Ex Libris Bitsy

Very few links this week, everyone is gearing up for the read-a-thon coming up on April 10th. Also coming up in the next few days is the launch of the I-Pad, a lot of the hype about it is undeserved I think (it’s going to ruin the world! and the publishing industry! and, and, Cheetos!). Okay, maybe it will ruin Cheetos, who wants to get orange powder on their $500 touch screen? The rest, probably unwarranted. I think a lot of what the internet and modern technology has done for the world has taken people by surprise and so now we’re jumping at shadows. Everything is going to be the next world changer that way we are never caught with our pants down. Anyone else find themselves exhausted by that constant level of “the sky is falling” from the media about every techno-related thing?

Later I found out this is actually a series that is on-going where these people are talking about Twilight and it’s impact on several levels. I thought it was interesting how they rejected the argument that because it was a book for teens that made the fact that it was not a well written story “okay”. Their argument was: saying something like that means that, for children, it’s okay to write trash and give them trash to read. It implies that their age means they don’t deserve well written, engaging stories.

Very interesting article about the resurgence of angels in literature and what that could mean in both social and literary contexts.

This got me very excited. A no frills e-reader that comes down into the price range I always swore I would buy an e-reader at. It’s coming out this May and as long as it allows you to put any ePub file you want on it (no matter what store it came from, or even if it came direct from publisher for review) than I will definitely be owning one before the year is out.

I found it interesting that according to people actually familiar with the textbook market that we have no child left behind to thank for this. The requirement for textbooks to adhere to standards set by various states means that they have for the last decade been taking a core model textbook and manufacturing different flavors for each state market depending on standards. They will simply make one bold flavor for Texas and, for fear of backlash, leave the textbook unchanged for all other markets.

I actually finished up this book a while ago but am just now getting around to blogging about it. I’m really behind on all things book blogging related! I loved reading this book and was glad to finally have the opportunity to start the books of the trilogy I already know so much about. I also really enjoyed talking about the books with my husband, though the discussions with the read-a-long have been fun too! I’m enjoying all of the different takes on the books, it’s very interesting.

Princess Bookie is hosting another recreate a book cover contest!

Going for another try at this. Last time I tried this with my attempt at a cover for Mockingjay I didn’t even get one vote and was out in the first round.

I think I went over the top trying to make a nice entry this time to make up for it. Try, try again, right?

Made up of… I lost count on the number of images, all vector based and royalty free – with the exception of the mermaid, which was a plain 3d rendering I colorized and spruced up a bit. For the book Forgive my Fins.

Not as many links this week and many of them just re-tweets. Spring fever is in the air, I guess, and people would rather be out and about than posting articles about stuffy old books! I’d say if you check out no other link check out the last one about women’s fiction. That by far was the most interesting and was the one with the fewest clicks, I’m guessing my butchering to get it down to 140 characters ruined it!

Youtube video of Rue’s Lullaby from The Hunger Games.

Wow, I loved reading this. An essay on the Bad Romance and the prevalence (and encouragement) of rape culture in Young Adult novels, particularly the book Hush, Hush. Very well written and well thought out, definitely food for thought. No does not secretly mean yes.

Interesting article on the books being read out in public around the world, it’s a slide show but at least it’s an interesting one!

Supposedly the prequel is better than the original. Less Jane Austen and that freed the writer to write instead of edit, and he’s better at that. I guess we’ll see if that turns out to be true.

I’ve been on a bit of a adult’s can read YA too crusade recently, haven’t I? I just think it’s silly to not read a well written book because it’s has a teen protagonist. You grow past the age and your past experiences are no longer viable to be explored in the context of reading a novel set in that age? Since when? Seriously, I’m out of the loop on this one.

This one got tweeted all over the book blogging sphere and this was my contribution. Pretty funny, and a challenge to avoid those phrases in future! I felt relieved that most of the words were ones I never used at all at least. Most, but not all!

I’m loving all of the women’s history month book lists that are coming out!

I was so happy to find this, you have no idea. I’ve had an inherent mistrust of remotely hosted solutions ever since I got my own host. A decade ago I needed three separate servers to be up to run my site: Blogger, Geocities (better ad display options so I FTPed my posts there) and Haloscan (when we HAD to go third party to get comments). One or the other would often be down and then my whole site would either go down or not be editable. The third party services I use now have a default it can switch to that my side provides if they go down. Not so for Mr. Linky and I kept hearing about problems with it: it’s up, it’s down, it’s having problems, etc. Well, now if I ever decide to run a challenge or meme I won’t have that issue.

Ongoing discussion going on in the community about Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation. There is also a giveaway going on at The Book Lady’s Blog that I entered with advice on how to get rid of cramps.

Salon article about women’s fiction and how the definition for it is both undecided and unfair, about how the attempt to pigeon hole it into chick-lit and misery-lit does a disservice to women readers and writers and, of course the line I included above. Talk about an article to get your feminist ire up!

This is a fairy tale I’ve been hearing a lot more about ever since Disney announced it was going to come out with a movie about her. Especially since it was supposed to be a) part of the new Disney Renaissance (they are releasing a fairy tale film every year for the next ten years, starting with the Princess and the Frog) and b) use a new animation technique. CG technology has come to the point where “the computer can finally bend it’s knee to the artist” so the Rapunzel movie is going to be more like a CG painting, not CG cartoon-realism which is all that was possible before.

I was a little surprised that Disney went for such a film, first off because of the themes in Rapunzel (lust, primarily) and secondly, well, just look at the art piece they are using as a basis for the style of the film.

Why yes, that is a man looking up her skirt. The piece is a French work of art, translated into English it means “The Happy Accidents of the Swing”, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard. My art major husband tells me that, yes, the men are doing this deliberately to get a peek, and yes, the woman is meant to be complicit in this act, and yes, the baby cherubs are watching you.