Parenthetical.net

New server, new look (though not the final one — this theme largely serves my purposes, but I need to insert my own image and change the colors).
And I added some new functionality! If you want to be emailed whenever someone replies to a post, just click the handy check-box when you [...]

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Parenthetical’s going offline for a little bit, loyal readers. I’m switching to a brand-new host — the awesome FictCo, which is the commercial venture of my current host, the even-more-awesome Jesse Chan-Norris. This switch ought to be a simple MySQL upload/WordPress upgrade…but with me, these things are never simple, so keep your expectations [...]

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This post on LibraryThing’s Thingology blog appeals to my nerdly love of maps and my nerdly love of books! The author shows maps of a few cities (including Cambridge, MA), with the libraries marked with blue dots and the bookstores marked with green. The ways they cluster, or don’t, is pretty interesting.
A confounding [...]

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The London Times and Chicken House Publisher have sponsored a “write the next great children’s book” contest. The field of 2,000 entries has been narrowed down to a five-title shortlist, of which you can read (very) brief excerpts at Times Online.
Sadly, unlike on American Idol, we the people don’t get to vote [...]

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Since Kate D. tagged me here, I’ll do a geeky library-themed “6 Things You May Not Know About Me”:
1. When I was a kid, I used to dog-ear corners in books because I didn’t like messing with bookmarks. Yes, even library books. I know!
2. Even more shamefully: I had an obsession with Absolut [...]

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Background: Two days ago, Roger Sutton (the editor of Horn Book) blogged that “adults whose taste in recreational reading ends with the YA novel need to grow up.” The comments, predictably (but intelligently), exploded, including a couple of smart posts by my friend Deborah, who expanded on the subject in her blog.
In a comment [...]

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A comment on my last post, from ruthling:
“young adult” and “SF/fantasy” books get the double whammy, since no author wants to be painted by the genre brush if they can get away with it at all (see Margaret Atwood, for example).
It’s true, which I find perplexing. The stereotype is that the kids who [...]

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I’ve been meaning to post for awhile about a Dave Itzkoff review in the New York Times that was apparently written to make me cranky. He reviews two works of YA fantasy/sf: China Mieville’s Un Lun Dun (which I enjoyed, if not adored) and Neil Gaiman’s INTERWORLD (which I haven’t read). [...]

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This is a test of MacJournal, a new app I?m trying out. I can journal on my computer, including attaching videos and pictures and whatnot. And apparently I can post it to Parenthetical, too. Let?s find out, shall we? (Thanks, MP!)
(Subject quote from Paula Poundstone on <i>Wait Wait Don?t Tell Me</i>, [...]

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