Monday Tally is a weekly link round-up of some of my favorite posts discovered over the week. If you have suggestions for Monday Tally, please e-mail sophisticated [dot] dorkiness [at] gmail [dot] com. Enjoy!
This is my favorite blog post from the entire week: The Suck Fairy, and what happens when she comes to books we love. An explanation,
The Suck Fairy is an artefact [sic] of re-reading. If you read a book for the first time and it sucks, it’s nothing to do with her. It just sucks. Some books do. The Suck Fairy comes in when you come back to a book that you liked when you read it before, and on re-reading—well, it sucks. You can say that you have changed, you can hit your forehead dramatically and ask yourself how you could possibly have missed the suckiness the first time—or you can say that the Suck Fairy has been through while the book was sitting on the shelf and inserted the suck. The longer the book has been on the shelf unread, the more time she’s had to get into it. The advantage of this is exactly the same as the advantage of thinking of one’s once-beloved ex as having been eaten by a zombie, who is now shambling around using the name and body of the former person. It lets one keep one’s original love clear of the later betrayals.
Books and Blogging
I thought this post, Best Practices For Bloggers: 9 Tips For Working With Publishers And A Question About Contests, which I thought were helpful.
Joyce Carol Oates’ memoir, A Widow’s Story, came out this week to a little controversy. I enjoyed this reaction piece from Neiman Storyboard, which looked at death, truth and memoir.
What does it take to make a great American novel into a Great American Novel? The Guardian speculates.
In more blogger love: Book Ninja – No Book is Safe.
If you do not watch the totally hip video book reviewer, Ron Charles, reading this Publishers Weekly profile should be enough to convince you to look him up. Hilarious!
My Friends Write Stuff Too
My friend Katjusa wrote a story about engineers from Georgia Tech who have found way to use rubble from Haiti to make concrete for new buildings.
My friend Mark, the photographer for the photos I included in my post about politics in Wisconsin, wrote part of this story on why Ron Swanson, the libertarian department head from NBC’s Parks and Rec, would love Madison. There are so many good things about this story, I don’t even know where to begin.
Current Events
In sobering news, it came to light that CBS correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted while covering the riots in Egypt. Some people responded badly, to which I point them to this Salon article: What not to say about Lara Logan.
I didn’t get to watch it, but I’ve been oddly obsessed with Watson, an IBM supercomputer, taking on two Jeopardy! champs. Watson won, and Ken Jennings wrote about the experience challenging a computer on Slate.
You’ve probably already heard that Borders is closing about 200 stores (here’s a full list). There have been a lot of reaction pieces, but one of the most insightful I read came from Salon, which looked at how Borders lost its soul.
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Great list of links. I see the Suck Fairy’s visited my shelves a few times this past year …
The Book Ninja link isn’t working for me, but I love the idea of a “book ninja”!
Belle: I haven’t reread in awhile, so no visits from the Suck Fairy, thank goodness 🙂 Thanks for pointing out the broken link — I just had a extra couple characters in it. Fixed now!
I was appalled by some of the responses to Lara Logan, and I think she has been just the picture of courage and grace throughout the whole thing. The Salon article was an excellent overview of how not to be a jerk when something bad happens to someone. I don’t know why I keep being shocked when people blame the victim.
Jenny: I was too. That’s why I posted the Salon piece, since it sort of summarizes all the jack-assery and then responds to it appropriately.
I have never been visited by the Suck Fairy. Maybe that is because I don’t re-read?? Except for Gatsby.
I am so glad that I missed a lot of the crap about Lara Logan. That would have broken my heart. Hope that she is doing as well as could be expected.
Gwen: That could be it — I sense it’s hard for the Suck Fairy to visit before you read a book 🙂
You expand my world! Such cool stuff.
Aww, thanks Care 🙂 I do my best!
Thank you for introducing me to Ron Charles– I love it.
Ash: Me too! His video book reviews are to die for, as are many of his print reviews. He recently had some lovely and funny things to say about The Weird Sisters.
Ummm The Suck Fairy is completely and totally awesome. I love that! Also, the Logan commentary makes me sick. I commend her for being so strong and brave.
Amy: Agreed, and agreed. I’m glad she is safe, and that she came out about the assault, since it would probably have been easier to keep it private.
Are women still being blamed for being raped? Even by other women? These freer people sitting in the other countries write long hearty articles about how people in countries like Egypt should totally get their freedom, and when a woman gets raped, they still slip back to narrow-minded thoughts? I’m sick and tired of hearing people say that a woman provoked her own rape! Since when is it okay to be raped because you happen to look beautiful or hot?
Aths: It’s ridiculous. One of the reasons this particular blaming stuck out to me is because I’m a journalist (not one that does scary and brave things like she does, obviously), and the debate about safety for female journalists was interesting. But clearly victim blaming in rape is not, and should just be over.