RIASS stuff:
My piece on culling my book collection has been syndicated on BlogHer. Apparently book culling is a universal trauma!
Possible truths and Helen Dunmore's Talking to the Dead'Rating: 
We all know that I love unreliable narrators, so its little surprised that I adored this one!
Review: My Life in Pea Soup by Lisa Nops'Rating: '(A fascinating memoir that blends ex-pat life in Sri Lanka and Bahrain with raising a severely autistic daughter.)
Site sponsor Notti Thistledores chapter book The Chatswood Spooks is free until the end of today.
Other bookish stuff:
Traditionally published kidlit author? Volunteer for LitWorlds World Read Aloud day.
Interview between George Saunders and his editor Andy Ward 'I found this quote interesting:'At least three of the stories in this book were 'novels' until they'came to their senses. That seems to be the definition of 'novel' for me: a story that hasn't yet discovered a way to be brief. Do you think that novels are merely waffly short stories? (I would argue not necessarily, but that all too often trilogies are waffly novels!)
Q&A on diversity with childrens author Lisa Yee Including characters of diverse backgrounds is less of a thought and more of a reaction. Its a given that I will always have at least one character who is Asian, because thats what I am and thats what my experience is.
Schools are using Skype to read aloud to each other
A reading challenge to keep you occupied in 2013: read the classics. It'is a gentle thumbing of the nose to the publishers marketing divisions reminding them that they do not own us. There are certainly good reasons for reading choice books of the hour to help us reflect on our times and to help us prepare for the particular challenges that lurk just beyond the horizon, for instance but I could certainly benefit from diversifying my reading habits (and I suspect that many other readers could do the same.) On a deeper level, though, I think there is a dangerous temptation in Western culture to ignore or dismiss the past, and a readers habit of tackling primarily or exclusively new books tends to draw one deeper into this temptation.
On narrative in the digital era'The mainstay of book publishing is the extended narrative, either fictional or factual and almost always shaped by a single authorial consciousness and expressed in a single authorial voice. It is, in other words, a work of artAttempts to reinvent the narrative of the book in new hypermedia forms have been dismal failures. There's a simple reason: they dispense with the art, which turns out to be the essence of the book's value. Your desire to see cultural artifacts as mere technological artifacts, as 'production units,' leads you to jump to the conclusion that because the narrative art of the book is resistant to digital re-formation, the narrative art is doomed to obsolescence. I think human beings are stranger and more interesting than you seem to believe.
PG Wodehouse and his French connection'He must have loved it in France. They are a minor theme of course, but in his hands, France and the French radiate optimism, gaiety, sheer fun.
Do you judge people by their bookshelves? seeing someone's entire collection all at once certainly speaks volumes (no pun intended) about who they are. How important is it for our bookshelves to reflect our personalities? And do we do it for our own sake, or to look good to those who visit our homes? Of course, there's nothing wrong with wanting your bookshelf to be impressive, or wanting it to accurately reflect the titles you've read, but is it problematic when we judge others by the contents of their shelves? This makes me think of one of my friends who has a sister who buys leatherbound classics purely because they look pretty (and pretty impressive)
Walter Dean Myers on how reading saved his life'Prisoners want to know, if I dropped out of high school, how did I get where I am? said Myers. I tell them, I dropped out of high school but I didnt drop out of reading books.
Literary graffiti from all over the world
Not bookish, but awesome: call for astronauts for Mars mission.
Did Poe die from booze, or rabies?'Modern doctors believe he'actually died of rabies; according to Jeff Jerome, curator of the Edgar Allan Poe House, Poe's 'may have had problems with alcohol as a younger man ' but by the time he died at 40 he almost always avoided it.' But still, until just two years ago, a masked man would stop by Poe's grave on the writer's birthday, leaving a bottle of cognac on his tombstone for a toast in the afterlife.
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