Being out-of-town and refusing to pay a Hilton-owned hotel for internet access when Holiday Inns and the like provide it free, this edition is a day late.
Bulletin Board
The NCAA men’s Division I hockey championship game is tonight was last night. Boston University’s come from behind overtime win over Miami (Ohio) again showed why college hockey is so much fun to watch.
Bookish Linkage
“Reading is the best way to relax and even six minutes can be enough to reduce the stress levels by more than two thirds, according to new research.” Listening to music reduced stress levels 61 percent.
I’m one who always says, “As long as it encourages people to read.” Still, I have a hard time believing that books in Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight series accounted for about 16% of all book sales tracked by USA Today in the first quarter of 2009.
I missed this when it came out last month. Although a survey showed that a significant majority (83%) of parents read to their children daily, they do so for an average of 32 minutes a day, compared to spending an average of about 59 minutes a day watching TV with their child.
SF awards: Ken MacLeod’s The Night Sessions (not yet available in the US) won the British Science Fiction Association award for best novel. And the Philip K. Dick Award ended in a tie between Adam-Troy Castro’s Emissaries from the Dead and David Walton’s Terminal Mind.
Nonbookish Linkage
The A.V. Club picks up my rant about how certain albums are made to be listened to in order. While not all of the 25 on its list would be on mine, the contributors at least understand my point.
[A library] is the most democratic of institutions because no one – but no one at all – can tell you what to read and when and how.
Doris Lessing, African Laughter: Four Visits to Zimbabwe
