnosed with gall bladder cancer,

The Quarry to be his last novel

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Bookish NZ News

Wellington Writers Walk — Four New Sculptures

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Best NZ Poems Now On-line

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The Thrill of Falling by Witi Ihimaera on Radio NZ National

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