PETRONA: Reading around

31 July 2006

Reading around

Looking round the blogs today I find yet more summer reading lists everywhere (they seem to start around April). I'm not going to link to any here, but would like to note this post by Amy on Books, Words, and Writing about a website featuring author interviews. The site, center for book culture.org, features an idiosyncratic (even eccentric) list of about 30 authors, including Hubert Selby twice, Edmund White interviewed by himself, Manuel Puig, Carlos Fuentes and a wide international choice. There is also a readings and conversations program (sic) from September to May each year (for when you've finished your summer reading, no doubt).

The Superman haiku competition results are up on Bookshelves of Doom --- and Debra was joint winner, as we all knew she should be! There were 5 winners, Debra's featured in the "fave cape mentions" category. I did write an entry myself, actually, but I couldn't remember the haiku rules except for 17 syllables, but not how many in each line, etc. And I'm shy. And I wrote it in 30 seconds with no prior thought or consideration. So I just posted it in Debra's comments (which have their own rss feed, incidentally).

Well, are newspapers dying or not? Joe Wikert (of the publisher John Wiley and sons) has written a sensible and informed analysis called the long slow death of newspapers. Essentially, Joe isn't impressed by their attempts to "monetarise" content, and has a few more imaginative suggestions for them to stay in business in the online era. Here's an interesting post on qwghlm, which starts out discussing the Long Tail, but is mainly about flaws in concepts/sites like Comment is Free (I agree, but they don't base their business models on consumers like me), MySpace, Digg and other "wisdom of the crowds" concepts that can end up as "wisdom of the spam" or "wisdom of the press release", etc. I also agree with Chris (aka qwghlm) that the jury remains out on whether Web 2.0 is going to transform the mainstream media or whether it will be the other way round -- and not just because, like Joe, I like to read my daily newspaper in print edition.

Here's a nice idea: welcome new bloggers to the blogosphere by showering their first post with comments. Bloggers blog (Jenny D assures me that the first word has no apostrophe because it is a noun) has the full story. Also at the same adjective-free zone, you can find out how much your blog is worth.

I'm ending with a note that probably isn't news to anyone reading this blog, that L. Lee Lowe has two (at last visit) chapters posted of Mortal Ghost on the blog of the same name. Not only is the sample so far excellent writing, but you can't move on the blogosphere for links to it and admiring comments about it: Frank Wilson (Books Inq.), John Barlow, Kimbofo (Reading Matters), Michael Allen (Grumpy Old Bookman) and many others. Congratulations to Lee, this is quality recommendation indeed, and well deserved too.

31 Jul 2006 18:04:51 | Books, Publishing, Weblogs