In My Life
I’m a day late with this weekly recap because I didn’t manage to wrap it up yesterday. My sister just came home at the end of last week after being abroad a few weeks for a community service project. That’s why I chose to spend more time with her over the weekend, since I hardly see her anymore.
Turns out that staying home over the weekend wasn’t such a shabby proposition either. Besides spending some quality time with the family, my Amazon orders arrived. Two boxes came in on Saturday afternoon, and another one came in yesterday. That was completely unexpected since technically UPS doesn’t do deliveries on weekends outside of Saturday mornings. Wonder what gave rise to such odd delivery hours.
Usually I don’t order this many books in one shot, and I’m even less likely to buy hardcovers because I don’t like book jackets but this time round I just had to. My dad asked me to order something for him off Amazon, so this was the perfect time to get hold of the bargain books I’ve been eyeing. Ordering this whole bulk meant no shipping costs, which is a pretty sweet deal for international orders. This way all the hardcovers I ordered were cheaper even than the paperbacks on The Book Depository.
The only thing when ordering bargain books is that you need to be okay with a few nicks and marks on the books. Thankfully that generally meant a dot drawn at the bottom with a marker for this load. Two or three books had a line drawn across the top. Since those books were cheaper, I’m alright with that somehow. Besides, two of these books are out of print and were only available as bargain books.
For those of you who want to look up any of these books, I’m including the Goodreads links as well.
Fiction
Stealing Heaven by Elizabeth Scott, Arranged by Cathering McKenzie, Bittersweet by Sarah Ockler, Fixing Delilah by Sarah Ockler, Say the Word by Jeannine Garsee, Ask the Passengers by A.S. King, Fat Cat by Robin Brande, The Half-Life of Planets by Emily Franklin and Brendan Halpin
Non-Fiction
Logotype by Michael Evamy, by Jon Duckettt, Responsive Design with WordPress by Joe Casabona, Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton
On the Blog
Reviews
Blog Posts
Around the Blogosphere
Bloggers & Blogging
- Amber @ The Mile Long Bookshelf wonders why so many book bloggers hide their blogs from family and friends.
Books
- Shannelle @ The Art of Escapism talks about the portrayal of bullying in books, and how it’s not always easy to deal with bullying.
- Asti @ Oh, the Books discovered some neat book photography from Joel Robison.
Rating & Reviewing
- Nikki @ The Paper Sea considers disagreements with book reviews. She prefers not to comment if she disagrees but looking at the comments, many seem to be alright with (courteously) debating books.
Reading
- Amy @ Tenpenny Dreams has never read Harry Potter. Her post is a good reminder to read what you want to read, and not what others think you should read.
THAT SLATE ARTICLE
For those who are unaware, Ruth Graham wrote an article on Slate, entitled Against YA, in which she insisted adults who read young adult books should be embarrassed for it. Proper adults should be reading grown-up books with literary merit instead of wasting their time with YA. Needless to say, this resulted in a storm of angry responses and a whole range of blog posts stating why Ruth Graham is wrong. I don’t endorse what Graham wrote, especially because I didn’t like the condescending tone, so I’m not linking to the article. Google it if you care to read it.
- Amy @ Ode to Jo and Katniss thinks it’s important to know when to speak up and when to ignore opinions that are shared just to cause an uproar.
- Ceilidh @ Bibliodaze explains the purpose of link baiting. (via Amy)
- Megan @ Adrift on a Vulcan rants about how there should never be a cause to shame someone for reading.
- Mel @ The Daily Prophecy (sarcastically) lists all the type of books we shouldn’t read, concluding that we should just ban all books. She thus wonderfully demonstrates why Graham’s reasons against YA don’t hold.
- Matt Haig states ten reasons it’s okay to read YA.
- Fahima @ I Read, Ergo I Write deconstructs the Slate article and notes that nobody should be embarrassed about what they read.
The best response of all? Jenny Han’s tweet, I must say.
Guys I figured it out so we can all calm down now. Ruth Graham is a muggle. It's not her fault.
— Jenny Han (@jennyhan) June 5, 2014
Quote of the Week
Each time someone dies, a library burns.
—Lennie, The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson
Albeit morbid, this is a very lovely imagery. I like the idea of people as libraries as they carry their thoughts and memories with them.
Kayla @ The Thousand Lives says
I didn’t even bother to read the article, or really many responses now that I think about it. I already knew how much of an uproar there was, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. People will have their opinions, but to blast them so rudely and condescendingly as you said… Urgh. It’s just awful! So I avoided the whole drama this week :P Jenny Han’s tweet is pretty hilarious though; I somehow missed that one.
I have Ask the Passengers on my shelf; I’ve been meaning to read it, but always read something else. I hope you enjoy it!
Joséphine says
Haha. Yeah, sometimes it is better to just stay out of such uproars. I decided to stay on the sidelines for that one but I still think important points where brought up, which is why I linked to them.
I can relate. I have a million books, ok maybe more like a hundred, that I keep skipping over of other books, even though I’ve been wanting to read those for the longest time. Oops.