Okay, after our little break while we waited for our systems to catch up with our scintillating articles, here is another vibrant issue of World Wide Wednesday: your weekly trip through the joys of the Internet!
1) SFF Masterworks
First up, there is a little project in the works right now. You can find the SFF Masterworks Read blog here: an audacious project to read all of the SF and Fantasy masterworks as issued by Gollancz. The various members of the reading project will be familiar to you from other review blog sites, and have decided to turn their weight of knowledge on all things speculative fiction to the classics. Definitely worth a read!
2) Halfway Through 2010
Incredibly, we’re already over halfway through 2010 (and I’ve been involved with FanLit for six months now!) and a few of our favourite blogs listed their stats and top reads of the year so far — some interesting results and, inevitably, I added to my wishlist again!
3) Whitewashing… AGAIN!
An evil concept. A truly horrible habit. One which the Book Smugglers are true crusaders against. This time Babbling About Books brings us the news that whitewashing is again being used.
4) A few Angry Robot articles
As you know, while Angry Robot Books have been on hiatus, they’ve used their blog to bring us some great little articles from well-known bloggers. Here is a quick catch-up: The adorable Harry Markov from Temple Library Reviews discusses “Cross Genre: The Rise to Power” while Adam Christopher talks about “The Big Magic Shelf“.
5) Omnivoracious!
The Amazon Omnivoracious blog is pretty decent to read most of the time, but this last week even better because one of the most public-facing authors — Mark Charan Newton — has been guest blogging (yes, yes, I know I mention Mark a lot but he writes a *lot* of interesting stuff! As soon as he gets less interesting, I’ll stop mentioning him!)
6) Beating a Dead Horse
Fantasy and Scifi Lovin’ News and Reviews beats the dead horse of how female “superheroes” are perceived, using television and film as examples. It is an interesting article and might make you reconsider some preconceived notions.
7) Wheel of Time
Adam Roberts — a rather clever and snarky author — turned his jaded gaze on the Wheel of Time, reading through the series and jotting down his thoughts on each of the books. This might offend long time fans of the series, but it is funny and, behind the sarcasm, Roberts does make some good points on Jordan’s magnus opus.
8) The Chylde of the Nyte Chronicles
After Gavin Smith’s attempt at paranormal romance – where he brought us the tale of vampire hobbits – Sam Sykes has jumped right on board this particular bandwagon, and writes about the Chylde of the Nyte!
9) Do you like podcasts?
I have to confess that I am not currently on board with the idea of podcasts, but I know a lot of people love them, so I’m bringing you a handy link to Steve’s Fantasy Book Reviews podcast, where there is a book club running: so far they’ve tackled many modern and classic reads, including The City and The City. Worth a listen!
10) The iPad
It’s been out for a little while now. I’m tempted. I know that some of my fellow FanLit reviewers have already taken the plunge with eReaders. Here we have a little article on one of the uses (or not) of the iPad. (I would be interested to hear whether our followers have joined the electronic movement where books are concerned!)
Excellent post Amanda! I’ve been poking around your links all morning (and also well after it stopped being morning, lol). Thanks for the links; they gave me a case of the thinkies.
I ramble about my top 3 of the year so far here at Goodreads.
I’ve often wondered that maybe not all whitewashing racially driven. My assumption was that they just want the books to look like Twighlight. Which almost as bad.
Justin, I definitely think that’s part of it. There are really two parts to what they did: they made the character white, and they made the book look more like the currently trendy colors. The former is wrong. The latter…meh, the new cover isn’t a good example of the covers that are in style now, but I can see how that style of cover might sell better.
And if they really wanted to imitate Twilight, they could have done a cover with an inanimate object instead of inserting a female model and making her white. There’s a commenter at Katiebabs’ post who suggested that they could have also done a cover like Graceling or Shiver, which would attract the eye, be fashionable, and not mess up the character’s race. Or they could have done the cover they did, but with an Asian girl on it. I think neither publishers nor bookstores give readers enough credit for being willing to read diverse books.