Elizabeth Lundblad talked with some librarians and avid readers to learn about their favorite required reading from high school and some current books they're raving about:

Seattle Public Library kicked off its 2013 summer reading program by attempting a world record of longest book domino chain. Check out what they came up with in what is the coolest video I've watched in a while:




-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

Chicago's Open Books has jumped on the bandwagon of of making "Call Me Maybe" videos with this parody "Read It Maybe." The singing is pretty bad, but the sentiment is pretty good.



In defense of e-reading, I looooove my Nook for several reasons — one of them is that people in public can't see what I'm reading. (Sometimes I like reading bad/trashy books, but I don't always want others to know about it. And it's much less embarassing to check out a trashy e-book through CLEVNET's emedia site than to have the cute guy at the library counter scan it for you after seeing your name on your library card.)

Any reading is good reading — whether it's a hardcover classic novel or a trashy pink paperback, The New Yorker or The Onion, on an e-reader or on a hard copy.

(Hat tip to Poynter for blogging about this video, where I found out about it.)


-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

Need some inspiration to prepare for a weekend of reading?
Check out this video of a warehouse filling with book sculptures posted on GalleyCat.
See you in the stacks!

Since I got my Nook, I've been voraciously scanning CLEVNET's emedia site for reading material. I came across "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" (Random House Reader's Circle Deluxe Reading Group Edition) by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows on a top-read list, so I put my name on the waiting list and had my usual giddy reaction when I got an email notifying me I could check it out.

The historical fiction is told through letters among the main characters. That's all. No dialogue, no additional text -- just letters. I had come across this before (in "The True and Outstanding Adventures of the Hunt Sisters" by Elisabeth Robinson), so I adjusted to the format fairly quickly. The story is set in London shortly after World War II. Writer Juliet Ashton begins corresponding with members of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and decides she has to go to the island.

This is where the book should get interesting, but I didn't find it that way. The letters continue, and the story becomes kind of predictable. I guess I just wasn't interested enough in the characters to care about what happened.

Part of what drew me to selecting this book was the time period in which it took place. But the really sad stories of the war came too late. I had already lost my investment in the story when I learned of the really awful things some of the characters went through.


The "deluxe" part of the book is the annotations throughout. Instead of having footnotes, like in a traditional book, the ebook links text to annotations in the back. Below, a video of me demonstrating how the annotations work (or watch here):



I didn't use the annotations much. Maybe I would have enjoyed the story more than I did if I had read through all of that background information to add context to the characters' situations. But I felt like the lengthy notes took away the momentum of the letters.


-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

If you hate to be interrupted when you're engrossed in a book, you'll appreciate this video from Julian Smith:

- Tricia Ambrose

Follow me on Twitter @triciaambrose

I recently came across this video about making books from the 1940s (thanks, YouTube!). My favorite part of video might be the clear distinction between men's work and women's work.




-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

This neat video combines a few of my favorite things: books, organizing, and stop-motion animation:



-- Cheryl Sadler | CSadler@News-Herald.com | @nhcheryl

One of my roommates from college is now a middle school language arts teacher in Indiana. The students joined together to make a music video to encourage reading, set to the tune of Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'." Below is their completed music video, plus a clip that made the local news:




--Cheryl Sadler
CSadler@News-Herald.com

No essays today.
Barely any words, at all.
Blog of videos.

The Melville House hosts its first annual Moby Awards tonight. (Yes, I know, technically something cannot be “annual” until it happens for two consecutive years; but that’s how they billed it, as the “first annual.” Next year, Melville House should call it the second inaugural Moby Awards.)

The awards recognize the best book trailers. The categories are best low budget/indie, best big budget, best performance by an author, best cameo in a book trailer (if Zach Galifinakis doesn’t win for his performance in Lowboy, I’m calling shenanigans), and least likely trailer to sell the book.

For your viewing pleasure, I have imbedded a few of the trailers.

I Lego N.Y.



Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter



The aforementioned Lowboy



Now, two completely unrelated book videos:

Brontë Sisters Power Dolls



Finally, Bill Murray reads poetry to construction workers



-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com

The News-Herald Book Club is multiplatform. (If I weren’t so repressed, I would have ended that sentence with an exclamation point.)

We have a YouTube page and a Twitter feed and everything.

In fear of sounding like an old man, I’m relatively new to this Twitter thing and taking suggestions.

Who should I be following? What writers? What critics? What magazines and newspapers?

Thus far, I am the disciple of eight feeds.

I follow the Book Examiner Michelle Kerns (you may remember me raving about her Literary Review Cliché Bingo); Carolyn Kellogg of the LA Times book blog; Michael Schaub of Bookslut; Elizabeth Baines (also known as the Fiction Bitch); Electric Lit (who tweeted Rick Moody’s short story last year); Colson Whitehead (Fantastic quipper. “You don’t have to put on the red light, but it would help with the mood and general ambience. No pressure. Just putting it out there.”); Neil Gaiman (Yes, I am a fanboy); and Margaret Atwood.

There are probably legions of fantastic Tweeters I need to follow, but I will never know them without your help. So hit me with some suggestions — via the blog or Twitter.

Also, Nathan Bransford has finished his experiment. The most popular query also had the most popular manuscript.

Bransford doesn’t claim the query process is flawless. Instead, he argues it is the best system we have.

“And all things considered, given the time constraints I still don’t know if there’s a better replacement out there for a query + short sample, even with its imperfections. Queries really do give an agent insight into the overall work, with the sample pages providing another glimpse.”

-Jason Lea, JLea@News-Herald.com