I’m having a wicked case of writer’s block when it comes to writing about books. Or maybe I’ve just spent too many hours bingeing on Jane the Virgin, which is truly one of the most delightful shows I’ve watched in a long time. Whatever the reason, today I’m bringing a link round up of some great [...]
Link Roundup
Awhile ago, maybe all the way back in 2011, I did a week link round-up post on Monday’s called “Monday Tally.” I’ve been reading a lot of great stuff online lately and wanted a way to share it, so I decided to bring this one back semi-regularly. Enjoy! Book bloggers are either detrimental to literature [...]
This is a little on the old side, but the Young to Publishing Group published a story about the Independent Book Blogger Awards, and quoted a “contentious young editor” — aka yours truly! — about blogs as a conversation space for readers.
“Is Pottermore Good for Harry?” by Lev Grossman in TIME
Book critic and author Lev Grossman had an interesting piece in TIME about what Pottermore, the new “interactive thingy” that J.K. Rowling announced last week, might mean for book readers. I especially enjoyed this paragraph:
There are two things that separate reading from other media experiences. One is that reading is better: it’s richer and deeper and more complex and more beautiful. It’s more intellectually rewarding. And I say this as, among other things, a hard-core video gamer. All media have their strengths.
Page One: Inside the New York Times
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I am geeking out about a new documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times, by Andrew Rossi. It looks like a lot more than just “a day at the newspaper” — more of a look at the transformation of old media in a new media world.
5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren’t There Yet by John C. Abell in WIRED
I love a lot great discussion points about e-books in this article, but my favorite paragraph has to be this one:
It may be all about vanity, but books — how we arrange them, the ones we display in our public rooms, the ones we don’t keep — say a lot about what we want the world to think about us. Probably more than any other object in our homes, books are our coats of arms, our ice breakers, our calling cards. Locked in the dungeon of your digital reader, nobody can hear them speak on your behalf.
I want to just pull out this quote every time anyone in my family makes a comment about the growing size of my bookshelves!
“It’s Not About You” in The New York Times
David Brooks’ article about the challenges for recent college graduates talks about the challenges individualistic rhetoric for recent college graduates. It’s an interesting piece, but my favorite quote is this one:
No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.
I’m going to be experimenting with some changes to Monday Tally over the next couple months to see if I can find a way to make the post easier to put together and less time-consuming for everyone to read.
Last week I started playing around with Tumblr, which is a short-form blogging platform — somewhere between Twitter and a full-length blog. Tumblr has different post formats that make it easy to just throw up a picture, video, link, or text into a short post. So far, I really like it as a way to collect links and comment on them as I find them. You can find my Tumblr, A Little Bit of Dorkiness, at http://kimthedork.tumblr.com/.
Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns did an interview with Nieman Storyboard, one of my favorite blogs about journalism and narrative nonfiction, about some of the process of writing her book.
Natalie (Book, Line, and Sinker) wrote a great post – Book Reviews or Book Reports: Which are you writing? – about how she taught her students about reports and reviews. What I liked most about it was how well her advice can be applied to reviewers of all ages!
This graphic from Discover’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog is the best summary of the writing process that I’ve never seen. Go look at it, right now.
Flavorwire offered 10 food and literature pairings, including spaghetti with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and chocolate chip cookies with Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
