Now that I’ve spent more than a year writing posts that round up the bookish news of the week, I have a sense of stories that keep cropping up with only minor variations. The repetition of certain stories is inevitable and I realized that there are some that would be quite happy to never see again.
No more, please:
- Articles that praise reading in print over other formats. (Read however you want! Don’t let people shame you for how you read!)
- Articles in praise of Lolita. (No, ew).
- Articles about the death of books/literature/reading. (Because the authors of these are always wrong.)
- Articles about how the internet is ruining language/writing. (Only dead languages don’t change.)
- Articles about faculty/patrons whipping themselves into a frenzy when librarians weed their collections. (Weeding is necessary, mostly to get rid of books that are not used to make way for books that will be used. Want to stop books from leaving the shelves? Use them.)
On the flip side, there are some types I will always read even if I don’t end up putting them in the weekly round up posts. Sometimes I tweet these articles because I want to share them, even if I don’t have room for them here.
Yes, please:
- Articles about using technology to recover lost ancient and medieval text. (It’s my kind of buried treasure.)
- Readers reflecting on how they organize their books. (My people!)
- Lists that round up retellings of fairy tales and myths. (I want more books to read.)
- Articles about translation and translators. (Partly to score book recommendations, but mostly because I am fascinated by the process of moving a story from one language to another.)
- Arguments about whether or not books should be published posthumously against the authors’ wishes. (Because I keep going back and forth on this myself.)
- Articles about book cover design. (Another bookish process I am fascinated by.)