It's Human Rights Month in commemoration of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the U.N. General Assembly on December 10, 1948. Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "The destiny of human rights is in the hands of all our citizens in all our citizens in all our communities."

Mark Twain said: "Every man is in his own person the whole human race, with not a detail lacking. I am the whole human race without a detail lacking; I have studied the human race with diligence and strong interest all these years in my own person; in myself I find in big or little proportion every quality and every defect that is findable in the mass of the race."

Henry David Thoreau said: "No humane being, past the thoughtless age of boyhood, will wantonly murder any creature which holds its life by the same tenure that he does."

And, Walt Whitman wrote: "A voice from Death, solemn and strange, in all his sweep and power, /
With sudden, indescribable blow--towns drown'd--humanity by thousands slain... Holding Humanity as in thy open hand, as some ephemeral toy..."

What are your thoughts on humanity? Do you agree with how writers have portrayed humanity--for good or ill?

It's the sixth day of December. It's St. Nicholas Day (the modern adaptation of the day is called KrampusNacht). Take a look at the reading selection for today:

• St. Nicholas - Horatio Algers
• The Pine Tree - Hans Christian Andersen

What are you reading on this day?

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the American literary figures you're almost certain to have read in any number of English or literature courses. His poetry and short stories are the favorite reading for Halloween; and his life (and untimely death) present us with no end of curiosities. His literary history is further embellished by the controversy that has surrounded his horrific works.

Most recently, Poe has once again made record-breaking history--with the sale of a rare collection of his poetry. According to the NY Post, "A rare copy of Edgar Allan Poe's first book has sold for $662,500 at a New York auction." The book was published in 1827--interestingly enough, the collection didn't include Poe's name. Apparently, only 12 copies are known to exist.

In The Raven, Poe writes:

"Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore,
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door."

Read the works of Edgar Allan Poe (collected poems, stories and more), and then join our discussion.

I love the idea that there are hidden literary treasures that are just waiting to be discovered. The Original of Laura was just published--unfinished and culled from Nabokov's hand-written notecards. But, would the author be rolling over in his grave?

AP, Globe & Mail, NPR, New York Books, The Guardian, Slate, and LA Times--all offer us the pieces of another great Nabokov puzzle. Why was his final, unfinished novel published (against his wishes--with questionable results)?

Of course, Nabokov is world famous (and controversial)--works like Lolita are acclaimed as world masterworks. So, we want to know everything about the man and his genius of words. We yearn for more. When they tell us we've reach the end (the final word), what can we do? We (as hungry readers) dare to ask for more. We sometimes even manage to reach (as it were) beyond the grave. We grasp at those tidbits of knowledge and understanding that were never intended for us to see. We never think to ask if there wasn't a VERY good reason for not releasing the manuscript in the first place. What about the author's wishes?

I should say: I haven't read the novel, so I can't address the quality of the fiction, nor the power of Nabokov's eloquence in this unfinished form. I'm sure (as many of the reviewers have already noted), there will be moments of brilliance in Nabokov's last unfinished manuscript. As Brian Boyd says, "Vladimir Nabokov's incomplete novel reminds us of the power of his story-telling."

Others have not been so kind in their assessments. Aleksandar Hemon (Slate) says: "At a mere 9,000 or so words, The Original of Laura is at best a short-story sketch, at worst a collection of 138 notecards (which Nabokov preferred to use to compose, leaving it to his wife, Vera, to type the manuscript), slapped together in just enough of a semblance of order to afford the reader a peek at a possible structure and a hint of the underlying ideas." He leaves little guess why he feels so strongly that the work should never have seen the publisher's light of day.

The reality of it is... We can talk about what could or should have been done with the manuscript, but I find myself strangely fascinated by this: yet another piece of the literary puzzle that's been left. After all, if Nabokov had wanted his work to be destroyed, why didn't he burn it? And, I can't help but think of that other famous quote from Nabokov: "The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible."

The page is not so blank anymore...