The most banned/challenged books of 2012
A brief history of American bookmobiles in pictures
BBC adapting Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell into mini-series
Infographic: Americans still love their libraries
Granta’s Best Young British Authors issue is out…check out the list
West Virginia introduces bill to include more science fiction in schools
Like the rest of us, publishers trying to figure out new common core standards
Books | Tim | 
April 19, 2013 8:38 am | 
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Do yourself a favor and check out this Kickstarter project.
Awesome, Books | Tim | April 17, 2013 7:28 am | Comments (0)
On the heels of Amazon’s purchase of Goodreads, Bookriot offers 12 alternatives to Goodreads. Spoiler: any potentially good alternatives are still in Beta.
We Don’t Know Why Someone Made a Having-It-All Rom-Com Trailer About Daenerys Targaryen, But We’re Glad They Did bit.ly/10ni2dY
— Flavorwire (@flavorwire) March 29, 2013
28 books geeks should read to their kids before age 10
Conservative group names Barnes & Noble and the American Library Association to their list of facilitators of porn.
Did you read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks? Then you may be amazed to learn that scientists are continuing to rip off her family.
France has a plan to save its indie booksellers.
Nice article on paperbacks with interesting comparison between covers of hardbacks vs paperbacks
15 of the most architecturally unique libraries in the world
Books | admin | April 5, 2013 8:17 am | Comments (0)
This week Meg and I talk about The School of Fear by Gitty Daneshvari. I was convinced that Meg was pronouncing that wrong, but that just goes to show what I know.
Book Time with Meg
Episode 32
The School of Fear
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Books, Podcast | admin | April 1, 2013 7:01 am | Comments (0)
The Tournament is over. A winner has emerged victorious in The Tournament of Books. And I’m reading the winner now. Hooray!
Amazon has inked a deal to buy the bookish social networking site Goodreads.
Everyone seems to have forgotten about Amazon’s similar purchases of Shelfari and LibraryThing. In 2008.
Video: Junot Diaz on the Colbert Report. Yeah, man.
Create your own family coat of arms – Game of Thrones-style
Newly discovered advice for writers from Oscar Wilde
The Most Hilariously Disturbing Band Fanfiction You’ll Ever Read
Books | Tim | March 29, 2013 8:33 am | Comments (0)
This week Meg and I discuss a book that is NOT by Rick Riordan. Instead we dive into the mysterious world of Lemony Snicket’s new series All the Wrong Questions. The first book in the series, Who Could that be At this Hour?, is good fun. The illustrations are pretty great, too.
Book Time with Meg
Episode 31
All the Wrong Questions 1: Who Could that be at this Hour?
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Books, Podcast | Tim | March 25, 2013 7:49 am | Comments (0)
Salon: My Amazon bestseller made me nothing – a grim look at the economics of writing
Songs from The Smiths’ album The Queen is Dead re-imagined as paperbacks
Tarantino movies re-imagined as Penguin paperbacks
Jimmy Fallon (video): Don’t read these books
Video: Game of Thrones/Princess Bride mash-up
Video: Explain Like I’m Five discusses Frederich Nietzsche and existentialism. With five-year olds.
The surviving independent bookstores are doing better than ever
Jane Goodall admits to plagiarizing web sources. 
Persepolis removed from Chicago public school curriculum.
Just your everyday book-holding contest
Books | Tim | March 22, 2013 8:16 am | Comments (0)
Stop Paying Attention to Me and Get Back to that Crucial Word Game Immediately.
T-shirt: The book was better
A visual guide to what would happen if famous authors stuck to The Elements of Style
How to use your Kindle as a bookmark
15 worst books to give as Mother’s Day presents
Video: Game of Thrones as a drama set in high school
Writer’s Almanac discusses the writing process of Colum McCann
Alternadad author Neal Pollack talks to the Onion A/V club about his troubles with making a living writing
Books | Tim | March 15, 2013 8:51 am | Comments (0)
This week Meg talks about Peter and the Starcatchers by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson. We also talk briefly about its successor in the series, Peter and the Shadow Thieves. She couldn’t put one of them down, and couldn’t keep the other one in her hands. Find out more on the podcast…
Book Time with Meg
Episode 30 and 30.5
Peter and the Starcatchers
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Books, Podcast | Tim | March 13, 2013 7:53 am | Comments (0)
Above from: The Pulp-o-mizer
Don’t forget to check in on the Tournament of Books
WSJ: How one novelist made more than $1 million before his book hit stores.
Fahrenheit 451 Design Includes Match & Striking Paper
Pixar’s 22 rules of storytelling
Cool idea: the underground library
Character in novel writes Amazon review
Believer Magazine announces the finalists for its annual book award. This is always a good source for off=the-beaten-path books.
Goodreads finds that trusted friends are still the top source of book recommendations – based on the two books they asked about, anyway.
I’m using this web site now: Coffitivity – ambient “coffee shop” sound to plug into for enhanced creativity
Books | Tim | March 8, 2013 9:38 am | Comments (0)
Would the author be better off had they left the “By the New York Times bestselling author of Go the F**k to Sleep” off the front cover? Time will tell. Rage is Back by Adam Mansbach arrived on the scene at an opportune time. I’ve been reading, with relish, the Hip-Hop Family Tree comics by Ed Piskor over at Boing Boing. The comics are focused squarely on the hip hop/graffiti golden era. It has this panel on the bottom of each episode, which bears a certain resemblance to Rage’s cover:
I’ve also been completely taken with the audacity of this amazing piece that went up in a quiet, forgotten corner of downtown Atlanta:
Just look at that! Anyway, I was primed to read a novel that featured graffiti artists from back in the day is what I’m saying.
So, yeah, back to the book. Rage is Back takes place in the present and is related to us by our teenage narrator, Dondi, the half-black/half-Jewish son of once famous graffiti taggers. Dondi kicks off his story by jumping right into the narrative :
When Ambassador Dengue Fever told me that Billy wasn’t dead after all but half alive and back in town, skulking through the Transit System’s blackened veins feral and broken and scrawling weird mambo-jahambo on the walls with chalk— chalk! as if spray paint never existed— I pretty much just shrugged a whatever shrug and kept on selling hydroponic sinsemilla to stainless steel refrigerator owners living in neighborhoods that had just been invented, and hoping Karen would let me back in the apartment soon, me being her son and all, even if I had been expelled from fucking Whoopty Whoo Ivy League We’s A Comin’ Academy on account of some Upper Eastside whiteboys’ inability to keep my botanical enterprises, of which they were the major beneficiaries, on the low.
And we’re off…!
The “Rage” in the title is Dondi’s father (Billy) who disappeared after things went down back in the day but has suddenly reappeared. Billy has been in the jungles of South America learning mysticism from shamans. He brings an element of magic realism to the story. Oh, you have a problem with that? Dondi is ready for you:
If you’re already frowning and thinking I’m an unreliable narrator, or going “oh goody, I love magical realism,” then you should cut your losses and go read Tuesdays with Morrie, before I get to the really wild shit later on. Skepticism is an admirable trait, but so is asking yourself if you’re really such a fucking Master of the Universe that things might not be happening beneath the surface of your world right now without you knowing.
Really, I could listen to Dondi’s interior dialogue all day long. The story unfolds as Dondi slowly gets to know and understand the father that abandoned him as a child, and we learn just why Rage is back. And he is angry.
I really enjoyed my time with Rage is Back. This book isn’t for everyone, clearly. If you’re a fan of old school hip hop (which gets name checked regularly) or urban art, you should check it out. If Dondi’s unique worldview, as expressed here in brief quotes, appeals to you – pick it up. Ok, one more:
Freeloading is exhausting. All conversation, no alone-time, and for the only child of a single mother like your boy here, solitude is the base of the mental health food pyramid, the grain-and-bread group of not losing my shit rather than the occasional, Chili Cheese Frito-esque indulgence some people seem to find it. When I do get some quiet, it’s in the dead-sober middle of the day, when regular citizens are out getting paid or educated, and I fritter it away shaking my fool head at the parade of unsound ideas and irresponsible people I’ve spent my life in thrall to— a great word, thrall; sounds like a monster’s gullet— while normal kids were busy soaking up all types of valuable knowledge from their square-ass parents.
Books, Fiction, Review | Tim | March 6, 2013 9:27 am | Comments (1)
The annual tournament of books begins today with a pre-tournament play-in round. Which of these Cinderalla teams will make it off the bubble tot he big dance? Check out today’s action, and then check out the amazing brackets.
Today’s round includes three books about the Iraq war reviewed by a combat veteran. It doesn’t play out the way you would think, but the only book of the three that I read advances to the tourney. Huzzah!
Awesome, Books | Tim | March 4, 2013 8:05 am | Comments (0)
Awesome, Books | Tim | February 26, 2013 9:33 am | Comments (0)
In this episode we discuss what seems like our one millionth Rick Riordan novel. The Throne of Fire is the second book in the Kane Chronicles series – but who can keep up. We may have run out of things to discuss about Rick Riordan books as this is our silliest episode by far.
Book Time with Meg
Episode 29
The Throne of Fire
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Books, Podcast | Tim | February 25, 2013 12:16 am | Comments (0)
Oops. Another slack week here at BGB. We have a queue of about 100 posts waiting to be written. Perhaps, soon, they will be. *sigh* Here are your Friday links:
Performance enhancing drugs of the literary world
7 tips from Hemingway on writing fiction.
The real story behind the Penguin – Random House merger
Pulp! The Classics (as long as you’re re-imagining book covers…)
Indie booksellers sue Amazon over DRM in e-books.
Unfortunately, says Cory Doctorow, they don’t seem to know what open-source and DRM mean.
Speaking of Doctorow, he gets a surprise glowing book review from THE MAN
This guy is reading the bestselling book for each year of the 20th century. Whoa.
Books | Tim | February 22, 2013 9:09 am | Comments (1)
In this episode, Meg (8) and I return to the work of Carl Hiaasen. Scat is another environmental themed novel for young readers featuring the everglades and Florida panthers – an all around fun read.
Book Time with Meg
Episode 28
Scat
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Books, Podcast | Tim | February 18, 2013 9:22 am | Comments (0)
Whale Words: an analysis of word usage in Moby Dick
Harlem Shake in the West Point Library and Boston College Library. Kids today…
On the Reading Habits of Teenage Boys
Proposal for a new punctuation mark
Scholastic unveils the first of new covers for the paperback version of the Harry Potter series. The artist selected for the job is Kazu Kibuishi, author and artist of the Amulet series, which we love. Behold:
Books | Tim | February 15, 2013 8:08 am | Comments (0)
Awesome, Books | Tim | February 14, 2013 11:34 am | Comments (1)
Some enterprising young person who reads a lot decided to paint this across three buildings in a forgotten corner of downtown Atlanta. I have no idea what it means exactly, but I love it. Extra points for the upside down history book.
Books | Tim | February 12, 2013 6:22 am | Comments (1)
We’re back with MORE Rick Riordan. Impossible, you say. Hardly. This time we tackle The Red Pyramid, the first book in The Kane Chronicles series.
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Book Time with Meg
Episode 27
The Red Pyramid
Books, Podcast | Tim | February 11, 2013 6:40 am | Comments (0)
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