The Victorious Return of Monday Tally

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!

It’s been like a month since my last Monday Tally… Oops.  I blame The Move and then me just being lame. But now it’s back, and I pledge to bring you awesome links. Some of these are a little old, but hopefully still good. Here we go!

Random Old and New Links

I haven’t gotten to watch it yet, but NBC’s webseries, FCU: Fact Checkers Unit, looks really promising.

If you’re not subscribed to Very Short List, then you should be. Each day, VSL sends out one great link, a mix of books, movies, comics, or other fun web stuff.

I like infographics, and this one about how the internet works was pretty helpful.

Roald Dahl was a real-life spy? Apparently so.

This is a little old, but we came across it at work this week and I thought it was great. Seth Godin asks, “Why are so many things broken?” and goes on a tour of badly designed stuff.

NYT columnists encourage America to take a day off. I heartily concur.

The Biblio Blogazine did a great post about how to respectfully spend time at coffeeshops and other public places. In an age where more and more people have roving offices, I think this post could be useful.

This is a possibly not safe for work parody of “Telephone” by Lady Gaga that takes place in an office – I liked it.

Another shocking thing I learned – not everyone loves Ted Mosby (How I Met Your Mother). How can that possibly be? Either way, Monkey See blogger Linda Holmes presents a great defense of why Ted is the way he is and why the narrative in HIMYM is so, so good.

Another great website I recently found is Five Books. There are a bunch of lists of five books you can read to become an expert on a certain subject. For a representative sample, here’s Catherine S. Manegold’s list of narrative non-fiction:

• Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea by Gary Kinder
• A Chorus of Stones: The Private Life of War by Susan Griffin
• The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
• Mayflower by Nathaniel Philbrick
• A Civil Action by Jonathan Harr

I like this article about the lives of bookstore cats, except for the weird formatting at the bottom.

Kobo published The eReaders Bill of Rights, which includes things like “The Right to Get Your Books Out” and “The Right to Freedom of Movement.” But their main point is that where you buy your ebooks matters more than you imagine, which is a big deal that I’m not even sure that I’ve thought of enough.

Events That Sound Cool

I got an e-mail this week about an event hosted by Investigation Discovery tonight (Monday, 9/20 at 7 p.m. EST) at the Library of Congress. Three mystery authors — David Baldacci, Sandra Brown, and Kathy Reichs — will be on a panel talking about the real life cases and investigations that inspired their stories. There will a streaming webcast of the event at www.investigationdiscovery.com, and in the fall there’s going to be a series with the game theme. Sounds pretty cool to me – I hope I can tune in.

Favorite BBAW Posts

BBAW was last week, and there were a lot of awesome posts both on the BBAW blog and across the blogosphere. Here are a few of my favorites from the BBAW blog and other places:

• Here we go again by Raych of books I done read
• Peachtree Publishers and Book Bloggers by Peachtree Publishers
• Bloggers And Authors Are NOT Friends, Bloggers And Authors Are NOT Friends by Sandra Brannan
• Appreciating Book Blogging by Care of Care’s Online Book Club
• I Love Audiobooks and So Can You by Candace of Beth Fish Reads
• Thank You by Selene Castrovilla

Books for My TBR

• Smart Things by Mike Kuniavsky, but I can’t remember where from.
• Everything but the Coffee: Learning About America From Starbucks by Bryant Simon because it got mentioned in an article about Wi Fi in coffee shops.
• The Great Typo Hunt: Two Friends Changing The World, One Correction At A Time by Jeff Deck and Benjamin D. Herson because NPR had a neat story about them.
• Extra Lives: Why Video Games Matter by Tom Bissell, despite Citizen Reader’s lukewarm post on the topic. I’m interested in gaming, so I think I’d like it better.
• Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama, and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore by Suzanne Stremp Shea, again via Citizen Reader.
• My Teenage Werewolf by Lauren Kessler because of an ad in Shelf Awareness.
• The Soloist: A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship, and the Redemptive Power of Music by Steve Lopez via Melissa the Betty and Boo Chronicles.
• Zoo Story by Thomas French via the Shelf Awareness Newsletter.
• Working in the Shadows by Gabriel Thompson because of Maphead’s good review.
• Obsessive Consumption by Kate Bingaman-Burt (via Apartment Therapy) because it seems like it’s exactly the opposite of all the de-clutter, simplify books I’ve been reading lately.
• The Eyes of Willie McGee by Alex Heard because I liked this NYT review.
• I Live in the Future & Here’s How It Works by Nick Bilton because I liked this review in the Miami Herald.
• Piracy: The Intellectual Property Wars from Gutenberg to Gates by Adrian Johns because I saw it mentioned in an e-mail and it sounds interesting.
• The Disappeared from Jill at Fizzy Thoughts
• Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde by Joe Sacco from Lu at Regular Rumination

Thanks for reading we first Tally back from break – I’ll try to be more consistent from now on

Related posts:

1. Monday Tally: Conflicts, Book Trailers, and Way Cool Libraries
2. Monday Tally
3. Monday Tally: June 30

Tagged as: BBAW, books, reading, Seth Godin, Very Short List