Here’s a great initiative: the Dewey Donation System.

It’s very simple: you donate books (new or used) to libraries or individuals who are in need, and this is the site that organises it.

So far the project has helped the following:

• the Oakland Public Library (whose funding was cut so much they couldn’t afford to buy books)
• the San Diego Public Library (whose holdings were damaged by fire)
• 2400 schoolchildren in India (survivors of the tsunami)
• Harrison County Library System (post Hurricane Katrina)

Here’s a blurb from the site explaining how the system works:

If you’re a librarian, you’ll be able to register your library and what it needs. If you’re a donor, you can look up your community (or maybe where you grew up, or where your niece lives, or where you once had a great cup of coffee), and send a little help their way. Or maybe it’ll inspire you to get involved in your own community, working with your library system to remind people that while Borders might have great coffee, nothing compares to the smell of a reference section.

Hear, hear!

Posted by Amy as Libraries at 5:14 AM EDT

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Anyone with an interest in religion in speculative fiction should check out Adherents.com: Religion In Literature.

According to the site, “This list contains 34,420 citations from literature (primarily science fiction and fantasy novels and stories) referring to actual churches, religions and tribes.”

The list is sorted alphabetically according to religion, so you could look up the references to Jainism, Druidism, Mithraism, and many, many more.

Posted by Amy as Religion & Spirituality, Speculative Fiction at 7:34 AM EDT

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1. One book that changed your life?

Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen).

2. One book that you’ve read more than once?

Just one? Good heavens. Courting Saskatchewan (David Carpenter).

3. One book that you would want on a desert island?

Mansfield Park (Jane Austen).

4. One book that made you cry?

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (J.K. Rowling).

5. One book that made you laugh?

What’s the Worst That Could Happen? (Donald Westlake)

6. One book that you wish had been written?

I wish Edwin Drood (Charles Dickens) or Sanditon (Jane Austen) had been finished.

7. One book that you wish had never been written?

Anything that promotes hatred.

8. One book that you are currently reading?

The perfect summer read: Two For The Dough (Janet Evanovich)

9. One book that you have been meaning to read?

Anything by Borges.

Via New Tammany College, The Mumpsimus, Books, Inq., Petrona, and a zillion others.

Posted by Amy as Memes at 8:05 AM EDT

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Apparently this piece about Philip K. Dick has been around for a while, but I’m just discovering it now: The Religious Experience of Philip K. Dick.

This is in comic form by R. Crumb.

Posted by Amy as Comics, Religion & Spirituality at 6:24 AM EDT

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Here’s a handy list: SF/F Writers Who Blog.

The list includes writers such as Gwenda Bond, Neil Gaiman, William Gibson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Edward Willett.

Via SF Signal.

Posted by Amy as Blogs and Bloggers, Speculative Fiction at 6:37 AM EDT

2 Comments »

Bear with me, people, I’ve had to uninstall WordPress.  I’m currently re-installing; things will be back to normal around here soon.

Thanks for your patience!

Update: I’m all caught up now (I think). If you run into any bugs on this site, please let me know.

Posted by Amy as Blog Housekeeping at 7:24 PM EDT

1 Comment »

Now, if only there were a test for Canadian English!

Via Logomacy.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff, Language at 6:05 AM EDT

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There’s a great post over at The Millions in which we learn how to pronounce the names of certain authors.

Hard To Pronounce Literary Names tells us the correct pronunciation for J. N. Coetzee, Pulitzer, and others.

There are some good links here to other pronunciation guides.

This is no doubt apocryphal, but I once heard that a university student had misheard “Pulitzer Prize” and wrote that a certain author had been awarded a “pullet surprise.”

Posted by Amy as Authors at 3:31 AM EDT

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Daniel Pennac has a new book forthcoming called The Rights Of The Reader.

It sounds like it’s going to be good. Here’s the Reader’s Bill of Rights which he has put together.

It features such items as “the right to read out loud” and “the right to escapism.”

Via Rebecca’s” Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 8:26 AM EDT

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Here’s a fun quiz for fans of Jane Austen: So You Think You Know Jane Austen?

The quiz is based on the book by the same name by John Sutherland.

Jane Austen is my all-time favourite author, so I wasn’t real surprised by my result:

You scored 17 out of a possible 18. Are you, perhaps, a time-traveller from the 18th century? Congratulations: have ten thousand a year. You are more than ready to tackle the quiz book itself.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff at 11:01 AM EDT

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The family of Samuel Taylor Coleridge has donated important archival material to the British Library.

The collection holds letters and a manuscript of a previously unknown work.

It’s a significant acquisition—there are “350 bound manuscripts and 29 cardboard boxes of loose correspondence.”

Via CBC.ca.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 7:55 AM EDT

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I’ve recently re-discovered a handy tool for finding new authors to read.

The Literature Map: The Tourist Map of Literature tells you what authors are similar to authors you already enjoy.

If you type in the name of a favourite author, the map will generate a cloud of names of other authors who write in a similar style. The authors who are closest to the centre are those who are most similar.

For example, if I type in Jane Austen, the following authors appear close to the centre: Charlotte Bronte, Charles Dickens, Harper Lee. A little further away I see Anthony Trollope, Anne Tyler, and Agatha Christie.

If I type in James Lee Burke, I get Michael Connelly, Robert Crais, Dennis Lehane, and Lee Child as close matches.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 6:48 AM EDT

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The people at Coudal Partners came up with an amusing challenge: they asked visitors to combine the name of a band with the name of a book.

Some samples were “Of Mice and Men At Work” and “Courtney Love In The Time of Cholera.”

The winners were The Invisible Manfred Mann, Fleetwood MacBeth, and Captain Beefheart of Darkness.

There are many other entertaining submissions listed; it’s a great read.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff at 6:16 PM EDT

3 Comments »

Kenneth Oppel, the Governor General award-winning author of the Silverwing series, is doing his bit for charity.

He will be auctioning off the opportunity to name a character in his next book.

The fundraiser will benefit the Canadian Children’s Book Centre

Via CBC.ca.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 6:46 AM EDT

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Michael Cassutt has put together a light-hearted little quiz that asks What Kind of Science Fiction Writer Are You?

Even those of us who will never write a word of SF can answer the questions.

I turned out to be most like Ray Bradbury, R.A. Lafferty, Roger Zelazny, or Harlan Ellison.

I can live with that.

Via Hassenpfeffer.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff at 6:55 AM EDT

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Egyptian Nobel Prize winning author Naguib Mahfouz is gravely ill.

According to the CBC, Mahfouz is in a Cairo hospital suffering complications from a liver dysfunction.

Via CBC.ca.

Posted by Amy as News, World Literature at 6:21 AM EDT

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Frank Wilson at Books, Inq. reported a while back on an interesting list we could compile: Those Authors Who Dominate Your Shelves.

The rules for the list are simple; if we have five books or more by or about an author, we include that person.

Here’s my list (in alphabetical order):

Douglas Adams
Margaret Atwood
Jane Austen
Maeve Binchy
Geoffrey Chaucer
Charles Dickens
George Eliot
James Lee Burke
Agatha Christie
Raymond Chandler
Robertson Davies
Dick Francis
Sue Grafton
Henry James
P.D. James
Margaret Laurence
Naguib Mahfouz
Ngaio Marsh
L.M. Montgomery
Alice Munro
Robert B. Parker
Sara Paretsky
Ellery Queen
Ruth Rendell
J.K. Rowling
Dorothy L. Sayers
William Shakespeare
Rex Stout
J.R.R. Tolkien
Anthony Trollope
Anne Tyler
Evelyn Waugh
Minette Walters
Laura Ingalls Wilder

These are also the authors I re-read frequently.

Now, if only I had all the money to buy all the books I’d like to have, the list would be significantly longer.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff, Readers & Reading at 7:49 AM EDT

5 Comments »

Here’s a useful resource for those who have fond memories of their childhood reading but who can’t remember the name of a particular book: Stump the Booksellers.

For $2.00, readers can submit descriptions of books they read and now want to locate, and the site’s owners or its readers will supply the names of the books (if they know).

Not all mysteries are solved immediately; here’s one that they’ve pulled from the archives:

Children’s books, probably read during the 1940s, about a young honey bee who searchs for a good shape to use for building a honeycomb. After experimenting, he comes up with a hexagon as an ideal shape and goest back to the hive to suggest that they use this shape - not knowing that is what they already use! Sort of a “re-inventing the wheel,” or “doomed to repeat the past” thing. Thank you.

If you think you know the answer to this, you can send in an answer via this page.

This site is run by Loganberry Books, a used bookseller in Shaker Heights, Ohio.

Via Weblog V2.

Posted by Amy as Booksellers, Readers & Reading at 5:26 AM EDT

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The British Library has a nifty exhibition right now: Front Page: Celebrating 100 Years of the British Newspaper 1906—2006.

The online component of the exhibition allows us to read 29 of the most memorable front pages from the last 100 years (ranging from “Titanic: No Lives Lost” to “9/11: The News That Everyone Already Knew”).

There’s also a digitised archive of the Penny Illustrated Paper (which was published from 1861—1913).

Posted by Amy as History, Newspapers & Magazines at 3:38 AM EDT

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The homestead where Lucy Maud Montgomery wrote Anne of Green Gables has now been designated as part of a national historic site.

According to the CBC, “The new designation also includes land surrounding the home where Montgomery lived: Lover’s Lane and the Haunted Woods.”

Via CBC.ca.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 5:28 AM EDT

2 Comments »

Matthew Cornell has a post explaining how to read a book quickly.

He actually has several methods listed; the one he proposes comes from Jason Womack.

It involves reading the following sections in this order:

· table of contents, glossary, index.
· anything in bold, titles, and subtitles.
· first line of every paragraph.
· entire book

I don’t think this would work for me; I prefer the old-fashioned approach.

I’m not averse to looking at the table of contents and flipping through the book to look at items in bold, but trying to skim through the book otherwise just confuses me.

Via randomWalks.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 7:29 AM EDT

2 Comments »

J. K. Rowling spells out what we can and can’t expect from her last book (at least in terms of Dumbledore).

Rowling has said that more characters will die in her seventh and final book of the Harry Potter series (likely forthcoming next year).

My predictions for the next book (at least in terms of deaths)? Hagrid and Snape will die, and the plot will develop in such a way that we will mourn Snape.

Via What’s New For Book-Lovers.

Posted by Amy as Fiction at 2:06 AM EDT

2 Comments »

This is not a joke: a comma placement in a contract may cost Rogers Communications Inc. $2.13 million dollars.

Via Hassenpfeffer.

Posted by Amy as Punctuation at 8:43 AM EDT

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Here’s a nifty list: fiction that features math.

Site owner Alex Kasman says, “The Mathematical Fiction Homepage is my attempt to collect information about all significant references to mathematics in fiction.”

Well, he’s certainly making a thorough job of it. You can look at the complete list here. You can also search by title or by author.

Starting in 414 B.C.E. with Aristophanes’ The Birds and ending with books forthcoming in 2008, the list encompasses such books as Stephen Baxter’s Godel’s Sunflowers, Robert J. Sawyer’s Factoring Humanity, Mark Cohen’s The Fractal Murders, and Matt Selman’s The Simpsons: Girls Just Want to Have Sums.

Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Readers & Reading at 8:36 AM EDT

2 Comments »

Check out the Guardian article titled ”Claws Out Over Hemingway’s Six-Toed Cats”.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to start fining the owners of the musem that was once home to Ernest Hemingway.

Apparently nearly 50 descendants of Hemingway’s cat Snow White roam through the author’s former home. They’re a hit with visitors, but not, obviously, with the USDA.

Via Quill and Quire.

Posted by Amy as Unusual at 8:10 AM EDT

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The Domesday Book is now online thanks to the National Archives in England.

I especially liked browsing through the list of names of Essex landowners. I saw the names of Countess Judith; Walter the Cook; Goscelin the lorimer; Frodo, brother of the abbot; and Roger God-save-the-ladies (I swear I’m not making this up).

The National Archives has a good website about Domesday. You can read about the background to it (what it is, why it was created) and you can find out what the information in it can tell us about Anglo-Saxon England.

There is also an online Latin tutorial that’s suitable for complete beginners.

There is a section for children, too—they can play a game that asks them to count the animals on the farm (and then there’s an explanation about why that was important for Domesday).

For some analysis of Domesday, you can check out J. J. Cohen’s comments about Domesday and colonialism.

Via In The Middle.

Posted by Amy as History, Medieval and Old English at 4:44 AM EDT

4 Comments »

Do you have a little time on your hands? Check out Franz Kafka’s Trivia Challenge.

Here’s Round 1:

For the last thirty years, M—–’s gait has been gradually slowing under an accruing burden of recollection and regret. Fifteen years ago he walked at half normal speed. Today, while shambling tediously across an intersection, he is about to stop forever, right in front of oncoming traffic. For ten points: make a sort of nervous, almost spasmodic gesture commenting on his fate.

Via Unmanageable Imaginations.

Posted by Amy as Humour at 7:35 AM EDT

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Fans of P.D. James might be interested to know that it was her birthday yesterday.

The woman who is the master writer of mysteries has an interesting web page that includes an ”About The Author” page that tells us, among other things, what her favourite meal is, the items on her desk, and her favourite place to visit.

For those who are interested in writing mysteries, she has a page with good advice to follow.

There’s also an article on why she chose to write mysteries and a FAQ.

This site is definitely worth a visit.

Posted by Amy as Authors at 11:27 AM EDT

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