blogis librorum. A blog about books. Rare books.

On December 23, 2021, legendary journalist, novelist, and essayist Joan Didion passed away at the age of eighty-seven due to complications from Parkinson's disease. Throughout a career spanning more than seventy years, she produced works of fiction and non-fiction that explored both the political and the personal.

This pioneer of New Journalism received many accolades throughout her career, including the National Book Award for Nonfiction, a National Medal for the Arts, and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Today, we explore Didion's career and some passages that exemplify her inimitable style and observational skills, which make her one of America's most important writers.

     

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British writer Virginia Woolf is undoubtedly one of the most important literary figures in both English literature and feminist literature. Her novels, essays, criticism, and work toward education reform have made her a frequent subject of study and firmly declared her relevant, even today when we are nearing sixty years since her death. Her work makes her a pillar of both feminism and modernism. Today, on the anniversary of her birth, let's take a closer look at her life and the ways in which she has stayed on the forefront of popular culture and zeitgeist.

     

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Edwin Aldrin Jr, better known as Buzz Aldrin, is perhaps one of America's best known explorer heroes. In 1969 he became one of the first men to walk on the moon during the Apollo 11 mission. He has served as one of the most prominent faces of NASA for many years, inspiring generations of people to go into the fields of aerospace and astronautics through his outspoken advocacy for space travel and exploration.

Even after Aldrin's retirement from NASA, he has continued to further knowledge of the importance of understanding space as a writer, authoring eleven books for a variety of age groups, including Footsteps on the Moon; The Return, Look to the Stars; Welcome to Mars: Making a Home on the Red Planet; and most recently, 2016's No Dream is Too High: Life Lessons From a Man Who Walked on the Moon. Though we all know Buzz Aldrin the astronaut and Buzz Aldrin the writer, here are some lesser-known facts about one of NASA's biggest names.

     

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