Elizabeth Bird

Fusenews: Readers Who Enjoy A Fuse #8 Production May Also Like the "Who Is Britney Spears?" Blog
August 29, 2008

• Peter makes me feel like I'm lying down on the job.  Now he brings us news that I've never seen reported anywhere else and it involves Beverly Cleary.  Better still, he makes it funny.  Intrigued?  Check out the post Leave It To Beverly for more.

• To a daily blogger like myself such instructions as these are like money in the hand:

10 wording blunders that make you look stupid

10 flagrant grammar mistakes that make you look stupid

10 mispronunciations that make you sound stupid

Thanks to BB-Blog for the link.

• 100 Scope Notes found a wonderful old-timey (read: 2000) Onion poll involving celebrity picture books.  I think the Dennis Hopper one is my favorite.  I would read that book.

• Newbie authors beware.  For that matter, old hand authors beware.  When you get a shiny pretty ARC?  Do be so good as to give it a read through.  Otherwise you could be in for a world of hurtin'.  Thanks to  Original Content for the link.

• Fascinating.  This should be particularly interesting to people who, like myself, participate in Goodreads.  According to Galleycat, who in turn got this information from Tim O'Reilly on the O'Reilly Radar, Goodreads trumps comparatively similar sites like Shelfari and LibraryThing in terms of unique visitors.  But wait!  Amazon.com just bought Shelfari, so what is this going to mean?  O'Reilly suspects that Amazon will throw its weight behind Shelfari, which is probably true.  Ron's point at Galleycat, however, was, "the consequences of such a move for authors and publishers, who currently have to choose one bookish network upon which to focus their attention or else scramble to maintain some sort of presence on several of them, could be significant."  Personally I'm just a little confused since Goodreads makes a point to get many of its records from Amazon.  I just sort of assumed that they were working together.

• Here's something that could turn into a post of its own if I were only willing to commit the hours to it.  Amazon again.  You know how Amazon.com will pair books together in a sort of "If You Liked This Then You Might Like This" fashion?  Adam Rex pointed out on his blog that his newest title Frankenstein Takes the Cake is being paired with. . . um . . . Watchmen .  Oh my.  Some kid somewhere is certainly in for a surprise.

• And this week's animal most likely to get his own picture book is . . . . Sir Penguin!  Thanks to BB-Blog for the link.

• Daily Image:

Normally you see something as neat as this Alpha Coffee Table and you expect it to be in some high-faluting designer's show.

You wouldn't, perhaps, expect it to be Crate and Barrel.  Mind you, that still makes it $899 big ones when the day is done.  Thanks (once again) to BB-Blog for the link.

Posted by Elizabeth Bird on August 29, 2008 | Comments (0)