How much are you sharing on Facebook?

How much are you sharing on Facebook? Probably more than you think. I know Facebook is reportedly unveiling new privacy settings this week, but I think you'll find it worth your time to check on your own how secure your personal information is on Facebook.

This link for ReclaimPrivacy.org came in this week's ALA newsletter; it's very legit and very easy to execute, and in moments you'll have a good assessment as to whether your private information on Facebook is, in fact, private. Know who can look at your information on Facebook!

Sex and the Austen Girl episodes

I should be back on a semi-regular posting schedule by next week, when I'll be back in Bloomington. Until then, however, I strongly recommend watching the first two "Sex and the Austen Girl" episodes. They're short and clever, and quite funny. The two first topics are "Meeting Men" and "Women's Fashion."

Maps!

Not to long from now, I'll get to see some really fantastic maps in a great exhibit at the British Library. Not wanting to hog all the intellectual fun, however, I want to share a link that looks at ten of the greatest maps in history (as per the British Library, again).

Don't you just love maps?

Austen online

I've read both of Laurie Viera Rigler's books about Austenites who find themselves quite out of time. I enjoyed them both, also, in a very beach-book, lazy Sunday, leisurely reading sort of way. They provide a nice little escape, if you will.

Thus, I'll definitely be watching the web series based on the books: Sex and the Austen Girl. Do check out the trailer!

Rethinking the book club

I'm in a book club. It's one of the high points of my week, although truth be told we don't always spend that much time talking about our week's reading at the meetings. We do read, though, and we discuss. We discuss what we read; what the reading made us think of; and what other things we've read, &c. &c. Basically, it's your traditional book club.

I was reading last week, however, about a new take on the book club: "One Book, One Twitter" (1b1t). The premise follows that of uber-librarian Nancy Pearl's "One City, One Book" campaign, in which all participating members of the community read one particular book. In theory, the book is then on the collective consciousness of the community, and book club-esque discussion can take place in all sorts of forums. In the case of 1b1t, these discussions take place on Twitter. Huge community, right?

1b1t will be reading Neil Gaiman's American Gods, and then full-force discussion will (hopefully) take place. A very large book club, indeed.

I'm curious what people think about this Twitter book club phenomenon. What kind of discussion will the 140-character limit promote? Will small groups inevitably branch off on their own? Will the discussion be too multi-faceted to be really meaningful? Feel free to chime in, and if you tweet, maybe participate!

Additional thought: American God is available in e-book format, which means, at least in theory, that 1b1t participants could read the book on their internet-enabled, e-reader devices and then participate in the online discussion from the same platform. Ponder that: a handheld book club experience.

Not Liking Movies

After a five-star review from my mother and several other people whom I cannot recall at this particular moment, I watched 500 Days of Summer yesterday.

And I did not like it.

And then, because I felt bad for not liking a movie that had been so highly recommended to me, I tried to rationalize why I didn't like it. Here's the list I came up with:

1 - It bugged me that Zooey Deschanel's character, Summer, was always dressed in blue. Supposedly it was to bring out her eyes, but come on. She is so not Alice in Wonderland.

2 - Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, Tom, kind of bugged me, too. Come on, dude, get over it. Stop dwelling. Don't be so emo.

3 - I wanted to know more about Tom's friend Paul, whose screen time did nothing to flesh him out.

4 - Haha, Autumn. Get it? It's, like, ironic and stuff! Haha! No.

5 - Sometimes I like nonlinear storytelling. Sometimes I don't. This time I really didn't.

And then, because all of these things really did bug me about the movie, but because all of them combined don't really make me feel as though I've adequately described why I did not like the movie, I decided that maybe I don't have to describe it.

I decided I don't have to justify why I don't like a movie. Or a book. Or shrimp. Or anything else for that matter. Not liking something can be enough.

Maybe it's dumb, but it feels pretty liberating.

Help! There are (zombies/demons/vampires/etc) in my literature!

I've talked about literary zombies and other creatures of their ilk on here before. Quirk Classics has really made a name for themselves in a relatively short amount of time because of their smash mash-up hit Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. They are not, however, the only publishers who are currently waxing demonic.

Check out this slideshow from the Huffington Post that gives an introduction to this current literary trend.