Category Archives: General

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?

Did you Know?, General

“Why would you want to read that; it’s dumb,”

Carla Cohen, owner of the Politics & Prose Bookstore in Washington DC – one of my favorite bookstores in the country – recently passed on.  Before moving on…she had the following interaction with one of her customers (this anecdote is from a tribute shared on the Politics & Prose website):

Cohen sometimes responded to customers in a less-then-politic way: “Why would you want to read that; it’s dumb,” she would say to a customer asking for a book of which she disapproved. “You would enjoy this a lot more — and it’s a far better book.”

Now that is a bookseller, par excellence: she knew her stuff (books) and her customers.

Farewell Carla, I appreciate all that you have taught me (Adam) from afar.

Did you Know?, General, Information

And now for something completely different…

Here are the winners of the EU Prize for Literature announced at Frankfurt Book Fair, 2010:

Belgium: Peter Terrin, De Bewaker (The Guard)

Cyprus: Myrto Azina Chronides, To Peirama (The Experiment)

Denmark: Adda Djørup, Den mindste modstand (The least resistance)

Estonia: Tiit Aleksejev, Palveränd (The Pilgrimage)

Finland: Riku Korhonen , Lääkäriromaani (Doctor Novel)

Germany: Iris Hanika, Das Eigentliche (The Bottom Line)

Luxembourg: Jean Back, Amateur

Romania: Răzvan Rădulescu, Teodosie cel Mic (Theodosius the Small)

Slovenia: Nataša Kramberger, Nebesa v robidah: roman v zgodbah (Heaven in a blackberry bush: novel in stories)

Spain: Raquel Martínez-Gómez, Sombras de unicornio (Shadows of the unicorn)

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia: Goce Smilevski, Сестрата на Зигмунд Фројд (Sigmund Freud’s sister)

The [EU Prize for Literature], supported through the EU Culture programme, aims to draw attention to new talents and to promote the publication of their books in different countries, as well as celebrating European cultural diversity.

So, please help yourself to some European literature.

(via)

Did you Know?, General, Information

‘Third World America’ : How the world (or, er, one magazine in Canada) see the US

third world america

The Sept. 20, 2010 issue of Maclean’s Magazine (a Canadian newsweekly, much like Time or Newsweek) offers us an article entitled “Third World America: Collapsing bridges, street lights turned off…:the decline of a superpower.”

Do you you agree or disagree with that sentiment?

A pull-quote from the article:

A pared-down police force, how can people be safe, a county judge was asked: “Arm yourselves.”

So, is this the unvarnished truth or merely scare tactics?  What do you think?  Where are we headed as a country, economically- and culturally-speaking?

Did you Know?, General, Information

Librarians Abandon Dewey Decimal System in Favor of Netflix Categories

maxpower on flickr

So,  would YOU enjoy using a library that classifies its books according to Netflix categories instead of a ‘normal’ library classification system like Dewey or Library of Congress?

“There has definitely been some healthy debate as to where some of our books will now live,” said Poleman, recounting a particularly heated debate about whether Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights belonged in the “Romantic Comedy” or “Cerebral Drama” section.

(found via what’s in rebecca’s pocket?)