May 2013
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April 2013
7 posts
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Amazon Tightens Its Chokehold →
Goodreads, according to Salon’s own publishing maven, Laura Miller, “was the single major readers’ community independent of Amazon.” But maintaining that independence hasn’t been easy. Up until January 2012, Goodreads used the Amazon Product Advertising API as its primary source for book data. But as Jon Mitchell explained last year, getting in bed with Amazon comes with some rather stringent...
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March 2013
1 post
February 2013
1 post
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January 2013
17 posts
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Nation's First Bookless Public Library Could Be in... →
The library system, dubbed BiblioTech, proposes to make thousands of e-books available for county residents both online and at a 5,000-square-foot physical location on the South Side of the county, according to a statement issued by Bexar County officials. Visitors would be able to check out books to read on their own e-readers or tablets, or borrow one of the library’s 150 take-home...
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“You know, “nerd culture” is mainstream now. So, when you use the...”
– Ben Wyatt
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This Rape Infographic Is Going Viral. Too Bad It's... →
Sadly, the graphic meant to set the record straight on false accusations only confuses matters. Three major problems jump out:
The graphic assumes one-rape-per-rapist. Looking at the above picture, one might start to get the impression that every other man you meet is a rapist. Nearly one in five women have been raped, according to the latest substantive government numbers, and infographics...
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Kat Vespucci Series: "Earth to Kat Vespucci" and "...
Unlike most fictional stories about an American’s experience abroad, the heroine of the Kat Vespucci series doesn’t seek to “find herself” in other countries or to “save” the natives. Rather, wide-eyed, curious Kat is thrown blindly into new experiences with little or no previous knowledge that could distort her observation of history and culture through the eyes of locals.
In the first book,...
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Sarah Jaffe: Trickle-Down Feminism →
It is class that created and maintains the schism between the professional feminists and the women who look to unions rather than to feminism to help them at work. You can’t find a self-proclaimed feminist who doesn’t pay at least lip service to the idea of equal pay for equal work, but we don’t see a whole lot of connection between that problem and the actions that might be taken to rectify it....
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ATTN: small presses, big presses, readers, and...
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“I’m just being myself. There is not an ounce of me that believes any of...”
– Zooey Deschanel
(THIS. She may sometimes border the line of overly twee, but I love this woman. Any celebrities who are openly feminist? I’ll take them.)
Anonymous asked: Hi Claire, thanks for the follow on Twitter! I'd like to ask you to read my book. It's called "Independence Ring: Rock the Female Revolution." The book contains core feminist teachings, originally from a Buddhist teacher, and then goes on to describe how, over time, these original understandings morphed and became my own as I learned, observed and perceived the lack of core...
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Libraries See Opening as Bookstores Close →
“A library has limited shelf space, so you almost have to think of it as a store, and stock it with the things that people want,” said Jason Kuhl, the executive director of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. Renovations will turn part of the library’s first floor into an area resembling a bookshop that officials are calling the Marketplace, with cozy seating, vending machines and, above all,...
December 2012
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October 2012
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Todd Akin was repeatedly arrested at 1980s... →
According to the Post-Dispatch archives, a 37-year-old William Akin, from Creve Coeur — whose name and address matches other information about the future lawmaker — was among a group of protesters arrested on March 15, 1985. The newspapers account said, “Nineteen anti-abortion demonstrators who refused to leave the waiting room of an abortion clinic in the Central West End were...
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The Myth of Male Decline
..One thing standing in the way of further progress for many men is the same obstacle that held women back for so long: overinvestment in their gender identity instead of their individual personhood. Men are now experiencing a set of limits — externally enforced as well as self-imposed — strikingly similar to the ones Betty Friedan set out to combat in 1963, when she identified a “feminine...
September 2012
2 posts
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“I am looking forward to a day when American women who are moms and in political...”
– The Convention Speech We’ll Never Hear, Katherine Lanpher
August 2012
13 posts
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10 Contemporary Politicians’ Favorite Books →
Mitt Romney – The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Mitt Romney has gone on record saying he enjoyed the Twilight series. But his all-time favorites are Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and East of Eden, at least according to his Facebook page.
I’m speechless right now.
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Although I agree with parts of this piece on “hookup culture” by Hanna Rosen (I’m happy to live in a world that, for the most part, offers women sexual freedom equal to that of men), I have to disagree that this culture is key to feminist progress. If that’s true, we haven’t made much headway towards gender equality:
For an upwardly mobile, ambitious young woman,...
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Fantasy Women of the GOP →
It may sound hyperbolic to argue that Republicans deny women’s humanity, but there’s no exaggerating how their policies bear this out. Personhood initiatives, for example, legally give fertilized eggs more constitutional rights than women. As Lynn Paltrow of National Advocates for Pregnant Women has pointed out, “There’s no way to give embryos constitutional personhood without subtracting women...
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“For me, each book released an aroma, a voice, a time, a moment, a pain, a...”
– Patrick Chamoiseau
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I appreciate (and agree wholeheartedly with) Obama’s response to Akin:
Rape is rape… What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn’t have a bunch of politicians, the majority of which are men, making decisions that affect the health of women.
However, I still haven’t forgotten Obama’s condescending response on the emergency contraception ruling last...
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How the Body Reacts to Sexual Assault →
One of the many problems with Romney/Ryan-like rape exceptions to broad abortion bans is that they encourage anti-choicers to draw a thousand false distinctions between worthy and less worthy rape victims, which is what Akin was really attempting to do. What he cares about is saving as many fetuses as possible, regardless of what calamity befell the women forced to bear them. For example, if you...
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Unglue.it: a crafty new way to resurrect lost... →
Unglue.it was set up in May to “unlock” hard-to-find titles and get them back into the hands of passionate readers. A Kickstarter for literary types, unglue.it crowdsources appreciation for classic books, soliciting donations from superfans with the aim of acquiring the rights and releasing them as free ebooks. Its first success, Ruth Finnegan’s Oral Literature in Africa, an...
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But Is It a Book? →
When he talks about bibliographic codes, Mr. Suarez means the elements that together make up the book as object. That includes paper stock, bindings, typeface, and illustrations. Just as important, he says, are the social codes embedded in a book. A Harlequin romance has cues built in that alert a reader to what it is. (Picture a bare-chested Fabio against a Scottish highlands backdrop.) A...
July 2012
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E-book Bargains: Is There a Heavier Price to Pay? →
Publishers’ willingness to experiment makes a change from the insistence that price be determined by the effort that goes into producing something, and no doubt they’re enjoying the roaring sales. But by letting their ebooks practically be given away, they are complicit in eroding the value of their product. Macmillan’s CEO, John Sargent, recently warned that books are “in...
