Bulletin Board
- I should have mentioned it before since it ended with July but I did not succeed with the Random Reading Challenge. I made it 75 percent of the way there but under the grading standards in the local schools that’s a “D”. Even the host, Caribousmom, also didn’t make her goal. And, sadly, I identify with her feeling of “failing miserably” since I’ve only read two books for the challenge I started.
- Happy happy joy joy! I got my letter Thursday from the NCAA telling me I have tickets for the Frozen Four in St. Paul in April.
Blog Headline of the Week
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- America: Land of Loners? (“… we live now in a climate in which friends appear dispensable.”) (via Arts & Letters Daily)
Bookish Linkage
- A “fourth-grader’s” book report on his summer reading choice, Portnoy’s Complaint.
- We’re barely eight months in and Salon has already called the “worst book of the decade.”
- What happens to marginalia in the age of the ebook?
- I’m excited to see that Amazon awarded a $10,000 grant to Words Without Borders to support the publication of the organization’s forthcoming anthology, Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East. The group’s Literature from the “Axis of Evil” is in part responsible for initiating my foreign literature addiction.
- Karl Marlantes, author of one of the hottest books this year, gives his list of the top 10 war stories.
- Five ways that paper books are better than e-books. (I might be able to come up with more but am satisfied with these.) (via PWxyz)
Nonbookish Linkage
- Things like this are what make the interwebz great: YouSwear.com teaches you how to swear in more than 200 languages. (via Lifehacker).
- Tom Scott’s journalism warning labels are absolutely wonderful — except a person would use so many so quickly it would be hard to keep a supply on hand.
- Top 10 ways your brain sabotages you
…a man ain’t nothing but his mind
Blind Willie Johnson, “Soul of a Man”
