Category Archives: Did you Know?

Did you Know?, General, Information

“[G]ild is ever so slightly off the lily…”

 

this is NOT me (via korosirego on Flickr)

 

Joel Johnson (Gizmodo) says the “gild is ever so slightly off the lily…” and the lilly is an ipad.

But it’s a pretty frustrating feeling to know that your data is inside the device you’re using but because of its closed system troubleshooting options are limited. It’s a little like being sick at Disneyland and getting stuck at the top of Space Mountain. Suddenly the veneer of blinking lights stops looking like the future and starts feeling like being trapped in a tiny car in the dark inside a warehouse.

I still really like the iPad for travel. I suspect even if I buy an Air—even the tiny version—I’ll still bring the iPad along for books, video, etc. I mean, hell, I already own it. Might as well.

But the gild is ever so slightly off the lily. And instead of being impressed with how capable the iPad can be compared to a traditional computer, today I’m missing traveling with a machine that gives me more flexibility when my expected path dead ends.

Do you agree?  Want more info?  Read the rest of his post here: my ipad  let me down

(via)

Did you Know?, General, Information

“H*ll is other readers…”: a Report from the Future of Reading: The Books in Browsers Conference

Do you think much about ‘social reading?’  Do you believe ‘h*ll is other readers’?  Either way, this report, via The Millions, from the Future of Reading: Books in Browsers Conference is worthy of your attention…

And in case you are interested, here is Rob Stein’s (from the Institute for the Future of the Book) Taxonomy of Social Reading:

  • category one: in-person informal discussion of a book;
  • category two: discussion of a book online;
  • category three:  formal discussion of a book in a classroom or book club; and
  • category four: online, synchronous discussion of a book in the margins of the book itself

So, is that our future?

Book Reviews, Did you Know?, Information

National Book Award Nominees, 2010

Here are the National Book Award Nominees, for 2010:

Fiction

Peter Carey, Parrot and Olivier in America (Alfred A. Knopf)

Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule (McPherson & Co.)

Nicole Krauss, Great House (W.W. Norton & Co.)

Lionel Shriver, So Much for That
(Harper, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Karen Tei Yamashita, I Hotel (Coffee House Press)

Fiction Judges: Andrei Codrescu, Samuel R. Delany, Sabina Murray,
Joanna Scott, Carolyn See

Nonfiction

Barbara Demick, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
(Spiegel & Grau, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group)

John W. Dower, Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq
(W.W. Norton & Co/The New Press )

Patti Smith, Just Kids (Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Justin Spring, Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward
(Farrar, Straus & Giroux)

Megan K. Stack, Every Man in This Village Is a Liar: An Education in War
(Doubleday)

Nonfiction Judges: Blake Bailey, Marjorie Garber, Jennifer Michael Hecht, Seth Lerer, Sallie Tisdale

Poetry

Kathleen Graber, The Eternal City (Princeton University Press)

Terrance Hayes, Lighthead (Viking Penguin)

James Richardson, By the Numbers (Copper Canyon Press)

C.D. Wright, One with Others (Copper Canyon Press)

Monica Youn, Ignatz (Four Way Books)

Poetry Judges: Rae Armantrout, Cornelius Eady, Linda Gregerson,
Jeffrey McDaniel, Brenda Shaughnessy

Young People’s Literature

Paolo Bacigalupi, Ship Breaker (Little, Brown & Co.)

Kathryn Erskine, Mockingbird
(Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group)

Laura McNeal, Dark Water (Alfred A. Knopf)

Walter Dean Myers, Lockdown
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Rita Williams-Garcia, One Crazy Summer
(Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers)

Young People’s Literature Judges:Laban Carrick Hill, Kelly Link,
Tor Seidler, Hope Anita Smith, Sara Zarr

For more info, see http://www.nationalbook.org/nba2010.html