archive.org
Rejoice, ’90s kids: More than 2,400 of your favorite MS-DOS games are now available to play online via the Internet Archive. READ MORE: Over 2,400 MS-DOS Games — Like Oregon Trail — Can Now Be Played Online | BuzzFeed News.
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Internet Archive offers 900 classic arcade games for browser-based play | Ars Technica
Just from reading some of Atwood’s answers to the reddit AMA, I feel I have been enlightened and transported to a surreal world!
Margaret Atwood, high priestess of an oracular temple deep in the digital Canadian woods, did a Reddit AMA Monday. Its great: she was asked all of the questions you might expect (Where do you see political dystopia today? Whats your ~process~?) and some you might not (Who is your fictional boyfriend?). Read on for the best bits. READ: Margaret Atwood Ruins a Marriage, Talks Memes, Politics in Reddit AMA | Jezebel
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…For the nearly 8 million people in the US with some degree of vision impairment, the advent of ebooks and e-readers has been both a blessing and a burden. A blessing, because a digital library—everything from academic textbooks, to venerated classics, to romance novels—is never further away than your fingertips. A burden, because the explosion of ebooks has served as a reminder of how inaccessible technology really can be…
READ MORE: E-Book Legal Restrictions Are Screwing Over Blind People | WIRED
A very thoughtful essay questioning the distinction between genre versus literature, using Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel as an example. Well worth the read.
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It’s hard to talk in a clear-headed way about genre. Almost everyone can agree that, over the past few years, the rise of the young-adult genre has highlighted a big change in book culture. For reasons that aren’t fully explicable (Netflix? Tumblr? Kindles? Postmodernism?), it’s no longer taken for granted that important novels must be, in some sense, above, beyond, or “meta” about their genre. A process of genrefication is occurring.
That’s where the agreement ends, however. If anything, a divide has opened up. The old guard looks down on genre fiction with indifference; the new arrivals—the genrefiers—are eager to change the neighborhood, seeing in genre a revitalizing force. Partisans argue about the relative merits of “literary fiction” and “genre fiction.” (In 2012, Arthur Krystal, writing in this magazine, argued for literary fiction’s superiority; he fielded a pro-genre-fiction riposte from Lev Grossman, in Time.) And yet confusion reigns in this debate, which feels strangely vague and misformulated. It remains unclear exactly what the terms “literary fiction” and “genre fiction” mean. A book like “Station Eleven” is both a literary novel and a genre novel; the same goes for “Jane Eyre” and “Crime and Punishment.” How can two contrasting categories overlap so much? Genres themselves fall into genres: there are period genres (Victorian literature), subject genres (detective fiction), form genres (the short story), style genres (minimalism), market genres (“chick-lit”), mode genres (satire), and so on. How are different kinds of genres supposed to be compared? (“Literary fiction” and “genre fiction,” one senses, aren’t really comparable categories.) What is it, exactly, about genre that is unliterary—and what is it in “the literary” that resists genre? The debate goes round and round, magnetic and circular—a lovers’ quarrel among literati.
READ MORE: A Better Way to Think About the Genre Debate | The New Yorker
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When I received the Brooklyn Public Library’s recent email newsletter promoting a new service called BookMatch, I was both delighted and dismayed.
On the one hand, it was a great idea. All I had to do was fill out a short web form letting the librarians know a bit about what I wanted to read and what I liked to read, and one promised to write back with five personalized recommendations tailored to my interests and tastes. On the other, the fact I was so delighted was exactly what was dismaying.
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Clearly, the librarians believe that human tastes and discretion are still relevant, even as automated algorithms are influencing an increasing portion of the media we consume, whether in the form of news, books, music, or movies. But are a book expert’s personalized suggestions really better than what I might get from Amazon, a site that hasn’t employed a human editor for its home page in 14 years? It’s very possible my positive feelings about the BookMatch program are sprung from mere sentimentality.
My two most favourite activities! I definitely think butterfly pose should have been included on this list though.
The holiday season is a great time to carve out some stress-free time with a book. If you want to take that relaxation a step further, or work on some tighter muscles, some yoga poses are actually perfectly suited for reading time.The majority of these poses work better when you give your body some time to ease and settle into them. I usually give myself a two page time limit before switching to the other side, but you can do more or less depending on your body. Benefits of each yoga pose are listed below, along with links to more in-depth articles about how to practice them correctly.
READ MORE 5 Best Yoga Poses for Reading | BOOK RIOT.
The only books I have read on this list are Macbeth and American Psycho (I recommend both). I would have included Perfume: The Story of a Murder by Patrick Suskind.
We’ve reached the time of year when the days seem impossibly short and the nights never ending. Good if you’re a vampire or like to go to sleep early, less exciting for the rest of us. So what is one to do with all this extra darkness? Well, read some dark books, of course. After all, there’s nothing better to cut through the literal gloom than to curl up with some intellectual doom. All you need is a tiny light to see your book by. After the jump, 50 gloriously dark novels to read during these dark days. After a while, you may even stop wishing for the light to come.
via 50 Great Dark Books for the Dark Days of Winter | Flavorwire.
This Font Could Help Dyslexics Read Better | CNET
Inspired by his own experiences with dyslexia, Dutch designer Christian Boer developed a font to make reading easier.
and a rebuttal…
A Typeface For Dyslexics? Don’t Buy Into The Hype | FastCompany
Lucida creator Chuck Bigelow argues that dyslexie and other similar fonts are statistically no better than Arial.
Here is a link to the presentation my colleague and I gave at Netspeed 2014 in Edmonton, Alberta. First time ever presenting in public. We worked really hard and felt we gave a great presentation. The presentation focused on evolving roles, competencies and skillets of information professionals working within corporate libraries. Attendees really listened and didn’t spend the whole time fiddling on their smartphones. Practice makes [almost] perfect. I can now cross this accomplishment off my bucket list!
E4: Role of the Corporate Library in the Information Management World | Netspeed 2014 Conference Program | The Alberta Library
Presenters: Margo Price and Nicole Mullings, Talisman Energy Inc.
Information management is an interdisciplinary field which combines skills and resources from librarianship, information technology, records management, and archives. The Information & Research Centre at Talisman Energy Inc. is part of a newly created Information Management team comprised of the corporate library, records management, and enterprise content management ECM groups. Learn more about the unique benefits and challenges that go along with aligning these synergistic roles and functions under one umbrella and how it speaks to potential trends in the special library field.
I’ve heard of geocaching before but never thought about this activity associated with books. This would be so much fun…would love to try!! Adventure and discovery, mysteries and problem-solving, stories and books, gadgets and tech, plus new environments…now if I had a to-go mug filled with tea…my idea of perfection. I also think geocaching would be a fun date activity.
Geocaching is a real-world treasure hunt. When this was written, there were over 2.5 million geocaches or “caches” and 6 million geocachers around the world. Each cache is listed on a website. A player uses a GPS device either a handheld GPS unit or a smartphone to read and decipher the clues and then find the actual treasure. It may take a long hikes in the woods or a simple walk around the corner, depending on where you are and what you want to do. For someone like me, who prefers to sit with her head in a book, it can be a welcome little bit of exercise between chapters. Once found, you sign a log, record it on the computer, and move on to the next one.
READ MORE: Why Geocaching Is The Perfect Sport for Readers | BOOK RIOT
infophile 