Day 2 of my month-long news blackout, and I’ve already typed ‘nyti..’ into my browser bar a couple of times. Slowwwwly, steaaadddy..FWIW I’m cross-posting this, but I’ve got a couple of non-overlapping communities running, so I’m going to keep it that way for now. Disclosure, Jonah Lehrer, blah blah, etc. How we got to a place where self-plagiarism is a thing is pretty bananas, but whatevs.
I have nothing amazing to say about Mandy Brown’s A Working Library. Except that it is a lovely site, with good recommendations for books, and excellent occasional essays about the reading experience in the digital era. For instance, here are her thoughts on reading the news. Smart.
It seems very much that e-reading is a code that has not yet been cracked, for what that is worth (Instapaper, Flipboard to the contrary). The best I have seen is maybe Al Gore’s Our Choice.
Of course, Push Pop Press was bought by Facebook, and has abandoned its plan to make its publishing technology available to others (compare how awesome their vision was in concept, esp. the last couple of paragraphs there, with their acquisition announcement. If you listen carefully, you can hear the sad trombone). I haven’t tried Apple’s own iBooks Author application, maybe it is just as awesome (minus the 30% to Apple to sell through iTunes, etc…).
For kids, simply nothing beats the Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore, from Moonbot Studios. It is an ipad app, and it is an alchemy of books + Pixar magic. If you haven’t looked at this, you should. You’ll thank me.
I have been trying to be good this year about tracking my (conventional, though mostly Kindle) reading on Goodreads, though that does not include my summertime re-read of the Harry Potter books. I also ignore books I read for professional work/development. I want to start a book club around Cheryl Strayed’s Wild but so far, no takers.
Comments are disabled for this post