Retrospect #28: July 13th

In My Life

The best thing that happened this week: Germany beat Brazil 7-1 in their World Cup semi-final match! I’m so excited about tonight’s final, and hopefully we’ll finally get that fourth star. It’s about time and the team is strong, so may we be celebrating Germany’s win tonight!

Other than that, life’s been good. I’m getting a better sense of what kind of jobs I’m interested in that I can apply for locally. A lot of the graduate programmes and job openings that I found in the previous months were based in London, Sydney, New York, and various cities in Germany. As much as I would’ve loved to apply, for now I’m staying rooted at home with my family. That vastly limits my options but it won’t matter anymore once I land a suitable position.

On the Blog

Reviews

No reviews this week. I meant to write up my review for The Fault in Our Stars by John Green but then the news about the children’s books that were banned in Singapore surfaced. I felt the need to express my views, so I posted my response to the book bans instead.

Blog Posts

• [10 Jul] How Blogging Has Impacted Me as a Reader
• [11 Jul] Pro-Family, a Sorry Excuse for Banning Books
• [13 Jul] Retrospect #28: July 13th

Around the Blogosphere

Bloggers & Blogging

• Sophia @ Loving Lit wonders, does anyone bother reading older book reviews? Looking at my statistics, it seems that once in a while my older reviews do get read but that happens at most once or twice a week.
• Jamie @ The Perpetual Page-Turner says she’s a creep because she needs to know what other people are reading. Her post totally cracked me up due to the extent to which she will go just to see all the book titles.
• Asti @ Oh, the Books! reflects on why blogging is worth it for her.
• Amy @ Aya M. Productions goes behind the scenes, and shows how she plans and organises her blog.

Books

• Lillian guest posted for Chiara @ Books for a Delicate Eternity, talking about preordering books and bargaining.
• Marianne @ Boricuan Bookworms wonders what the necessary elements are movie adaptions to be good.
• Rinn @ Rinn Reads feels that there is a difference between teen and young adult fiction.
• Briana @ Pages Unbound expresses her love for the library.
• Annie @ The Runaway Reader absolutely loves book sales.
• Stormy @ Book. Blog. Bake. questions if some long books really need to be that long.

Language

• Hannah @ So Obsessed With beautifully expresses love for stories over words.
• Chiara @ Books of a Delicate Eternity shares the top ten funky words she adores.

Rating & Reviewing

• Tabitha @ Not Yet Read interviewed Suzanne, the VP of Communications at Goodreads, to find out how Goodreads calculates reviewer rankings.

Reading

• Miranda @ Tempest Books asks if you can multitask while reading. In my case, audiobooks are ideal for multitasking purposes.
• Amy @ Ten Penny Dreams talks about reader’s guilt.
• Cait @ Notebook Sisters wants to knows how seeing your name in a book affects you when you read. If I like the character, then I’m happy reading the book. But if I don’t like the character, then I do get peeved about it.

Quote of the Week

There is never a need for double spaces between sentences when setting type on your computer, as was done in typewriter days. In fact, it is a serious type crime in professional typography.

—Type Rules! by Ilene Strizver

This! This cannot be repeated often enough. Every time I see double spaces, I cringe because it makes the whole text look so unbalanced. A computer is not a typewriter. One space is enough to separate words clearly. That extra space is superfluous.

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What are your thoughts on banning children’s books?