Monday Tally is a weekly link round-up of some of my favorite posts discovered over the week. If you have suggestions for Monday Tally, please e-mail sophisticated [dot] dorkiness [at] gmail [dot] com. Enjoy!
Sorry for the delay — I had a review scheduled yesterday so Monday Tally got put off a day.
Top Picks
- Rebecca Skloot: How Fannie Flagg and Hurricane Carter Shaped The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
- Friday Coffee Chat – Book Snobbery
- What Broke My Father’s Heart
Things to Think About
Jezebel posted a long piece about The Daily Show’s Woman Problem, arguing that behind the scenes the show is a boys’ club where women are marginalized. Slate’s Emily Gould responded, saying the post is an “example of the feminist blogosphere’s tendency to tap into the market force of what I’ve come to think of as ‘outrage world.’”
The World Cup decreased workplace productivity, even shutting down one plant in Italy after managers told workers they couldn’t watch the game.
Henry Jenkins, a scholar of journalism and participatory culture, posted the syllabus of one of his upcoming classes – Civic Media – which sounds awesome. I’m contemplating a personal reading project to keep up with the syllabus in the fall, since I’m sure I’ll be jonesing for school.
Rebecca Skloot talks to ReadRollShow about how she came up with the structure for The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. She says she was inspired by books like Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café by Fanny Flagg and movies like The Hurricane starring Denzel Washington. This is super fascinating!
Amy (My Friend Amy) wrote an Open Letter to Borders and Barnes & Noble about a recent decision to drastically change (whitewash) the cover of Cindy Pon’s book Silver Phoenix.
Marie (The Boston Bibliophile) went on a mini bookstore tour of Seattle with some great pictures. I love this idea.
People are more productive when they work in healthy office spaces with plants and open windows. I’m taking suggestions on what flower to get for my drab cubicle.
Carin B (A Little Bookish) asks “Are You A Book Snob?” to which I have to sheepishly reply, yes.
Ereader News and Notes
One study suggests that people read faster in print than they do when reading an eBook, but that people like the experience of reading on a eReader about the same as a printed book (except for on PC screens – people didn’t like that). But, the study only looked at 24 readers, so there’s a lot more research to go on this one.
Must-Read Journalism
The Isthmus did a great story on a group of “at-risk” kids in a local neighborhood who are starting a salsa business using community grown food. I heard about this project when I was doing research last spring, but never got to write about it fully. It’s an amazing and inspiring story.
New York Times Magazine has a beautiful and sad piece about medical decision making called “What Broke My Father’s Heart” by Katy Butler. Butler did an interview with Neiman Storyboard about the development and structure of the story which is also quite food.
Old Media + New Media = Crazy Controversies
Woot.com called out the Associated Press for a hypocritical stance on the use of quotes in stories. Previously, the AP said it would charge ANYONE that quoted information from their stories (regardless of any potential fair use uses). Then, the AP went and quoted from a blog (Woot), and the blog wants payment. Good stuff.
ScienceBlogs, as website that hosts a number of really strong blogs on science topics, started one called Food Frontiers, which would be written by scientists from Pepsi. Lots of bloggers objected, saying it was basically advertising for Pepsi disguised as a blog (journalism). ScienceBlogs took Food Frontiers down and asked for suggestions. This analysis from The Lay Scientist sums it all up pretty well:
Instead, the scandal that will inevitability be dubbed Pepsigate, is ultimately about three things. The first is community identity – the fence that delineates the ScienceBlogs community from the rest of the world; the second is respect; and the third is the line between editorial and advertising.
I recommend the post for bloggers curious about any of these issues – I think they’ll come up in book blogging sooner rather than later.
The Blogger’s Toolkit
Glen at ViperChill: Viral Marketing wrote a great in-depth post about the ins and outs of guest blogging. I think this is a good overview for newbies, and a great refresher for others.
Big Bad Book Blog, the blog of the Greenleaf Book Group, is starting a series on blogging best practices – looks like it could be helpful for newish bloggers, especially later parts which including managing, promoting, and tracking progress for your blog. (Thanks, Exile on Ninth Street for pointing this out to me).
Interested in learning about Get in Bed With a Book Blogger? In this Q&A at Follow the Reader with Rebecca (The Book Lady’s Blog) talks about her relationship with Fountain Bookstore in Richmond.
Becky (One Literature Nut) asked “How Do You Recommend a Book?” Head on over and join the discussion! (Thanks @florinda_3rs for this link)
Books for My TBR
- No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments by Brooke Berman (via ModCloth BookSmarts) because I am a sucker for twentysomething coming of age stories.
- Blacksad by Juan Diaz Canales and Juanjo Guarnido (via Monkee See) because the elevator pitch for the book is: “a talking, anthropomorphic cat detective navigating a painstakingly rendered urban landscape rife with violence and deceit.”
- Real Food: How to Eat and Why by Nina Planck (via Simple Good and Tasty) because I’m excited for BookClubSandwich and on a foodie book coveting kick.
I hope you didn’t miss Monday Tally too much yesterday, and that Tuesday Tally was worth the wait. Enjoy the links!
Comments on this entry are closed.
Another great list of lists! I read a really great analysis of Gould’s response to Jezebel, btw, but now I can’t find it! Basically it asked why we aren’t allowed to have conversations about things that affect us and how one women doesn’t make it not sexist.
It also pointed out her statement about conversations about things like rape, sexism, etc “But it may just be that it’s not possible to have these conversations online.” And said that isn’t that the best part of online? That we can talk about that stuff?
Anyway, all of the articles on both sides of the issue are really interesting to read so thanks for including it.
Amy: If you find the other article, let me know. It sounds interesting. I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with either of them, although I was really, really sad to learn some of that stuff about The Daily Show.
Wow, SO worth the wait, Kim. Great links. Love the story about the World Cup. I happened to be in Italy in 1982 when they won the World Cup. Talk about INSANE! It was quite an experience, that’s for sure.
Headed off to watch the video…I loved Henrietta Lacks.
I’m still reading Cutting for Stone on my iPad two months later, but that has more to do with how infrequently I exercise. It’s not the eReader factor slowing me down 🙂
Lynne: Wow, I can’t imagine being in Italy for that — it would have been amazing!
I’ve taken a long time to read eBooks, but for the same reason — I read them mostly when at the gym, and haven’t been getting to the gym much lately.
I’m loving your diverse Monday link roundup (any day of the week), and glad I could assist with it this week :-). My own roundups are currently on hiatus because a one-handed blogger can only do so much, but you’re inspiring me to make them better when I start up again (or else, quit and tell people to just check out yours instead!).
Florinda: It would be hard to be a one-handed blogger. I’d put links roundups on hiatus too!
I was looking for The Monday Tally yesterday, so I’m glad to see it today. I’m especially interested in this concept of reading faster or slower on an e-reader. Personally, I think I read MUCH faster on an e-reader, and a colleague of mine with a Kindle has experienced the same thing. I’m already 500+ pages into The Passage (in a week), and it usually takes me upwards of a week to read a 200-page print book. I think my eyes tend to wander less, and by taking the text in smaller chunks, I make much faster progress.
Looking forward to checking out more of these links!
Andi: That’s an interesting point about ereaders versus print. I think I read slower, but it’s because of where I’m reading, not what I’m reading on. I might do a page count test sometime soon to see because now I’m curious!
Interesting article on the Daily Show hiring women business! I read the story on Jezebel the other day and had much the same reaction to it–but since I am evidently unpleasable, I thought that the Slate article gave too sweeping a denunciation of feminist blogs in general. I adore Salon’s Broadsheet, and it’s fairly rare for me to read something on there that I think overreacts.
Jenny: I think I agree with you — the Jezebel story made me angry, but the Slate one was a little sweeping. But sometimes I think modern feminism is a sort of continuum and we all have some level at which things “makes sense” versus things that are “too much” and it just depends.