Bulletin Board
Welcome Prairie Home Dysfunction to the SD blogosphere. Jeffrey, what took you so long?
Blog Headline of the Week
Mass Hysteria As Twitter and Facebook Slowdowns Cause People to Have to Talk to Other Real People!
Bookish Linkage
“The Lost Art of Reading” speaks to many of us in today’s modern society — although it may be a tad disconcerting that the book editor of the LA Times says he has a hard time devoting the necessary attention to readingn. (Via.)
The Encyclopedia Britannica blog, of all places, makes a strong bid for book-related blog post of the year.
Those damn Leftists!!!! Hugo Chavez has the audacity to start a Revolutionary Reading Plan that includes giving away thousands of free books and sending “book squadrons” around the country that are intended to encourage reading. (Via.)
I wonder, though, if Hugo has checked this out. The New Statesman, a British magazine “created in 1913 with the aim of permeating the educated and influential classes with socialist ideas,” has a list of Red Reads, “50 books that will change your life.” (I am somewhat surprised I have only read four.) (Via.)
Retired (as of today) U.S. Supreme Court Justice David Souter has bought a new home in part because, according to a friend, his current home wasn’t structurally strong enough to hold the thousands of books he owned.
For some reason this strikes me as odd. The subject of Ian McEwan’s next novel? Climate change. (Via.)
Oxfam opens used bookstores in the UK and other secondhand booksellers cry foul.
A list of 100 book blogs for history buffs. (Via, who made the list; yours truly did not.)
Was Billy Shakespeare his century’s Hunter Thompson?
Obama impacts books sales once again: One of my favorite books in college, Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, is undergoing a revival.
Nonbookish Linkage
China makes another technological leap ahead of us.
Want to conserve water? Pee in the shower. After all, it’s all pipes.
Maybe I should go on a hunt for the Netflix location in Sioux Falls. (Via.)
Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being.
David Ulin, “The Lost Art of Reading“
