You really just can’t tell if all of the home schooling folks’ reviews were good or bad about this book. In reality, there isn’t much of a relation between “best-seller” and “good cover design”. You just have to look at the Best Sellers Lists in all the papers to see that, which is a shame. But this is a fun little time water built on the Amazon API though. Can you pick a best-seller simply by looking at the cover?
Ann, over at Books on the Nightstand, has produced a post that capitalizes on what I think is one of the coolest ideas floating around right now… build your own virtual book conference. Basically, she came up with a theme (books she likes right now) and she put together a collection of online videos with the authors, readings and other notes. So now you can click your way through her conference, titled Pixelated, at your own pace.
I want to do this. This could be really fun and you could tie in all kinds of content from various social media. All I need is a theme and some free time… hmmmm.
I’ve never read anything by Peter Vansittart, but after reading his obit in the New York Times, I think I’m going to have to look him up (The Guardian‘s is good too). Nothing overly fancy, just sounds like good solid historical fiction writing. I mean, being compared to Golding’s Lord of the Flies is a good thing, I think. It’s a shame that I only picked up on him due to his passing.
It’s Buy a Friend a Book Week! This week is one of the four per year weeks where bookish types around the globe target a friend and plot which book to buy for them. bwahahaha! (that’s my October/Halloween laugh.) You can click on over and see what all the hub-bub is about (even on Twitter) and slap some BAFAB week icons on your site. But most importantly… pick someone… and buy them a book.
But banning Huck Finn? The Giver? Of Mice and Men? from high school or community libraries? For real? I’ve seen Hardee’s commercials that violate more social mores, in 18 seconds, than all three of those classics combined. Oh well. That’s reason enough to read a banned book (or explore one on Google’s Banned Books page)!
