Weekend Edition 4-10

Bulletin Board

• Check out the local B&N tomorrow (Sunday) as it hosts a bookfair fundraiser for the Sioux Falls Jazz & Blues Society. Books and jazz — hard to ask for a better combination.
• Copyright law turns 300 today.
• A esearch-based website has launched to tell the story of a young farm family battling the Dust Bowl. The site is updated daily and the story is told with poetry.

Blog Headline of the Week

• Scrabble announces new “dumfuck edition”

Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes

• Why positive thinking is bad for you. (Lifehacker)
• How e-books will kill the smallest libraries

Bookish Linkage

• The Hugo Award nominations were announced. Although I’ve read little SF in the last year, I have actually read one of the best novel nominees (which, coincidentally, this week won the best novel award from the British Science Fiction Association).
• Congrats to Michael Orthofer’s complete review on its 11th anniversary. If it and its blog, The Literary Saloon, aren’t in your RSS feed reader, they should be.
• If you, like me, are still waiting for the advent of great post-9/11 novels, they’re dead.
• Keith Richards, librarian????
• The Brennan Center for Justice has launched a legal book review site (but, unforunately, it’s RSS feed does not appear to be functioning). (Above the Law.)
• Philip Pullman discusses his latest, and controversial, book.
• The American Booksellers Association announced the winners of the 2010 Indies Choice Book Awards, which come from books on the previous year’s Indie Next Lists. (Shelf Awareness)

Nonbookish Linkage

• Why am I not surprised that the world’s largest fact-checking organization isn’t in the American news media?
• Somebody needed to point this out. What you are reading here is a post, not a blog. Thank you for your attention.
• I know this is unabashed geekiness but I can’t resist. (io9)
• Perhaps more than you ever wanted to know about poop.

José Saramago, Blindness