“Is Pottermore Good for Harry?” by Lev Grossman in TIME
Book critic and author Lev Grossman had an interesting piece in TIME about what Pottermore, the new “interactive thingy” that J.K. Rowling announced last week, might mean for book readers. I especially enjoyed this paragraph:
There are two things that separate reading from other media experiences. One is that reading is better: it’s richer and deeper and more complex and more beautiful. It’s more intellectually rewarding. And I say this as, among other things, a hard-core video gamer. All media have their strengths.
Page One: Inside the New York Times
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that I am geeking out about a new documentary, Page One: Inside the New York Times, by Andrew Rossi. It looks like a lot more than just “a day at the newspaper” — more of a look at the transformation of old media in a new media world.
5 Reasons Why E-Books Aren’t There Yet by John C. Abell in WIRED
I love a lot great discussion points about e-books in this article, but my favorite paragraph has to be this one:
It may be all about vanity, but books — how we arrange them, the ones we display in our public rooms, the ones we don’t keep — say a lot about what we want the world to think about us. Probably more than any other object in our homes, books are our coats of arms, our ice breakers, our calling cards. Locked in the dungeon of your digital reader, nobody can hear them speak on your behalf.
I want to just pull out this quote every time anyone in my family makes a comment about the growing size of my bookshelves!
“It’s Not About You” in The New York Times
David Brooks’ article about the challenges for recent college graduates talks about the challenges individualistic rhetoric for recent college graduates. It’s an interesting piece, but my favorite quote is this one:
No one would design a system of extreme supervision to prepare people for a decade of extreme openness. But this is exactly what has emerged in modern America. College students are raised in an environment that demands one set of navigational skills, and they are then cast out into a different environment requiring a different set of skills, which they have to figure out on their own.
I’m going to be experimenting with some changes to Monday Tally over the next couple months to see if I can find a way to make the post easier to put together and less time-consuming for everyone to read.
Last week I started playing around with Tumblr, which is a short-form blogging platform — somewhere between Twitter and a full-length blog. Tumblr has different post formats that make it easy to just throw up a picture, video, link, or text into a short post. So far, I really like it as a way to collect links and comment on them as I find them. You can find my Tumblr, A Little Bit of Dorkiness, at http://kimthedork.tumblr.com/.
This graphic from Discover’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog is the best summary of the writing process that I’ve never seen. Go look at it, right now.
Flavorwire offered 10 food and literature pairings, including spaghetti with Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and chocolate chip cookies with Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates.
Discover Magazine’s Not Exactly Rocket Science blog put together a long list of female science writers, many of whom have some interesting looking pop science nonfiction. Thanks to @BiblioEva for linking to this one.
NPR and ProPublica put together a powerful multimedia package on five soldiers who suffered traumatic brain injuries during the same explosion in Iraq. I haven’t gotten through the entire package yet, but the parts I’ve read and listened to are great journalism.
If you read only one link this week, let it be this blog post by Linda Holmes (blogger at Monkey See from NPR) who writes in praise of cultural omnivores — “people who … ‘are involved in both ‘highbrow’ and middle- or lowbrow activities.” I won’t say much more, just share this quote, which gives you a good sense of the tone and topic.
I’m a huge fan of getting into television shows late in their run so I can sit down and watch watch a bunch of it in a row. The Guardian had a fun article about the appeal of watching multi-season tv shows over again from the beginning:
The final page of a novel is planned and meant; the final scene of a TV drama is often accidental and dictated by external events. The rerun screening gives viewers their equivalent of the pleasure that comes from taking a well-thumbed hardback from the shelf and opening at page one.
Monday Tally: The Digital Edition
by Kim on March 14, 2011 · 10 comments
I’m a huge fan of getting into television shows late in their run so I can sit down and watch watch a bunch of it in a row. The Guardian had a fun article about the appeal of watching multi-season tv shows over again from the beginning:
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