Friday, June 21, 2013

The Addicted to Double Ohs Weekly Link Round-Up


It's the summer solstice-- the longest day of the year. After today, it's all downhill for my favorite season. This means that I've got to enjoy my double ohs as much as I can. Double ohs? you ask. Sure. B"oo"ks and P"oo"l. And with the Super Moon coming on Sunday, I may go out for late night swim and see if it's bright enough out there for me to read a book.

The only slight problem I'm having is... well, make that two... (1) My mind isn't on the preparation of food all the time, which makes mealtimes occasionally interesting for Denis. (2) I refuse to take my eReader out to the pool. I feel that that's tempting the Fates too far. I can speed through books like nobody's business out in my watery sanctuary, but I have several advanced readers copies loaded on my Kindle that I have to get read by their deadlines, and I'm starting to get a bit stres.... What am I talking about?!?  Are any of these folks going to take away an annual pay raise or my medical benefits? No!

All righty then! I've got some links to share, Denis to get off to work, some coconut curry chicken to put in the slow cooker, and some reading time in the pool to enjoy!


Bookish News & Other Interesting Stuff
  •  "Tweet" and some other words are now in the Oxford English Dictionary.
  • Ringo Starr is set to adapt his song "Octopus's Garden" as a children's picture book, which I think is perfect.
  • There's still hope for us all: Public libraries outnumber McDonald's.
  • That huge asteroid that flew past Earth last month is an entirely new beast.
  • Who do I see to get paid the big bucks for my glaringly obvious studies? Now there's one that says reading novels makes us better thinkers. Duh!

Digital Reading
  • One man believes that self-published authors are destroying literature.
  • Penguin is testing a social reading rewards program called First to Read.
  • A new eBook DRM technology called SiDiM-- developed to prevent book piracy-- is a bit terrifying for those of us who truly love books.

I   ♥   Lists

Book Candy

That's all for this week, folks. Don't forget to stop by next weekend for a freshly selected batch of links for your surfing pleasure. Enjoy this summer weekend!


10 comments:

  1. Oh, how lucky to be able to just take a late-night swim and even read a book in the moonlight--maybe with a little help.

    Yes, ditto, reading novels makes us better thinkers! I suppose someone got paid to study this!

    And on the stress of having to read ebooks by a certain deadline: Remember this reading is not for a job or a college degree. It's for pleasure, entertainment, distraction -- even if learning comes in, too.

    So, pace yourself and enjoy. If a deadline is missed for a few books, you can order them later on.

    I get like this about library books and dvd's. Then I remind myself I can return them and get them out again later when I have time.

    As the eminent blogger, Yvette, says: This isn't supposed to be work!

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    1. And Yvette knows what she's talking about! The only stress I have, I put on myself because I tell publishers and authors I can get the reviews up within the first week of release.

      I've been toying with the idea of having Summer 2014 be my TBR Summer, where the only books I read come from the hundreds on my to-be-read shelves. Sounds mighty good right now!

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  2. That sounds like a plan! Hundreds of TBR books? Yikes!

    I worry as I have about 25 TBR books sitting around here. (But then there are the TBR Mount Kilimanjaro lists, which I can't even bear to look at sometimes, until I remind myself I have no deadlines, and can read them when I want to ... no pressure.)

    But an entire summer to read your shelves of books with your pool, plenty of iced tea -- definitely sounds good to me. (Maybe some bird photos, too!)



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    1. Nothing exotic has been showing up here, which is why you haven't seen any bird photos. They've begun construction of the next leg of the light rail, and that seems to throw the bird populations into a bit of a tizzy for a while. I don't blame them a bit. It throws me for a loop, too-- especially when they dig up a major street that I'm used to tooling up and down to visit some of my favorite shops!

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  3. I'm contemplating the benefit of reading novels, in addition to making us better thinkers. We are also enlightened about the human condition, the world, history, about events that happen to people and how they react.

    We are exposed to countries, cultures, customs, different personalities. There is nothing a novel can't discuss. This is such a huge topic.

    When I think of great books I began reading as a young teenager, like Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, then Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, then John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath (and more), then later on Toni Morrison's Beloved, which educated me even more about slavery, then Alice Walker's books, some of Amy Tan's books about life in China in a certain period and Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible and now, Flight Behavior. This is just a sampling of books that affected my thinking.

    And I'm leaving out crime fiction here, some of which has taught me things while being entertaining.

    What a loss it is to people who don't like to read or who don't have access to books or whose reading is very limited. When I see these "banned book" lists put out by libraries or civil liberties' groups, I want to cry or do something about it. This just deprives people of expanding their thinking, of learning about other people's experiences and feelings, of learning to be more understanding and compassionate towards others.

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    1. The more "expanded" some people's thinking becomes, the more afraid they feel, which is criminal. They aren't aware enough to realize that the narrow existence they've been taught-- or that they've chosen-- is the truly frightening thing. It's as though they refuse to move from their comfort zones because they know their cherished belief systems won't withstand being compared to those of other people.

      Reading can teach so much. Sometimes I just want to shake non-readers and force them to open their eyes and read. But how much good would that do?

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  4. Yes! Yes! It would be like taking anti-science types to a natural history museum or to any science museum.

    I was watching a show about an Orthodox sect in my city which keeps the word dinosaur out of their books as they want to avoid anything touching on evolution. They also keep gynmasium out of their books; why, you ask? Because exercising is out of their world. They don't do it.

    It's just all so weird to me when I see parents don't want their children to read classics or terrific books where they might learn something.

    I read The Jungle at 13, Dreiser, Steinbeck, Maugham, Zola. My parents encouraged it and more. I was one of the few students who actually read real, literary books. I was almost an aberration until high school, then a few more readers came into my environment.

    Also, reading helps one learn understanding and tolerance of people from various countries, cultures, religions, etc.

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    1. My grandfather had an eighth grade education. Periodically he'd ask my mother what the teenage me was spending my wages on. She'd reply, "She's saving most of it. What she doesn't put in her savings account she mostly uses to buy books and a few records." And that would be that. He was a happy man. He knew the importance of education and always insisted that we made the most of our chances to get a good one.

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  5. People who don't read or don't want their children to read or those who don't see life as a constant continuum of learning I just don't understand. The Internet makes it even more compelling to have curiosity and want to learn new things every day.

    I can't wait to get my NY Times every day, to check news online and to read book reviews, even if I can't possibly read all of the good books. It seems so basic to me, but I got such a good start from my parents.

    I hope you get to read Kingsolver's Flight Behavior, which, even though not a mystery is full of good things.

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