Saturday Sharing (My Finds Are Yours)

With today's eclectic edition of Saturday Sharing, you'll find links to practice your French while browsing the online Books and Literature Gallery of the National Library of France, learn what writers think of their teachers in a series of posts at the Los Angeles Review of Books blog, read newspaper articles about Houdini from the collections at the Library of Congress, scan W.E.B. Du Bois's four-volume photograph album documenting African Americans' lives, use your virtual New York Library card to download free e-books, and imagine how a certain collection of topiaries might look in your garden come spring. Today's video feature is a segment from physicist Brian Greene's wonderful series The Fabric of the Cosmos. 

✦ Don't miss the virtual Books and Literature Gallery at the National Library of France. The online exhibitions range from Homer to Sartre to fairy tales, comics, Proust, and Persian splendors. You'll also find virtual exhibitions for architecture, photography, and cartography. (The various galleries are available in both English and French.)

✦ The Los Angeles Review of Books blog posts a semi-regular series "Writers on Teachers" that is well worth your time. Recent essays include "Siddhartha Deb: A Teacher of a Different Kind" by Morten Hoi Jensen; "Passionate Utterances: Learning from Stanley Cavell" by Sianne Ngail; "My Dinner with Marianne", Jeffrey Kindley on Marianne Moore; "The Lasting Impression", Mark Sarvas on Steven Corbin; "The Marathon Writer", Rita Williams on Alison Leslie Gold; "Marvin Mudrick Believes in You", Bob Baisdell and Jervey Tervalon; "The Prynne and I", Geoff Nicholson on Poet and Cambridge Institution J.H. Prynne; and "Howler Among the Pros", Clarissa Romano Remembers Barry Hannah. Links are provided at the end of each essay.

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✦ Did you know that our Library of Congress is a repository of Houdini memorabilia, including advertising posters, newspaper articles, photographs, and personal items documenting the great magician's career? Here's the first page of digitized items, part of the American Variety Stage Collection, available to browse online. Of additional interest is The Bigger Picture blog's article "Houdini Escapes the Smithsonian".

Among the American Treasures of the Library of Congress is the Photograph Album for the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900 for which W.E.B. Du Bois created four unique volumes documenting African Americans and various aspects of their lives. Of related interest: The Brian Lehrer Show's recent series of interviews with Henry Louis Gates Jr., Harvard University professor and director of W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, who talks about his book Life Upon These Shores (Knopf, 2011).

✦ Are you a member of the New York Public Library? If you are, you can download e-books without leaving home, although visiting the bricks-and-mortar building is always one of my stops when I travel to the city. Go here to learn how to access free e-books, learn what's on the library's recommended reading list, find apps for your children, and more. 

✦ When spring rolls around and one look at your bushes tells you some trimming is called for, remember these inspirational topiary fancies from the Archives of American Gardens, including "William the Lion" and "The Llama and His Mama", and these beautifully manicured "Green Animals". (My thanks for these links go to the Collections Search Center of the Smithsonian Institution.)

✦ Physicist Brian Greene's best-seller The Fabric of the Cosmos has been turned into a four-hour NOVA series. The video below introduces us to a fascinating subject: What Is Space? The other parts are "The Illusion of Time", "Quantum Leap", and "Universe or Multiverse". A Q&A with Greene is here.