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!
BookClubSandwich: We’re Heading Into The Jungle
The book readers voted on for our next BookClubSandwich read is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. I’m excited about this pick – it should be easy for everyone to find and, even though it’s a novel, is often cited as one of the big books in journalism history.
The discussion will start online at my blog on Monday, November 8. Then, Andi (Estella’s Revenge) will do a wrap-up of the discussion on November 15. Hope you’ll join us!
Bookish News and Notes
Nieman Storyboard did an interview with Ron Charles, creator of the ‘Totally Hip Video Book Reviewer.’ If you haven’t watched those videos, go over and do it right now.
Gene Logsdon has written a book called Holy Shit, which is about agriculture and manure. But when he gets interviewed or press about the book, no one can say the name.
Greg at The New Dork Review of Books wrote A Reasonably Short, Fairly Impassioned Defense of Reading Fiction, that I enjoyed. Sometimes even us nonfiction lovers need a gentle reminder.
As a balance to my link to Maureen Johnson’s piece on reading for boys last week, I suggest this post by Jodie at Book Gazing that looks at the topic – also read the comments, they’re interesting too. Thanks to Jeanne at Necromacy Never Pays for pointing this one out.
Taxes, TV, Stats
Talking Points Memo put together a tax receipt for a person who pays about $5,400 in federal taxes. It’s a pretty enlightening breakdown.
Sesame Street parodies True Blood with a skit called “True Mud.” Totally cute, which seems like a silly way to describe a True Blood parody.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the number of young adults that have never been married is now higher than the number of adults who have been married.
Media Clichés and the People Who Love Them
First, “This is a news website article about a scientific finding,” which is funny and sad for anyone who has read or done science reporting.
And then this video makes fun of tv news reporting:
Books for My TBR
I didn’t do a ton of blog reading this week, but I found one book for my TBR: Bottlemania because Maphead suggested it on my review of Bottled and Sold.
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That breakdown of taxes is quite different to what I had expected. Not in what the taxes cover, exactly, but in the proportion of taxes that are paid to different things – like, federal parks? Who knew they got so much money from us?
Jenny: Me too. I was surprised at how big the first few numbers were, and how small some of the bottom ones are. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could reapportion our taxes the way we want to?
I told a friend about the marriage stats and she’s wondering why she can’t find any single guys if 50% or so are unmarried. 😀
Trisha: A lot of them are probably co-habitating or in long-term relationships but aren’t married yet. That was one of the sneaky finds of the story that the headline doesn’t quite capture 🙂
Great collection, as always!
Amy: Thanks!
Glad you liked the discussion in the comments at Bookgazing. I’m continuing to think about this issue.
Jeanne: I did enjoy it. Not being a parent of boys or girls, I don’t know that I thought about the issue as much as I should have. I just had a gut reaction as a reader to a lot of what Maureen Johnson had to say about the male-dominated high school and college reading lists.
Love the list, Kim! I saw the True Mud video a couple of weeks ago and thought it was hilarious!
Marie: Lots and lots of Sesame Street sketches are so funny lately. There was another one recently about CSI, I think, that laughed and laughed at.
Those tax numbers are depressing for so many reasons. The say that our road system is a disaster waiting to happen yet it get’s more money than education?? And I can’t help it be cynical about Social Security and Medicare amounts. I have no faith that the programs will be of any help or use to me when I become of age and they get the most $$.
The “scientific” article cracked me up. I can’t tell you how often I talk back to those kind of articles or reports on TV. They are all media scare sound bites and attempts at encapsulating a study that took so much work.
Your Monday Tally’s are always so interesting and send me off in such cool tangents!
Gwen: Yes, they are. The SS and Medicare amounts made me upset too, since, like you said, I’m not sure they’ll be there much longer. A huge chunk of my paycheck goes to those programs, which I find frustrating.
Science journalism is really difficult, and as a journalist I can see why some of those conventions exist – it’s a way to write a story that meets a certain set of standards. But it’s definitely not the best journalists can do, and I hope journalism starts to shift and we all get to do better work than that.
Love the video of the stereotypical tv news feature – it was bang on.
Christy: I know, so hilarious! I dislike tv news, so anything that makes fun of it especially makes me laugh.
My son and his friend joined me recently at the Omaha Lit Fest and the friend picked up a graphic novel version of The Jungle. Apparently, his brother had convinced him to read the original when he was only 11 and it has really stayed with him.
Lisa: Yeah, I imagine that’s a book that would stick with you. I’m having a hard time imagining a graphis novel version. I think it’d be pretty disturbing.
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