Another sign of the changing times…
5,400 public libraries are now lending free e-books and audio books to their patrons. With the help of OverDrive, library customers can download texts to their Sony e-book readers, computers and various hand held devices. They get two to three weeks with the book, and then, poof, it expires.

Jason Kottke has unearthed a rare and lengthy interview with the great director, Alfred Hitchcock. The interview was conducted by Tom Snyder back in 1973, and he starts with a good question. “All of the pictures that you do scare people.

We’re lucky to have Anne Frank’s diary — lucky that the diary was ever discovered, and lucky, too, that someone took a chance on publishing the eventual bestseller. This is all nicely outlined by Francine Prose, who has a new book out called Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife.

Let’s take you back to the beginning of David Lynch’s career. Above, we’re back in 1968, and we’re featuring Lynch’s second short film. “The Alphabet,” which won an award by the American Film Institute, has been released on DVD along with five other early short films. Find them here.

A very quick fyi: If you haven’t already, you should spend some time at Arts & Letters Daily. It is essentially a meta site that gathers links to the “most intelligent, provocative, and illuminating news stories, critical reviews, political essays, and commentaries published online.

Or so that’s the claim of Brian Vickers, a professor at the Institute of English Studies at the University of London.

50 years of space exploration condensed into one rather beautiful image. Make sure that you click the items to get the historical details…
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This clip of Coltrane’s 1960 classic comes to us via @hughmcguire.
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Gustavo Dudamel, the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, kicked off his tenure last Saturday with a free performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Hollywood Bowl. 18,000 people were in attendance.

A little birthday present. John Lennon would have been 69 years old today. This memorable interview, recorded in 1971, features John and Yoko in a candid, relaxed and wide-ranging conversation with one of America’s leading talk show hosts at the time. To watch the full interview, see  Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6.