Linkbait: What a bookseller's brain looks like (via Politics & Prose tumblr)

Via the Politics & Prose tumblr, a terrific image by Sergio Monterrubio - originally posted at Dribbble. Find Sergio on Twitter.

Angela Sherrill says this is the best short article on bullying and school policy you'll read.

This is strong stuff.

You'll want to click through to read the full post by guest poster and YA author Mike Harmon on book blog Random Acts of Reading.

Todd was quiet, personable, received good grades, and was a football player with scholarships in his future. He’d never been in trouble with the school or the law.

Then he threw two punches and it almost all fell apart. Garrett, a wrestler, bumped into Todd in the hall. Words followed. Garrett pushed, then tried to punch him. Todd threw two punches, breaking Garrett’s eye socket, nose, and fracturing his jaw. My son’s friend saw it happen. Blood flew everywhere, Garrett fell to the ground, and Todd walked away.

[Full post: Author Mike Harmon on Bullying and Schools]

Review Link: Becoming Ray Bradbury in Shelf Awareness (University of Illinois Press)

  

Becoming Ray Bradbury
by Jonathan R. Eller
University of Illinois Press | 9780252036293 | $34.95 | Aug 2011

It's the featured review in Shelf Awareness for August 9, 2011:

In Becoming Ray Bradbury, Jonathan R. Eller painstakingly details the process by which the young writer consciously shifted his literary influences from pulp writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.P. Lovecraft to literary figures like Thomas Wolfe and John Steinbeck. Drawing upon interviews with his subject, as well as access to his archival papers, and light critical analysis of the stories, Eller lays out Bradbury's tightrope walk along "the line between unrestrained individualism and the effective use of technique," resulting in short stories that used science fiction and fantasy tropes to reach out to larger audiences.

 University of Illinois Press: twitter | facebook | blog

Linkbait: Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Patrick Ness accepts Carnegie medal with fierce defence of libraries

One of my favorite (YA) authors, Patrick Ness, has won the Carnegie medal for book 3 of his Chaos Walking series, Monsters of Men (from @Candlewick). Good on ya, @Patrick_Ness! In the main link above, Ness used his time at the podium to attack the British government's budgetary policies slashing support for libraries. He also praised librarians & libraries:

"Librarians open up the world," he said. "Knowledge is useless if you don't even know where to begin to look. How much more can you discover when someone can point you in the right direction, when someone can maybe even give you a treasure map, to places you may not have even thought you were allowed to go? This is what librarians do."

Q & A with Patrick Ness and Denise Johnstone-Burt

Related to the previous item, an interview on PW.com between Patrick Ness and his Walker Books editor, Denise Johnstone-Burt, mostly covering their work on his new book, A Monster Calls (coming out in the US from @Candlewick in Sept 2011).

Fanmail FAQ: Looking for Good Books….

Contemporary fantasy legend Patrick Rothfuss has posted a terrific series of reading lists to his blog.
List one: his general "you oughta read this" SF&F list – 40 books/series.  
List two: 20 books/series that were his runners-up, the ones that he felt bad about leaving off the first list.
List three: 25 books/series he's been meaning to read but hasn't gotten to yet.

And as always, where one writer has left his comments open, his fanbase floods in to offer commentary, criticism, corrections. 276 comments as of now. 

Lucky Peach

Some seriously great food writing, celebrity chef access (Momofuku's David Chang) and foodie chops, with McSweeney's attitude. Issue One is focusing on ramen. RAMEN! And it features Harold McGee, Anthony Bourdain, Ruth Reichl, Wylie Dufresne, and more.

Go find a copy and dig in. Bring your chopsticks.

Did My Brother Invent E-mail With Tom Van Vleck (Part One)?

Errol Morris goes LOOOONG in his Opinionator blog on the NYTimes.com site with the first part (of five) investigating his older brother Noel Morris's role in the invention of email at MIT in the Sixties. Always fascinating.

also: Part Two  Part Three  Part Four  Part Five

Linkbait: Sunday, June 5, 2011

Ruminating on Madison Bookstores, Present and Past, and Dean Bakopoulos, the Ex-Bookseller Who Has Written Not Just One, but Two Great Novels (and is Coming Thurs. June 9 for the Second One).

At Boswell & Books, Daniel Goldin posted a terrific look at the state of Madison, WI bookstores, and a not-unrelated look at Dean Bakopolous' great new novel, My American Unhappiness.

Bookseller review: The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Teresa Rolfe Kravtin posted a review at her excellent new tumblelog, A Rep Reading, by one of her territory's booksellers (Atlanta's Blue Elephant Book Shop owner Laura Keys) for a new novel from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. You should add Teresa's blog to your RSS feed pronto!

(A copy of The Return of Captain John Emmett has also recently shown up in my own mailbox. Thanks, HMH!)

BEA 2011

Over at PK in the Terrarium, Paul Kozlowski posted a typically sharp-elbowed look back at his BEA 2011 experience. (As I look back at the show, I think I only violated one of his prohibitions – about which I shall not go into detail.)

book expo 2011

And this round-up wouldn't be complete without a link to the post-BEA 2011 wrap-up by the Rep of the Year, John Eklund (via his own Paper Over Board).