Happy August, everyone! We've had a very slow week due to the fact that two of us have been lacking an internet connection and the other was just taking a much needed break from regular posting. Almost like a blog vacation!
After blogger and author Roni Loren posted about being sued for copyright infringement, bloggers everywhere are understandably discussing the Do's and Don'ts of using pictures on your blogs. (not all blogs can be as lucky as we are to have a lovely coblogger who loves to draw pictures for all their features;-)) Jane at Dear Author chimed in on the issue and included a discussion of Fair Use and the balancing test courts traditionally use, and Vacuous Minx wrote a post about using Google image searches and a recent instance where someone used a copyrighted image as their avatar.
In a truly bizarre story this week, a reporter wrote a detailed and researched piece on the self-plagiarism and the making up of Bob Dylan quotes allegedly perpetrated by author and New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer in his newest work.
Maeve Binchy, an Irish author whose work I've been reading since high school, passed away this week. She told wonderful stories about towns and the people in them. Stories about love going right and love going terribly wrong. Because I love the way she weaves the emotional elements into her books, it absolutely shocked me how someone could write something like the Telegraph opinion piece entitled, "If Maeve Binchy Had Been A Mother," in which writer Amanda Craig posits the idea that Binchy somehow missed elements of the human experience in her writing because she was childless during her life and that her books might've been deeper had she been a mother. I cannot speak for Tatiana or Catie but I find the entire piece rather disgusting.
You know what never needs to happen? Making a short junior-high level book into three movies. You know what is happening? The Hobbit is being made into three movies. Also, more Twilight fan fiction is being traditionally published. Galleycat reported that indie author Sylvain Reynard has signed a seven-figure deal with Penguin to publish Gabriel's Inferno and Gabriel's Rapture, two books that began as online fan fiction.
Jacob Silverman, over at Slate, wrote a piece about how liking, retweeting, and other buttons on social media sites do not encourage book discussions and what the literary world needs is less glad-handing, more honest critiquing, and a removal of the book from the author, both in terms of reviewing the book and in terms of the author's emotional reaction to critical commentary. He insists that the book world is drowning in niceness, which leads us to believe his part of the bookosphere is far removed from ours.
Have you been getting your free audiobook downloads this summer? Sync has been offering up two free audiobooks every week for the past month and will continue to do so for a few more weeks in August. This week's offering of Daughter of Smoke and Bone is particularly exciting, as Laini Taylor is a genius.
Speaking of geniuses, two of our favorite Australian authors have short stories available next week. Melina Marchetta contributed a 15,000 word standalone story to the Australian Review of Fiction. The story, entitled Ferragost, is based in the world of her Lumatere Chronicles books and centers around the character of Lady Celie of the Flatlands. The relevant issue of the literary journal will be available for $2.99 online on August 7th and will also feature a story by Raw Blue's Kirsty Eagar titled Molasses.
The summer YA Scavenger Hunt ends tomorrow so if you feel like devoting some time to scouring author blogs to potentially win some books, head over to the contest blog. Me? I'll be spending my Saturday watching Dance Academy and Skins with Maggie from Young Adult Anonymous.
Do you have any interesting links to share with us this week? Comments on the ones we've included?
After blogger and author Roni Loren posted about being sued for copyright infringement, bloggers everywhere are understandably discussing the Do's and Don'ts of using pictures on your blogs. (not all blogs can be as lucky as we are to have a lovely coblogger who loves to draw pictures for all their features;-)) Jane at Dear Author chimed in on the issue and included a discussion of Fair Use and the balancing test courts traditionally use, and Vacuous Minx wrote a post about using Google image searches and a recent instance where someone used a copyrighted image as their avatar.
In a truly bizarre story this week, a reporter wrote a detailed and researched piece on the self-plagiarism and the making up of Bob Dylan quotes allegedly perpetrated by author and New Yorker writer Jonah Lehrer in his newest work.
Maeve Binchy, an Irish author whose work I've been reading since high school, passed away this week. She told wonderful stories about towns and the people in them. Stories about love going right and love going terribly wrong. Because I love the way she weaves the emotional elements into her books, it absolutely shocked me how someone could write something like the Telegraph opinion piece entitled, "If Maeve Binchy Had Been A Mother," in which writer Amanda Craig posits the idea that Binchy somehow missed elements of the human experience in her writing because she was childless during her life and that her books might've been deeper had she been a mother. I cannot speak for Tatiana or Catie but I find the entire piece rather disgusting.
You know what never needs to happen? Making a short junior-high level book into three movies. You know what is happening? The Hobbit is being made into three movies. Also, more Twilight fan fiction is being traditionally published. Galleycat reported that indie author Sylvain Reynard has signed a seven-figure deal with Penguin to publish Gabriel's Inferno and Gabriel's Rapture, two books that began as online fan fiction.
Jacob Silverman, over at Slate, wrote a piece about how liking, retweeting, and other buttons on social media sites do not encourage book discussions and what the literary world needs is less glad-handing, more honest critiquing, and a removal of the book from the author, both in terms of reviewing the book and in terms of the author's emotional reaction to critical commentary. He insists that the book world is drowning in niceness, which leads us to believe his part of the bookosphere is far removed from ours.
Have you been getting your free audiobook downloads this summer? Sync has been offering up two free audiobooks every week for the past month and will continue to do so for a few more weeks in August. This week's offering of Daughter of Smoke and Bone is particularly exciting, as Laini Taylor is a genius.
Speaking of geniuses, two of our favorite Australian authors have short stories available next week. Melina Marchetta contributed a 15,000 word standalone story to the Australian Review of Fiction. The story, entitled Ferragost, is based in the world of her Lumatere Chronicles books and centers around the character of Lady Celie of the Flatlands. The relevant issue of the literary journal will be available for $2.99 online on August 7th and will also feature a story by Raw Blue's Kirsty Eagar titled Molasses.
The summer YA Scavenger Hunt ends tomorrow so if you feel like devoting some time to scouring author blogs to potentially win some books, head over to the contest blog. Me? I'll be spending my Saturday watching Dance Academy and Skins with Maggie from Young Adult Anonymous.
Do you have any interesting links to share with us this week? Comments on the ones we've included?
