Link Smorgasbord, August 2015

Neil Gaiman’s ‘American Gods’ Lands Series Greenlight at Starz
*Incoherent gibbering*

American Gods as a TV show has been a long running tease, one that I've both eagerly awaited and dreaded (the fear anyone faces when a favorite book is translated into a different medium).  But it looks like this is actually going forward, has a good level of communication with the original author, and is being done by a subscription network which generally results in more money on hand to throw at the show.

The Art of Weeding
We don't just buy books and put them on the shelves for you to borrow - we have to sometimes take them off the shelves.  There's often a lot of vilification after a library does a huge weeding project, regardless of the reasons (and there are sometimes very valid and pressing reasons that force a library to discard a large volume of its collection), but regular weeding is part of collection maintenance.  It helps us replace damaged books that we can't repair (or can't afford to repair), and allows us to free up space taken up by non-circulating (and sometimes hysterically out of date) materials and make room for incoming titles.  Actually, weeding has value even when we're talking about ebooks, but that's a different discussion.

The LibraryBox Project
I love this.  It's a little, low-cost, digital delivery system for off-the grid access.  Kind of like a digital Little Free Library.  Even better, they have instructions and downloads if you want to build your own.

What happened when we got subpoenaed over our Tor exit node
BoingBoing got subpoenaed over their Tor exit node.  Makes for an interesting read.

How long will it take to finish your TBR pile?
Hahahahahahaha....
The problem isn't the number of items on my TBR pile, the problem is all the other books I read instead of attacking my TBR pile.

Top 10 literary hoaxes
Hoaxes, fraud, satire, and shenanigans.

27 Seriously Underrated Books Every Book Lover Should Read
I think calling the majority of the books on this list "underrated" is a bit of an overstatement.  Several of them show up across English curriculums and Summer Reading lists, and by and large they are not written by lesser known authors.  However, definitely a great reading list.

Book Display: Most Stolen Books
Frustrating source of inspiration - but I also like the idea.  The authorial trends are interesting.

Bodleian Library launches children’s imprint
Well now, consider me intrigued.

Bookish Business Card Designs
YES PLEASE.

I know I've linked to a few of these before.  Still would love to have one of the library inspired designs for my own business cards.  Maybe someday when I'm a little more financially solvent.

Chain, Chest, Curse: Combating book theft in Medieval Times
Where libraries start to resemble torture chambers.

Old Man’s War, 10 Years On
Old Man's War is one of those books that I took way to long to get to reading.

A love letter to libraries
A beautiful love letter to libararies and librarians by Jenny Lawson (also known as The Bloggess)

Reading for pleasure builds empathy and improves wellbeing, research from The Reading Agency finds
Well, I guess its nice to have justification.

Cuts-hit Birmingham libraries ask public to donate books
Library budget problems in England.

Where Have All the Women Gone?
Guest post by Judith Tarr on the invisibility of women in SciFi.

Women in Science Fiction
Exactly what it sounds like - a site focusing on women who write Science Fiction, of whom there are quite a few.

The 23 Best Science Fiction Books by Female Authors
A few of my personal favorites don't make the list (though they do make the comments), and I guess there's always room for more titles on my TBR list.

ePub isn’t perfect—but look at the format mess at Amazon: Time for anti-trust action to get Amazon to do ePub?
The format issue is one of my various complaints against Amazon, regardless of how easy I find it to strip the DRM and change the format.  And since this article Authors United has actually started pushing towards anti-trust action.

ALA Calls for an End to Mandatory Filters
Since again and again we find that filters either block content they really shouldn't, or fail to block the intended content entirely.

Bookburners : Some Books Have Teeth (podcast)
This is just getting started, but has some incredible talent behind it.
There are age-old books, texts literally steeped in evil, the merest opening of which could spell humanity’s doom. All but forgotten throughout the world, these tomes have lain dormant… waiting… When an incident takes her brother, New York City cop Sal Brooks is thrust into the battle between nefarious forces trying to unleash this power onto the world and those trying to stop them. She joins Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum, a clandestine order within the Vatican responsible for the safeguarding of these magical texts. Together they stand between humanity and magical apocalypse. Some call them the Bookburners. They don’t like the label.
SJ Games vs. the Secret Service
Not a new event at all, but something I had managed to not hear about before.  Hysterical and a bit disturbing.

Crowdfunding Is Driving A $196 Million Board Game Renaissance
Games is pretty much the only section of Kickstarter I flip through on an regular basis, I only wish there was a way to limit to physical vs digital games (and all the "help me build a computer" funding requests).  I don't back often, but I have definitely added to our already respectable board game collection by backing a handful of games.

Where to Start with the Works of James Tiptree, Jr.
I've come across this author several times this week alone, and now I'm wondering how the hell I've never heard of her before.

Why It’s Difficult For Your Library to Lend Ebooks
Happy to see this article, I was involved in the MA pilot program discussed.

Pilot schemes to give all children automatic library membership
"Schemes" always seems a bit insidious to me, but talk about putting weight behind the importance of the library in life and development.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

[Book Review] Battle of the Linguist Mages

[Book Review] When Sorrows Come

[Book Review] You Sexy Thing