Two debuts this weekend. First is the new design. I just felt like a change and came across a theme I really liked and that is easier to tinker with than my old one. It may still require a bit of adjustment here and there but let me know if you think it’s an improvement or not.
The second debut is Weekend Edition begins, patterned after the Saturday Review concept at The 3 R’s. It will appear at some point each (I hope) weekend and serve as a place for various announcements, linkage and occasional general randomness. Because this is the first edition, a couple items are more than a week old.
Bulletin Board
The South Dakota Festival of Books begins in Sioux Falls next weekend (Sept. 26-28). Here’s the full schedule.
The festival coincides with the kickoff of Banned Books Week, which runs Sept. 27 to Oct. 4.
I’d like to think it’s because someone took note of my new interest in foreign literature but this year’s Big Read is called The Big Read Egypt/U.S. The selected book is The Thief and the Dogs, a 1961 novel by Nabuib Mahfouz, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1988.
Linkage
I don’t know that the time is worth the effort.
Why do publishers and the public allow classic SF series to be bastardized by prequels, additions and sequels? I will do what I have done with other efforts. Ignore it.
Print-on-demand publisher not liable for defamation, unlike mainstream publishing houses.
Confessions of a compulsive buyer.
Hockey’s response to the now best known “hockey mom.”
I guess I don’t need to read the Booker Prize finalists. (HT.)
Salon, the online magazine, has created a Literary Guide to the World. (HT.)
For some reason, I imagine North Korean fiction as somewhat drab. (HT.)
Blogosphere notes
There’s several newer South Dakota blogs I’ve been remiss in not mentioning previously. Welcome to Dakota 21, Cranium Creek, the So Dak NORML Blog (likely a carryover from the 2006 medical marijuana initiative), and agree2disagree.
I’m going to repeat it (and undoubtedly will do so again in the future). If you don’t regularly check or have an RSS subscription to The Big Picture, you are missing one of the best sites going these days. If it doesn’t impact your perceptions of the world, it will certainly educate them.
My personal hobbies are reading, listening to music, and silence.
Edith Sitwell, quoted in Reader’s Digest (October 1977)
