Recap: March 7th-13th 2010
I’ve always wanted to have a link blog as part of… well just about every blog I have ever run. I always stumble across cool links, or have them come in on news feeds, or whatever and want to share them. Lately I’ve taken to tweeting them (or re-tweeting them) and I thought every week for my non-twitter followers I would compile the links here for people to check out and enjoy. I only tweet a link if I really think it’s interesting or it contributes to an ongoing conversation the book blogging community is having. Here are the links I tweeted this week.
I’m a huge fan of Margaret Atwood and enjoy reading her work and have seen some of her interviews on youtube and just think she’s a cool person. I enjoyed reading about her experiences in writing and how she got where she is today. I especially enjoyed the part where she talked about social media and modern day technology:
During the question and answer period, a student asked her about social media, since Atwood is well-known for Twittering and blogging.
“You have no idea who your readers are, and no idea who people on Twitter are,” she said.
That world, she said, “is like having fairies at the bottom of your garden,” who pop up and make themselves known in unpredictable and mischievous ways.
She admitted that she couldn’t “do that thing with my thumbs” and spoke disparagingly of her phone.
“I have a bad relationship with my phone and it has a bad relationship with me. We live in a state of mutual hostility.”
Nothing more needs to be said here! I do like the current trend of just filling out a form for a giveaway, oh, and Helen’s Book Blog is awesome anyway, you need to check it out!
This week was read an e-book week. A chance to raise awareness about e-books and, if you are an avid reader of them, to be sure and answer any questions people might ask you this week and get them on the path of addiction to love of reading e-books as well. There were also a lot of free or deeply discounted e-books available this week. You lucky e-reader owners, you!
This was an article about Young Adult books coming of age. It talked about the changing trends of YA literature and about how, in a lot of ways, it’s not just for young adults anymore! I guess I’m one of those rare adults that’s never felt guilty about cracking open a young adult novel, but if you ever have then read this article! It will reassure you, it says we are living in the golden age of Young Adult literature, so you might as well enjoy it!
I thought this article was a very interesting take on Christian book reviews in particular. With reviews concerning books about such a dominant religion (in this society) there is extra baggage being brought to the table. The reviewer agreeing or not agreeing with the particular theology being presented will skew the review one way or the other. I never thought about that but now I want to look back at my old reviews of Christian literature and see if my beliefs in one way or another affected my ultimate rating of those books.
International Women’s Day was March 7th, this article by the UN Dispatch give a list of recommended reading that touch on the theme of women’s (and human) rights. One book from the list that particularly struck a cord with me was The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World:
“I would also like to strongly recommend The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World. First published in 1989, its most recent edition, the 4th, came out last year. Written by geographer Joni Seager, it’s a feminist nerd’s delight — chockfull of fascinating maps, charts, and statistics about women around the world, Topics covered range from the average number of hours per week women around the world spend fetching water, to what countries are the world’s biggest markets for cosmetics, to male literacy rates in various countries, to the status of lesbian rights across the globe.
I was particularly struck by the stats on violence against women. Some examples:
— In Russia, 70% of adult women say they have experienced physical abuse by a male partner or intimate.
— In Bangladesh in 2002, 68% of women who were physically abused say they never told family or officials about their abuse.
— In the U.S., between 22% and 35% of women who visit the emergency room do so because of domestic violence.
— In Japan, out of 104 gang rapes that were reported in 2005, there were only 5 convictions.– In the U.K., the rate of criminal convictions on rape charges is 7%.”
Quite simply an article about all of the books that were behind the movies that made the Oscars this week. I was surprised to find Push in there, a book I actually own! Shows how out of the loop I am sometimes.
The by now famous two minute video of creating a book cover for the third book in the Soulless series. The contest in question is Princess Bookie‘s Recreate a 2010 YA Cover Contest. I entered my cover recreation of Mockingjay the third book in The Hunger Games series.
I’m a bit of a Trekkie fan so I perked when I saw this, but now that I’ve read the article about it I’m not sure if it will be hugely funny or hugely lame. Probably the later.
This was kind of a continuation to a link I tweeted last week about how Penguin will reinvent books for the I-Pad. My brothers are big time gamers and so when I saw that Random House was looking to expand into the video game market I became very interested in what the article had to say. Basically it talked about a huge expansion of what qualified as a story telling vehicle and how publishers can get in on that. It was really interesting!
Really controversial article about an author who thinks the novel medium has become outmoded and outdated in our media driven world that had a thirst for reality based media.
A link to a review in the Montreal Gazette about the book Jane’s Fame. It sounds really interesting, I particularly liked this part of the review:
Jane’s Fame is aimed at diehard Austen fans, of which there are, of course, a prodigious number. It’s full of minutiae that only a “Janeite” (a term we learn dates back to about 1870) would be interested in. But this book is leavened with humour and a little gossip, both of which would no doubt have pleased Austen herself. We learn, for instance, of Austen’s visit to a library with her niece Anna. Not knowing that her aunt was the author of Sense and Sensibility, Anna threw aside the book, saying, “Oh that must be rubbish I am sure from the title.”
I noticed Aarti from Booklust brought up the concept of Abe Lincoln being portrayed as a superhero in the book Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer in the twitter convo following the posting of my article about Feminism and the Recent Vampire Craze. So I thought this was an interesting continuation on that, talking about other famous historical figures being fictionally portrayed in supernatural situations in books and movies.
Not strictly speaking relating to books, this was just a humorous article about the website Historical Tweets. Very humorous take on what history would have looked like through the tweets of various historical figures.
An article about a group of famous children’s writers and illustrators who are writing and illustrating a book online Exquisite Corpse style. They started last September and are planning to finish this September. The book is currently over 90 pages long! You can read the story for yourself at the government website Read.Gov, the project is being sponsored by the Library of Congress.
5:58 am on March 20th, 2010
I love this feature. I always think of keeping track of links throughout the week, but I never actually do. There were several of these stories I hadn’t seen, so thank you!