Tag Archives: Birmingham

Out of the brambles

Alabama is getting a new magazine this month… Thicket is set to hit newsstands in mid-January, promising six issues a year. Lots of notable names in their inaugural issue and a couple of local celebs on their blog.

I’m looking forward to what they have to feature on Alabama and Birmingham. I’ll let y’all know how the first issue looks.

{via Bham Terminal}

The Literacy Council Used Bookstore

lc01.jpgThe Literacy Council
2301 First Avenue North, Suite 102
Birmingham, AL 35203
Phone: 205-326-1925 and 1-888-448-7323
Fax: 205-326-0538
Email: info@literacy-council.org

It’s easy to miss this place. The doors are tucked up under an awning along 1st Avenue North. Most days you have to ring the doorbell to be let in. Just tell the person at the desk that you are there for the book sale and they’ll wind you around the office to the back area with all of the books. This space also doubles as a conference room. So if someone is having a meeting, you’ll have to come back later. But you can’t beat the prices and you never know what you’ll find. There are plenty of remainders but then also, just as many pristine copies of donated books.

The book store is open 8:30- 5:00, Monday through Friday.
Hardbacks $3.00, Softbacks $2.00,
Used books and advance copies $1.00
Buy 5 and get the 6th free.

lco2.jpg

lc03.jpg

lc04.jpg

lc05.jpg

lc06.jpg


lc07.jpg

lc08.jpg

 

Birmingham’s ‘Big Read’

Susan Swagler posted about the JCLC’s new “one city, one book” type program which kicks off with Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

Festivities officially start January 14th and go all the way through April. Looks like lots of movies, group talks, road trips are on the calendar. I’m digging their plan to place 1,500 copies of the book around town for folks to pick up, read and then set loose in the wild again. Could be good fun!

According to Swagler’s post, one of the speakers at the Alabama Bound event, in April, is a scholar who wrote a paper “questioning Atticus’s heroism.” Huh? What blasphemy is this? I’m going to have to find said paper and investigate. You can bet I’ll have red markers at the ready!

Actually, I’m just glad that the JCLC has taken the time to get all this organized.

Google’s knol

I can’t make up my mind just how big of a deal this is. To be honest, I never really dug into Wikipedia, never having enough faith in what the masses would post. But then I discovered the Bhamwiki. It was like a light bulb that suddenly turned on. I got it. Our little local wiki is exactly what the whole Wikimedia is supposed to be about. It’s a great place to look up info on local authors, books,publishers etc.

And now Google is throwing their hat in the same ring. The only difference, that I can find, between Wiki and Google is that:

1. Google will restrict entry editing to a slate of topic experts, to kick things off.

2. Google will allow these topic experts to share in the ad revenue stream generated by their entries.

Are there more differences? I’m certainly not qualified to write anything, but I’ve been a fan of Google for a while and I’m wondering why they keep spreading out into new areas, beyond their core search business. Maybe it is just to stem the people clicking from Google search links to Wikipedia, as this guy’s non-scientific test highlights.