Mock Turtle

Over at Strange Horizons, James Schellenberg ponders the question, “If there are too many books, then why is it so hard to find a worthwhile one to read?” Considering the various strategies we employ in winnowing out, from the vast array of options available, the next book to read or the next movie to see, Schellenberg suggests that a sequel to a known work can offer a shortcut for the chooser. But of course even the realm of sequels is loaded with too many options and variations … so Schellenberg proposes a taxonomy of sequels, remakes, and adaptations.

From Schellenberg’s article:

I’m a librarian by training, and I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy, so my obsessive side (less politely: my nerdy side) often gets a workout. I was contemplating the proliferation of sequels and their ilk — mostly when people argue about this stuff, it’s to judge between the items. For example, are sequels written by other people inherently worse than sequels written by the original creator? But any argument needs to have its terms defined.

So here is a taxonomy.

Read the article and the taxonomy: “Sequels, Remakes, Adaptations,” by James Schellenberg.
(Note that Schellenberg solicits comment and plans to maintain an updated copy of the taxonomy at his website.)

kmccook writes:

The Royal Society has announced the longlist for this year’s Aventis Prizes for Science Books’ General Prize, which celebrates the very best in popular science writing for adults. The formal announcement was made at London Book Fair by Fiammetta Rocco, literary editor at the Economist and member of the General Prize judging panel.

The Longlist includes:

• Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World – David Bodanis (Little Brown)
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive – Jared Diamond (Penguin Allen Lane)
• The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison – John Emsley (Oxford University Press)
• The Gecko’s Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature – Peter Forbes (Fourth Estate)
• The Silicon Eye: How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete – George Gilder (WW Norton)
• Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and our Future in the Cosmos – Michio Kaku (Penguin)
• Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life – Nick Lane (Oxford University Press)
• Venomous Earth: How Arsenic Caused the World’s Worst Mass Poisoning – Andrew Meharg (Macmillan)
• Empire of the Stars: Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes – Arthur I. Miller (Little Brown)
• Seven Deadly Colours: The Genius of Nature’s Palette and How It Eluded Darwin – Andrew Parker (Simon & Schuster)
• The Truth About Hormones: What’s Going on When We’re Tetchy, Spotty, Fearful, Tearful or Just Plain Awful – Vivienne Parry (Atlantic Books)
• Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis: The Quest to Find the Hidden Law of Prime Numbers – Dan Rockmore (Jonathan Cape)
• The Fruits of War: How War and Conflict Have Driven Science – Michael White (Simon & Schuster)

kmccook writes:

The Royal Society has announced the longlist for this year’s Aventis Prizes for Science Books’ General Prize, which celebrates the very best in popular science writing for adults. The formal announcement was made at London Book Fair by Fiammetta Rocco, literary editor at the Economist and member of the General Prize judging panel.

The Longlist includes:

• Electric Universe: How Electricity Switched on the Modern World – David Bodanis (Little Brown)
• Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive – Jared Diamond (Penguin Allen Lane)
• The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison – John Emsley (Oxford University Press)
• The Gecko’s Foot: Bio-inspiration: Engineering New Materials from Nature – Peter Forbes (Fourth Estate)
• The Silicon Eye: How a Silicon Valley Company Aims to Make All Current Computers, Cameras, and Cell Phones Obsolete – George Gilder (WW Norton)
• Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and our Future in the Cosmos – Michio Kaku (Penguin)
• Power, Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the Meaning of Life – Nick Lane (Oxford University Press)
• Venomous Earth: How Arsenic Caused the World’s Worst Mass Poisoning – Andrew Meharg (Macmillan)
• Empire of the Stars: Friendship, Obsession and Betrayal in the Quest for Black Holes – Arthur I. Miller (Little Brown)
• Seven Deadly Colours: The Genius of Nature’s Palette and How It Eluded Darwin – Andrew Parker (Simon & Schuster)
• The Truth About Hormones: What’s Going on When We’re Tetchy, Spotty, Fearful, Tearful or Just Plain Awful – Vivienne Parry (Atlantic Books)
• Stalking the Riemann Hypothesis: The Quest to Find the Hidden Law of Prime Numbers – Dan Rockmore (Jonathan Cape)
• The Fruits of War: How War and Conflict Have Driven Science – Michael White (Simon & Schuster)

Interesting column from the Detroit Free Press, in which a community college instructor offers her observations regarding the epidemic of non-reading in her state and nationwide.

Over and over, my students — all adults — tell me that too many school districts neglect to include provocative selections within their curriculum. The collection of choices made and the way reading materials are handled fail to inspire. Why educators would undertake such a questionable course is murky, but the results are not. Michigan community college students struggle to speak in complete sentences and are challenged when asked to write coherently. Will they perform any better during job interviews? Is this next generation of workers prepared to create cutting-edge products and services?

She also comments:

It’s easy to buy picture books featuring the gentle antics of big red dogs, but it’s much more difficult to pick out thought-provoking selections for a 16-year-old when a parent hasn’t read a book since high school — if ever.

Thanks to Reading Today Daily for the link.

TechSoup announces the launch of this year’s “Stop Spam
Today!” campaign. This educational campaign is co-sponsored by
Mailshell, one of TechSoup’s long-time technology
partners. The campaign begins this November and culminates on
December 14 and 15, when nonprofits and public libraries can
order free anti-spam software donated by Mailshell.

The goal of “Stop Spam Today!” is to help nonprofits manage the
effects of spam on their organization. Each week during the
campaign, TechSoup.org will post articles, tips,
resources, and online discussions about fighting spam. All of
this educational content is available in the special “Anti-Spam
Solutions” section of TechSoup.org.

TechSoup announces the launch of this year’s “Stop Spam
Today!” campaign. This educational campaign is co-sponsored by
Mailshell, one of TechSoup’s long-time technology
partners. The campaign begins this November and culminates on
December 14 and 15, when nonprofits and public libraries can
order free anti-spam software donated by Mailshell.

The goal of “Stop Spam Today!” is to help nonprofits manage the
effects of spam on their organization. Each week during the
campaign, TechSoup.org will post articles, tips,
resources, and online discussions about fighting spam. All of
this educational content is available in the special “Anti-Spam
Solutions” section of TechSoup.org.This special offer is available to:

• U.S. public libraries that have either a 501(c)(3) designation or an FSCS ID
• U.S. nonprofits with valid 501(c)(3) status
• Canadian charities with a Confirmation of Registration Letter from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)

TechSoup strongly encourages organizations to preregister in advance of the 48-hour ordering window. If your organization is already a TechSoup Stock customer, you do not need to re-register your organization; simply go to www.stopspamtoday.org on December 14 or 15 to order your software donation. Note: Even if you are already registered as an individual at MyTechSoup, you still need to register and qualify your organization on TechSoup Stock — the registration processes are completely separate.

Here’s the “Stop Spam
Today!” FAQ

From Reading Today Daily :

Reading Rainbow, that venerable children’s program that has promoted the love of reading among youngsters since 1983, faces a funding crisis, reports Twila Liggett, the program’s executive producer and founder. With that in mind, a “Save Reading Rainbow” website has been launched. There, program supporters can sign an online petition of support, prepare a testimonial letter, or make a donation. For further details visit the new website.

At the Save Reading Rainbow site, there’s also swag to buy, tools for spreading the word, and Save Reading Rainbow banners you can snag and post on your blog.

Please help get the word out on the following opportunity for college students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

From the ELDNET-L list:

As you may have heard, Sloan-C is working with the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the Sloan Foundation on a project called the “Sloan Semester“ to bring free online courses to students displaced from colleges shut down due to damage from Hurricane Katrina. We have been putting together a website (http://www.sloansemester.org/) that provides and collects information that will help in this effort and we are now asking for your help in getting this information out to students that could potentially benefit from this initiative.

[more below the fold]

Please help get the word out on the following opportunity for college students displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

From the ELDNET-L list:

As you may have heard, Sloan-C is working with the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) and the Sloan Foundation on a project called the “Sloan Semester“ to bring free online courses to students displaced from colleges shut down due to damage from Hurricane Katrina. We have been putting together a website (http://www.sloansemester.org/) that provides and collects information that will help in this effort and we are now asking for your help in getting this information out to students that could potentially benefit from this initiative.

[more below the fold]The Boston Globe estimated that as many as 175,000 students will be displaced this semester due to this disaster. Many will have to seek classes at other institutions, even now that the semester has already started at most of these colleges. Sloan-C has organized more than 100 institutions that offer quality online courses in an accelerated format, starting in October (we are still accepting additional volunteer institutions at the website).

This is a grassroots effort, meaning everything hinges on your help to get this information to the students.The press has already given us some coverage, but that can only do so much, it is really up to our personal efforts to get the word out. Please contact as many personal and professional contacts as possible with the hope that the more people you contact, the more likely more students will find out that this is available. Even if you don’t know a student from the affected schools, someone you know might, so please forward to all you feel comfortable forwarding to.

Because these courses start in October and are completely online, this gives these students the flexibility to have some time to get their personal lives back together, and the geographical freedom to not have to attend a face-to-face classroom in an institution far from where they intended. This will also make it easier for them to return to their institutions once those colleges have recovered from the hurricane damage.

Please help us in getting the word out to everyone you know, so that we can help these students continue their academic careers in spite of this very unfortunate event. Our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those affected.

This is the link that you can forward: www.sloansemester.org/

Sincerely,

Keith Bourne
Sloan Consortium
Chief Operations Officer

The Louisiana Library Association has set up The LLA Disaster Relief Fund and is now accepting monetary donations to assist school, public, and academic library restoration efforts in Southeastern Louisiana.

Please make checks payable to:
LLA-Disaster Relief

And mail to:
LLA
421 South 4th St.
Eunice, LA 70535

The New Yorker has an amusing little piece about the quest to identify the fake entry in the recently published second edition of the New Oxford American Dictionary (NOAD).

“It was an old tradition in encyclopedias to put in a fake entry to protect your copyright,” says Richard Steins, one of the editors of the 1975 edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia. The idea was that if your planted entry showed up in some other reference work without attribution, you knew your work had been lifted.

The tradition has been revived and adopted by NOAD; when word leaked out that the new edition contained a fake entry starting with “e,” a team of word sleuths were hot on the trail. They narrowed the field of suspects from 3,128 to six, then zeroed in on the culprit.

Read all about how one investigator and nine lexicographical authorities found their Mountweazel.

(Thanks to A Capital Idea for the pointer.)

C-SPAN’s new Book TV Bus takes off from Washington, D.C. in September, slated for 20+ stops at bookstores, libraries, and book festivals in the East, Southeast, and Midwest. The 45-foot coach is a mobile television production studio. Its mission? To promote Book TV’s nonfiction book programming, which airs every weekend on C-SPAN2.

See the Book TV Bus schedule and other details here; check back for added dates and locations. In fact, if you’re interested in hosting a Bus visit @ your library, submit a request to [email protected]. In your email, include:

• The date, time and location of your event
• A brief description of the event
• Why you would like the Bus to be there

(Thanks to the Bookstore Tourism Blog for the tip.)

Over at SIVACRACY.NET, Siva Vaidhyanathan invites librarians to join an ongoing dialogue about Google Print that he has been carrying on with Michael Madison of madisonian.net.

The topic: What is a library?

Siva posts a longish passage from Madison, then says:

Any librarians want to take Michael up on his questions? Write to me and I will post the responses.

He primes the pump with a couple of initial responses, and the floor is open. (You can reach Siva at sivav at pobox dot com.)