BOOKISHGAL

Time for one of my favourite activities of the week: perusing my blogroll (and perhaps, today, some others I don’t [yet?] have there, but who have really been interesting this week).

And right away I come upon some very fun stuff from Nicola at Alpha Heroes. First, she talked early in the week about a new trend in romance books: angel/demon stories. For the last few years, it’s been what she labels “vampires and shifters,” but the new big thing is demons as heroes and even love interests. While I like the vampire type of stories, and I love Kim Harrison’s Hollows series that has vampires, witches, elves, werewolves — oh, just name it — I’m intrigued at how one might write a story with a demon as a sympathetic and romantic character. I may have to pick up books from some of the series Nicola mention, just because this type of project sounds so interesting.

But that’s not even my main interest from Alpha Heroes this week. Nicola came upon a reading challenge from the Romance Vagabonds site: to read at least 12 romance novels in the year that feature recurring title words, recurring plots, and recurring cover images. You know those things get recycled, so that the word “lover” or “secret” (their examples) often occur in a title, and half the time there’s some muscled guy with his shirt half off. The suggested list of needed words, plots, and cover images is here. It looks hilarious. Nicola says she’s already at 58 points. And if she doesn’t publish the spreadsheet she’s keeping, there will be hell to pay! (Which kind of ties back to her other post, huh?)

Carrie at Books and Movies (a new member of my blogroll) has been doing a similar browse through the blogroll and other book links the last couple of days. But on Friday she posted a great interview with Jason Pratt , author of the fantasy novel, Cry of Justice . And I also noticed another 2009 reading challenge I hadn’t heard of yet: the Essay Reading Challenge. Now, that’s something I’d really like to do, because I think essay-writing is an endangered art, and I haven’t delved into essays at all in my reading history.

Meanwhile, Flit at Flitting on Fiction has  such an interesting school life, “having” to buy books and read them for her classes. Oh, for such homework! She talks about the assignment to buy a book from Lulu.com and to email the author, but in earlier posts there’s something even more interesting. She contrasts two books she’s just read, about the internet culture — one very positive and one very negative. Don Tapscott has been writing about the digital/internet age for several years now, with great insight. I’ve been intrigued by him since I heard a CBC interview with him about a decade ago, and as new things have developed I’ve often thought, “I wonder what Tapscott would say about that.” Flit has been reading his latest book, Grown Up Digital. (The book for which I heard the earlier interview was Growing Up Digital, so obviously he’s following the same people as they grow up in the internet age.)

Contrast that with the book, the cult of the amateur, by Andrew Keen. (And I’ve capitalized his name, giving him that dignity, even though — agreeing with Flit — I am getting exceedingly irritated at the hip types who’ve decided they don’t need to capitalize anything any more. Talk about tearing down culture.) From the sound of it, this writer thinks all of us using the internet — especially us bloggers — are destroying Culture As We Know It, and very possibly all of civilization, from the sound of it.

I agree with Flit (again) that it probably makes more sense to read Tapscott’s book.

Over at The Indextrious Reader, Melanie took a Friday tour of some of her favourite book-related blogs, sharing posts she enjoyed. Obviously I love doing that sort of tour. But scroll down for a couple of posts and you’ll find her link to Kate’s Food and Fiction Meme. That’s where you list foods or meals from books you’ve read that you’d either like to try, or that didn’t live up to the billing they got in the book, etc.

That sounds like fun, and I may try it in the next day or two (even though it’s a Friday meme for Kate). I already agree that Turkish Delight simply did not live up to its billing in The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe. And there’s a particular feast I’d love to have attended, in one of Dorothy Dunnett’s books. But I’ll save all that for later.

And to wind things up with my bookish blogroll, the Weekly Geeks are replaying a project from last May, doing Political and Social Issues as this week’s theme.

But there have been some fun things going on at blogs that aren’t on my bookish blogroll, but which I’ve started following for other reasons. For example, Rocket Scientist (one of my new favourites, that I encountered through watching the Flitting on Fiction blog) talks about astronomy, space exploration, and related things, but also talks about writing. This week, on Wednesday, Stephanie did an exercise I’d seen done before, but which is always interesting and difficult: writing a meaningful story in six words. (Stemming from when Hemingway was challenged to do so, and responded, “For sale. Baby shoes. Never worn.”) She had her own very good examples, and several of her readers left comments with their own attempts.

And that exercise was actually inspired by her sister’s blog, Shakespearemom, where Shakespeare (I love her user name!) is also doing instructional writing exercises. And that also takes me to Exchange of Realities , where ravyn, too, discusses writing, among other things.

Three more blogs I intend to follow regularly. And I encourage you to do the same!

Now go have a good week, and happy reading!

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