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Women Who Blog

January 6, 2006 / Monique

I don’t want to turn this into a love fest, but … Patricia at BookLust called my writing style “elegant and enchanting.” The comment is within the context of a post on Women Who Blog. Patricia is outraged about a recent Glamour magazine article that gives women bloggers some exposure, but essentially portrays them as “vacuuous idiots who are lonely and crave attention” (Patricia’s words). The subheader is apparently “Are They Self-Absorbed Exhibitionists? Groovy Free Spirits? Or Just Plain Bored? Meet Them And Decide For Yourself.” Rightly so, Patricia has challenged this foolish commentary and listed 5 women who blog and are not vapid, self-absorbed lunatics. I was listed. (Clearly Patricia has been protected from firsthand exposure to my madness.)

The honour of the link on Patricia’s site, which I love, is much appreciated and in return I want to mention 5 other women who deserve some attention.

First, of course, is Patricia who deserves a mention for her very witty blog about cartoons, her life, and books. One of my top three sites to visit whenever I fire up Bloglines.

Jen of Canuck Librarian who continues to amuse me with her commentary on libraries and working as a librarian. It is the Dilbert nature of so many jobs that gets me giggling like a drain.

Susannah Gardener of Buzz Marketing with Blogs. Part buzz marketing, part techie, part business, part blogosphere insider’s look. And she has published a couple of books with Wiley. Who doesn’t like a girl who can geek it up?

Lalia of Moorish Girl who writes about books, including her own, plus cultural or political commentary on the world, particularly the Arab world. Her book is Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits. Not only a great title, but I’m sure her writing is as good as her blog.

Lex of Canadian girl out and aboot who writes about writing and dance and TV. I think she is my doppleganger. We have similar allergies, we both dance, we know people who work at the Canadian Cooperative Association, we’re prairie girls, I’ll stop there. I like her site because her writing is very real. I do enjoy a voyeurist view of other people’s lives.

Those are just a few of the women I read out of personal interest. There’s a whack of them I read out of business interest, either technology or books or tap dancing.

So is there a woman blogger in your life who you’d like to mention? Share the love.

Go Quietly into the New Year

January 5, 2006 / Monique

In my experience, the new year brings very few new titles with it. The early new year that is. I suppose publishers assume that readers are busy devouring the books they received over the holidays. Instead they pummel us with self-help books and business books. I’m tired of the top 10 lists of books I should have read last year, books that celebrities loved in 2005, [insert your own book list here].

I was, however, pleasantly surprised with the mail last week. I received a copy of Daniel Isn’t Talking by Marti Leimbach . It is my latest book from McClelland & Stewart, as part of their 100 Readers Club. The cover on Amazon is not the one on my advance copy, photo to come.

Anyway the book is about an autistic boy, a la The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, however the story is told from the neurotic, smothering mother’s point of view. I loved Curious Incident, but as you may have guessed, I did not open this book with excitement. The writing is ok but in some cases clunky. The characters are interesting but mildly annoying. I am over the 100 page mark though, which is my cut off for rejecting and quitting bad books, and I’m still reading. I’ll update the post with a full rreport when I’m finished. Until then, please tell me if you’ve heard of exciting new books for 2006. I’m on the lookout.

Where did all the singable songs go?

January 1, 2006 / Monique

Last night I attended a New Year’s eve party with a bunch of musicians. I have a weakness for musicians. James likes to tell me that he played sax in grade six. It’s not exactly the same though, is it?

Anyway there was a bit of a song and dance portion of the evening and it struck me that none of us could think of popular songs that everyone would know the words to. Maybe it was just our group, maybe we don’t sing along to the radio enough, maybe we had a mental block on New Year’s songs, or maybe it’s that the majority of the songs on the radio are trite and not the songs you sing together. Perhaps we needed some of the songsters from Zizane restaurant or Colombia.

I was in Colombia years ago and my host family was appauled by my lack of singing. The first night I stayed with my host dad, he took me to a party where we sat around drinking whiskey and singing Sinatra. “Why don’t you know all these songs? They’re your songs,” he said. I pointed out that they were actually American songs and I tried to sing part of a Hip song but lost my way.

Years before that I’d been on a city-city exchange with a Quebec town. I was the youth contingent and everyone else representing my town was 60-70 years old. When they started singing it was awing. Lots of songs about friendship and love and songs that the Quebec folks knew in English and French. The Quebec group who were younger–40-50–had their own songs too. What did I have? A bit of Madonna and Debbie Gibson. A very sad state of affairs.

So where did all the singable songs go? Or better still, what are the songs that we sing together? Who knows all the words to Auld Lang Syne? When was the last time you sang the anthem? Maybe there can be more singing in 2006.

Happy New Year.

Dance Dance Revolution

December 30, 2005 / Monique

I was uploading my snowman photos to Flickr today and saw that Dance Dance Revolution also hit the Krug household. James and I attended a house party where DDR made quite the hit. The best part was putting the game on the highest speed and watching people go crazy trying to step on the foot pads in time with the flashing arrows on screen.

But back to the snowmen. Winter in Winnipeg is always fun because Peggers are crazy for Christmas lights and snowmen. There was even a city-wide Christmas light competition this year.

James and I noticed early on that Cordova Street in River Heights seemed to be a hotbed for snowmen builders. The builders were never seen but their work was on full display. You’ll notice that these snowmen are sporting all sorts of winter mittens and toques. Nobody would think of stealing the mittens off a snowman. This is Winnipeg. Leave that door unlocked too. Check out the snowmen of Cordova St.

CBC Podcasts

December 18, 2005 / Monique

My CBC.ca viewing was interrupted today by a survey request. CBC wanted to know more about how I felt about podcasts. Yippee! A couple of things here to note: the “could you fill out this survey” was a clear question and I was told it would take approx. 15 min, good to know, and when I clicked yes, I got to view the story I was going to before I had to take the survey. Lovely because 15 min. later I would have forgotten why I’d come to the site in the first place. The survey layout was also great. There was a progress bar at the bottom so I could see how far along I was. The questions were phrased in an easy-to-understand way with good check boxes. The only question I didn’t like was one where you pick which programs you’d like podcasts of and you could only pick a maximum of 5. There were at least 10 I wanted, but I guess the survey folks need to narrow things down. Overall it was fantastic and I said at the end that I would be interested in discussing the future of podcasts more so I signed my name and contact info. At the moment I listen mostly to the Radio 3 podcasts and Tod Maffin’s, but I was thinking the other day that those damn leaders debates should be podcasts because I kind of have cooler things to do at 8 pm than sit around watching a bunch of hot headedness. I know CBC has the debates in video form you can download, but I need the podcast version so I can listen to it in the car on the way to and from work. Maybe podcasts of the leaders debates exist and I haven’t found them?

I did find the CBC Blog Report on the election though:
Canada Votes Blog report

The only other dissatisfying part of the survey was a series of questions on whether I’d pay to hear CBC podcasts and how much. I understand there are costs involved for producing new content and that there are permissions and rights fees for using the radio content in a podcast but I don’t want a subscription model (i.e., pay X amount for unlimited downloads during 12 months) nor do I want a per podcast fee. So I said I’d be ok with sponsorship or advertising. I used to be a regular Globe and Mail reader. I looked at the online site every morning and then sometimes in the afternoon if I was following a story. Now, I never go to the site because you have to subscribe to see the good stuff.

I’m very glad that CBC offers podcasts and I hope they continue to be free and I loved taking their survey even though I hate surveys. I guess relevance is everything in surveyland.

Imagine The Imagined City

December 15, 2005 / Monique

Just received a notice from Turnstone that my stocking stuffer is now in stores: The Imagined City: A Literary History of Winnipeg, edited by David Arnason & Mhari Mackintosh.

Here’s the publisher’s description: In The Imagined City, David Arnason and Mhari Mackintosh trace the literary history of Winnipeg from the Red River Settlement through two world wars, the 1919 General Strike, and the Great Depression, to today. Through a wide variety of excerpts, they present the significant works, people, and places that have contributed to Winnipeg’s literary life. This mosaic history of the intellectual life that has developed in Canada’s geographic centre helps to explain how a small hub city, at the meeting of two rivers, has grown into one of the country’s most diverse and densely artistic communities. Featuring the writing of Carol Shields, Margaret Laurence, Dorothy Livesay, Adele Wiseman, and The Weakerthans’ John K. Samson, and illustrated with more than 160 photos and illustrations and 5 maps, The Imagined City introduces readers to the men and women of Winnipeg’s literary past and present.

Buy the book from McNally Robinson, my favourite Canadian bookstore.

On Discovering Shane Koyczan

December 15, 2005 / Monique

HarperCollins Digitizes Books Then Sells Them to Search Engines

December 13, 2005 / Monique

The Globe and Mail ran an article today by Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg and Kevin J. Delaney titled “HarperCollins does Net end run: will sell digitized books to search firms”.

I’d like to link to the article but help me if I could find it in the digital edition of The Globe. So here’s my summary. There’s a controversy raging at the moment about the future of book, in particular the future of books as Google and Amazon wish to display them in their digital glory. At the moment publishers send physical copies of their books to Amazon and Google to be scanned and included in Search Inside the Book (Amazon) and Google Print (now Google Book Search). Google does offer publishers the option of sending an electronic scan of the book instead of the physical copy, which for Canadian publishers means no shipping costs and no duty fees.

The big news today is that HarperCollins Publishers is telling the search engine giants and Amazon to forget it. Essentially HarperCollins wants the search engines to back away from digitizing content on their behalf and instead wants to digitize their own books and determine who they license the content to and how it will be displayed.

Quote: Instead of sending copies of their books to various Internet companies for digitizing, as it does now, HarperCollins will create a digital files of its books in its own digital warehouse. Search companies such as Google will then be allowed to create an index of each book’s content so that when consumers do a search, they will be pointed to a page view. However, that view will be hosted by a server in the HarperCollins digital warehouse.

So the digital files will only be on HarperCollins servers. Search engines will have to crawl the HarperCollins website but will not be allowed to index the image of the page. HarperCollins will control the terms of trade, i.e., deciding who they want to partner with as retail partners. There is no strategy for selling directly to the consumer. They hope to have scanned and digitized key titles by mid-2006. And, the strategy is seen by CEO Jane Friedman as a way to “protect our rights and the rights of our authors.”

So what do you think? It doesn’t exactly address the reader’s right to easily find and discover new titles, when they want, where they want, unless HarperCollins has a very clever arrangement with Amazon and Google about how those page views will work. Perhaps nested within an Amazon frame? I don’t think it is in Amazon’s best interest to move people away from their site.

On the one hand, I think HarperCollins is going to engage in a very interesting exercise. I’m keen to see how it all works out. On the other hand, I’d rather see publishers work things out together with Amazon and Google, you know, the subject-matter experts in online retail and search.

I’m confident that there are enough level-headed people to find a way to balance user rights with creator rights, but, it is a big conversation that isn’t easy to have. Again, what do you think?

UPDATE: Quill and Quire reported the following in the OMNI edition. A quote from David Kent, president and CEO of HarperCollins Canada.

Quote: Kent is more inclined to talk about the principles at stake. Maintaining control over digital content reflects publishersí right to be paid for their work. ìWe invested in [the book], we took the risk, we should control it,î he says, adding that at the same time, no publisher wishes to restrict the publicís access to the books. ìIf you want it, come to us, and you can get it.î

My Wishlist

December 11, 2005 / Monique

James and I engaged in a poke-and-stroll down 4th avenue today. Poke as in stick your head in a store, poke about, then stroll on. I redeemed my Duthie’s gift certificate that my brother gave me for my 30th birthday. 30 bucks for 30 years. Thank you D.

Here’s the book I got: The Genius in the Design

I like book gifts and it is that time of year so here’s my wishlist: Amazon listmania

What’s on your list? Any good recommendations I don’t have on my list?

The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating

December 9, 2005 / Monique

CBC has reported a couple of times on a Vancouver couple who are observing a special diet that restricts them to eating foods that are grown and produced within a hundred mile radius of their home. The authors Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon are actually writing a series of articles for The Tyee. The diet is really less about dieting than about the politics of food, recognizing where things are grown, the amount of fuel used to transport food, and our disassociation with the food production process.

Quill and Quire reported today that Random House Canada has acquired the rights to publish The 100-Mile Diet: A Year of Local Eating. It will be interesting to see whether two authors interested in their ecological footprint will be able to ensure the book is printed on 100% post-consumer, recycled paper, vegetable-based ink, non-bleached paper, etc. I certainly hope so because the good work they did decreasing their consumption of foods requiring long-distance transport (fossil fuels) might be quickly undone by the rather environmentally heavy act of publishing thousands of copies of a book using virgin paper (paper from trees as opposed to paper two or three times removed from the original tree).

Random House has signed on with Markets Initiative and I hope that means the book will be as eco-friendly as the diet. Watch for the book in Spring 2007.

So Misguided