Thursday Hangovers - Gwenda Bond

Did I vanish there? Why, yes, I'm very mysterious that way. My goal for the afternoon is to catch up on e-mail. & huge amount of links to kick out.
Some RaceFail links (all accessible to people out of the loop, too): Susan Groppi with "Things we say and don't say" and "Frames of Reference"; Naomi Novik with "what ought to go without saying but doesn't"; Niall Harrison with "Reasons to Care about RaceFail"; Colleen Mondor with "Are you reading this wrong?"; and Chris Barzak with "On failing to keep up with RaceFail." There are soooo many more.
This has been a pet issue of mine for years. Why have science books for kids traditionally been so dry and boring? (Via Cyn.) I'm still angry that all the personalities are removed from the stories of invention and advance, but this post gives me some hope that things have improved a bit Since My Day.
Rachel Aaron on writing the right book (and, really, if you're not reading The Magic District yet, it's full of good posts).
Linda Sue Park is going to join the ranks of writers for the 39 Clues series.
Jeff Ford on his instructor John Gardner's go-to craft book, An American Rhetoric, by W.W. Watt.
The Second Pass, a new lit site updated with new content daily. Pretty. And Maud will be contributing.
Like I really believe the kids aren't still reading the beats. Yeah, right. And Charlie Finlay puts it best: "Like Sylvia Plath wouldn't be reading Stephanie Meyer if she was a college freshman today."
The New York Times gets added to the list of publications full of accolades for Jed Berry's The Manual of Detection, as does Strange Horizons (nicely said, Ms. Meisner!).
F&SF has posted all its Nebula-nominated stories online.
Karen Healey is watching Heroes, and cracking me up with commentary on Mohinder's "science."
An excellent profile of Lynda Barry.
The Guardian writes up queryfail.
Good on Jay Asher and his book's slow-building success.
Small Beer HQ is planning (get it? get it?) for their first foray into desk calendars, with A Working Writer's Daily Planner 2010: Your Year in Writing. Sign me up. Also, please to include the dates (if available) for some of the bigger conference events — BEA, AWP, ALA, and such, perhaps?
Carolyn, at Paper Cuts and away from it, has personality to spare. SRSLY.
Finally, Glen Hirshberg is blogging again, yay, and has just finished a book that sounds both ambitious and wonderful, called The Book of Bunk. I can't wait.

Colleen

March 12, 2009 at 3:51 pm

You know what got me on that article about college reading? It’s based on sales in college bookstores – as if that is where anyone goes to get their pleasure reading. Pretty much the only books bought there not required reading related are the “I have nothing to read and don’t have a car and don’t want to wait for an amazon package” kind. In other words – how the heck can anyone say what college kids are reading without considering that, I don’t know, maybe they get their books from someplace other than college bookstores?
Please. When I was in college I got most of my pleasure reading from the library and used bookstores because I didn’t have a lot of cash. And there is no way to track that. So this whole thing just strikes me as very very silly. (Or another reason to wig out about “today’s young people” for no reason.)