The link below is to an article that looks at a number of clever and creative bookmarks (including pictures).
For more visit:
http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/bookmark-designs/
Monthly Archives: October 2015
Kindle Unlimited Payments Changing November 1
The link below is to an article reporting on changes to Kindle Unlimited Payments from tomorrow.
For more visit:
http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/10/30/attention-amazon-is-changing-kindle-unlimited-payout-on-1-november/
Japan: Bookstore-Styled Hotel
The link below is to an article that takes a look at a bookstore-styled hotel in japan.
For more visit:
http://en.rocketnews24.com/2015/10/27/bookstore-styled-tokyo-hostel-has-1700-books-to-read-bunks-in-the-shelves-to-sleep-next-to-them/
Now Blloon Is Closing Down
The links below are to articles reporting on the closure of ebook subscription service Blloon.
For more visit:
– http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/10/29/the-blloon-has-popped-its-shutting-down-its-subscription-ebook-service/
– http://goodereader.com/blog/e-book-news/blloon-is-shutting-down-their-e-book-subscription-service
Who owns Dumbledore – JK Rowling or the Harry Potter fans?
What would Dumbledore do? It’s a question that’s galled many die-hard fans of JK Rowling’s phenomenally successfully Harry Potter books since the author last week signed an open letter opposing a cultural boycott of Israel, and instead advocated for cultural dialogue between the two countries.
Their responses have played out in a flurry of Twitterverse exchanges, with many fans arguing that the lesson of the Harry Potter story was, as Helen Lewis summarises in The Guardian:
That talking wasn’t enough to end conflicts. Look at the Wizarding War […] If Harry had tried to coax Lord Voldemort to a UN summit in Geneva rather than destroying his Horcruxes, everyone would have ended up dead. Not just Tonks, Remus Lupin and one of the Weasley twins.
One Potter fan in particular gained media attention with a Facebook letter to the author which presented the argument in the following way:
I am writing to you in response to your public support for Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and opposition to the BDS movement in the Guardian’s Culture for Coexistence. As a Palestinian, I have to say that I was completely disappointed when I read about this, because your books have been the very source of all the hope I have for peace and justice in my homeland someday.
Rowling, in her response to the fan, also drew on Dumbledore and the Harry Potter series to make her point, stating that:
I’ve received a lot of messages over the past few days that use my fictional characters to make points about the Israeli cultural boycott. This isn’t a complaint: those characters belong to the readers as well as to me, and each has their own life in the heads of those who have read them. Sometimes the inner lives of characters as imagined by readers are not what I imagined for them, but the joy of books is that we all make our own mental cast.
What began as a debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has since developed into a discussion about whether Rowling had the right to use Dumbledore’s characterisation to support her argument. It’s a discussion that raises interesting questions about the relationship between authors and fans of their work.
According to French theorist Roland Barthes, the author has been dead for many decades, but Barthes was writing before social media gave us unprecedented access to authors’ thoughts and feelings. The author has, in a manner of speaking, been revived. But does this change the audience’s relationship with authorial intent?
Debate on Twitter centred on the appropriateness of Rowling using Dumbledore to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Fans cited his character’s sympathy with pure-blood supremacy in his youth. Others opined Dumbledore is too powerful to stand in for either side in the political debate. Others claim the conflict is too dense to be reflected in an example from Harry Potter.
While the latter point may be valid, it would be remiss not to acknowledge the way Harry Potter books explore grand themes such as racism and discrimination.
Stimpdawg
As fans have noted, the wizarding world becomes obsessed with purging “muggle-borns” during the reign of Voldemort, despite the fact that many talented witches and wizards come from non-magical backgrounds (Hermione Granger, Harry’s best friend and the brightest witch of her age, is a prime example of this).
The desire to attack people who are different is the central concern of the story, and as Rowling herself noted in her Twitter exchange:
It was true in the Potter books and it is true in life that talking will not change wilfully closed minds.
Rowling’s use of a fictional magician to articulate her political beliefs was considered by some to be “misguided” – particularly because, in some cases, fans considered her approach to be a misinterpretation of the spirit of the books. To which Rowling responded:
I can only say that a full discussion of morality within the series is impossible without examining Dumbledore’s actions, because he is the moral heart of the books. He did not consider all weapons equal and he was prepared, always, to go to the hilltop.
What we must remember when discussing the interpretive potential of Dumbledore and the Harry Potter franchise as a whole is that the books are more than just books. Hogwarts is not an object that people can examine objectively – every fan of the Harry Potters series has interpreted it in their own way, and often the way that it is interpreted can say more about the interpreter than it does about the story.
EPA/Andy Rain
There are generally two ways that people tend to approach interpreting the Harry Potter universe: through the canon, which is all of Rowling’s writings and commentary, and extra-textual spaces such as Pottermore.com; or through “fanon”, which is how fans have developed the series through their discussions, fan-produced art and stories, and their “head canons” (or their personal interpretations of characters and events).
Fans have begun to approach Rowling’s extra-textual interpretations of the texts by examining them, deciding whether they fit into their overall interpretation of the work, and either incorporating or discarding them. Readers may embrace the ridiculously-named Fleamont Potter (Harry’s grandfather) but take issue with Rowling’s assertion that Remus Lupin never fell in love before he met Nymphadora Tonks (because many fans interpret him as bisexual, with a potential love interest in Sirius Black).
It is heartening to see Rowling acknowledge the fraught relationship between reader interpretation and authorial intent. In the response Rowling posted on Twitter, titled “Why Dumbledore went to the hilltop”, she wrote:
Sometimes the inner lives of characters as imagined by readers are not what I imagined for them, but the joy of books is that we all make our own mental cast […] All books dealing with morality can be picked apart for those lines and themes that best suit the arguer’s perspective.
There is a question of ownership at work here which will not be resolved through a social media exchange, but it is clear that while the author may have been revived the fans are not taking her words as gospel. At this point, Dumbledore is under the joint custody of JK Rowling and her legion of fans.
Jessica Seymour, Sessional Academic
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Ebook Reading on Windows Smartphones
The link below is to an article that takes a look at ebook reading on Windows Smartphones.
For more visit:
http://the-digital-reader.com/2015/10/28/the-sad-state-of-ebooks-on-windows-smartphones/
Alice in Wonderland at 150: Why fantasy stories about girls transcend time
Michelle Smith, Deakin University
It’s 150 years since an Oxford mathematics don published the most important work of children’s literature and one of the most influential books of all time.
The origins of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in a story that Charles Dodgson told 10-year-old Alice Liddell and her two sisters while rowing along the Thames in 1862 are well known. What is less understood is why it has become such an enduring cultural touchstone across the globe.
Many popular stories can be distilled to the basic structure of a male hero undertaking a quest. In 1949, Joseph Campbell described the common features of the “monomyth” or hero’s journey that are evident in stories from those of Buddha and Jesus to Luke Skywalker.
Contrary to the dominance of heroic tales of men, there are several iconic narratives of pre-pubescent girls journeying through dream-like fantastic realms that have become enduring phenomena.
Wikimedia
Like the ubiquitous Alice, Dorothy Gale from The Wizard of Oz has gained a life of her own beyond L. Frank Baum’s books. The Kansas orphan’s journey into Oz is, if anything, better known through the MGM film starring Judy Garland. The film transforms Dorothy’s journey into nothing but a dream— like Alice’s— inspired by a cyclone-induced blow to the head.
The stories of Alice, Dorothy and more recent girl protagonists in popular fantasies, such as Sarah’s encounters with the Goblin King in the 1986 film Labyrinth, are strongly inflected by fairy-tale tradition. Campbell himself later acknowledged that he “had to go to the fairy tales” in order to bring any semblance of female heroism into The Hero with a Thousand Faces.
As fairy tale scholar Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario explains throughout her work, fairy tales are most often about girls on the cusp of maturation and marriage.
In their original book incarnations, however, both Alice and Dorothy are very young girls: Alice is just seven and Dorothy is estimated to be eight. Carroll was notoriously fascinated by pre-pubescent girls, whom he often photographed in staged poses.
Wikipedia
The young ages of Alice and Dorothy free them from involvement in a romance plot. In girls’ fiction from the early twentieth century, it was common for adventurous heroines become hastily engaged in the final pages of a novel.
Even more importantly, as girls, Alice and Dorothy occupy a transitional borderland between childhood and adulthood. This also seems to make them more attuned to crossing the boundaries between fantasy and reality.
Whether this capacity derives from the combination of negative assessments of children and females as less rational in comparison with adults and males, or marks girls out as more perceptive and empathetic, is debatable.
What is clear is that these girl heroines take different paths to characters on the typical male hero’s journey. Even within fantastic literature, where anything is possible, there are clear gendered distinctions for protagonists.
As my Deakin colleague Lenise Prater pointed out to me in an important scholarly dialogue on this topic (a Facebook chat thread), female hero quests in fantasy tend to encompass an internal quest that takes place in a dreamscape. In contrast, male heroes enter into literal fantasy worlds; their adventures are supposed to be “real” with the space of the story.
The dreamy adventures of Alice work through or play with some of her waking interests and anxieties. As in Carroll’s text, Tim Burton’s film adaptation explicitly signals that Wonderland is a purely imaginary place. Alice suffers from nightmares about Wonderland as a child, and her father reminds her that dreams cannot harm her and she can “always wake up”.
Wikipedia
The MGM Oz film changes Dorothy’s journey into a dream through its casting of the same actors in roles in both sepia-toned Kansas and Technicolor Oz. (Farmhands Hunk, Hickory and Zeke appear as the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion, while neighbour Almira Gulch proves all dog-haters must surely be green-skinned witches.)
As lone questers, girl characters are the most vulnerable and physically weak. Despite their powerlessness in conventional respects, heroines such as Alice and Dorothy are able to survive the dangers posed by people and supernatural beings who possess advantages that are not available to them (adult authority and magic chief among them).
The lives of both Alice and Dorothy beyond their original books by Carroll and Baum suggest a cultural investment in stories about the most vulnerable of people. Alice and Dorothy experience the most amazing of journeys, in which they triumph over the highest forms of authority and power, from queens to witches.
It is reassuring that these stories about girls, who are often overlooked because of their age and gender, are almost universally known. Nevertheless, imagine the possibilities if our most iconic girl characters did not always have to “wake up” at the end of their adventures.
Michelle Smith will be chairing the Making Public Histories seminar on “Melbourne’s Alice” at the State Library of Victoria on 26 November 2015.
Michelle Smith, Research fellow in English Literature, Deakin University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Gore and glory: how Shakespeare immortalised the Battle of Agincourt
Alison Findlay, Lancaster University
Henry V’s 1415 victory against the French at Agincourt is a key point of pride in British memory, and as such celebrations for this week’s 600th anniversary are multiple and varied. Options include the Tower of London’s exhibition, featuring medieval arms and armour, experiencing “the sights and sounds of twenty thousand arrows darkening the battlefield skies” at Leeds Castle or attending one of the many commemoration services in churches around the country.
What Shakespeare might have thought of all this commotion is interesting to consider, as it’s largely down to him that Agincourt haunts British memory. His plays have kept “this glorious and well-foughten field” alive, championing its power as a myth of national unity and heroism. “King Henry the Fifth, too famous to live long” is given an afterlife which raises him to the status of a superhero in Henry VI Part I:
His arms spread wider than a dragon’s wings;
His sparking eyes, replete with wrathful fire.
The statistical significance of the victory at Agincourt by “we few, we happy few” is advertised in Shakespeare’s listing of French and English casualties in Henry V: 10,000 “slaughtered French” including 126 nobility, 8,400 knights, esquires and gentlemen and 1,600 mercenaries, contrast with just 29 English dead, whose names Henry reads: the Duke of York, the Earl of Suffolk, “Sir Richard Keighley, Davy Gam esquire / None else of name”, and 25 commoners.
Rousing rhetoric
Henry V overflows with rousing patriotic speeches and these speeches have lent themselves remarkably well to versions of British patriotism over the years. Shakespeare’s dramatisation of the battle champions rhetoric, Henry inspiring his troops with dreams of glory. The fact that they are outnumbered by the French just means a greater share of honour for those present.
Henry V promises that fighting at Agincourt will eliminate class boundaries: “He today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother” and that his soldiers’ names will “be in their flowing cups freshly remembered” by future generations.
The “wonderful” victory at the Battle of Agincourt has been especially invoked at times of national or political crisis to awake feelings of patriotism. The play was staged just at the point when the Earl of Essex was miserably failing to establish imperial control over the Irish, and, some thought, to lead a coup for Queen Elizabeth’s throne. Agincourt reminded spectators of the English victory over the Spanish Armada at a time when national stability and succession was precarious.
More recently, in Laurence Olivier’s 1944 film, and Kenneth Branagh’s 1989 post-Falklands film, Henry’s speech celebrating the “band of brothers” and “we few, we happy few” engaged with the patriotic political agendas of Winston Churchill in World War II and of Margaret Thatcher’s attempt to retain power. Indeed, Branagh’s delivery of the speech from a raised cart amongst his troops deliberately echoes Olivier’s which is shot from the same angle.
Not so glamorous
So the seductive image of a “band of brothers” fighting against a common enemy is well remembered. But the play’s equally sound critique of Henry’s campaign has often been ignored.
Shakespeare does not depict the Battle of Agincourt as simply “glorious”. The play repeatedly punctures its own representations of national unity and glory. The four Captains of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland are not as united as they first appear and doubts are raised about the number of Irish fighting for Henry. Before the army even leaves English shores, treason is uncovered amongst three noblemen, “English monsters” who have plotted to kill King Henry for French gold.
Although the Chorus proclaims that “all the youth of England are on fire”, the cast includes characters who do not want to be there or are fired by the desire of looting, “to suck, to suck the very blood to suck” as Pistol says. His boy servant is disgusted by English cowardice and petty theft.
The play insists on the brutality of war, in spite of Henry’s insistence that the French people, including the women, are not to be harmed. Burgundy’s plea for “naked, poor and mangled peace” hints at the damage done and tellingly observes that the French people “grow like savages, as soldiers will / That nothing do but meditate on blood”. Henry’s wooing of the French princess Katherine romanticises his conquest, but this scene can be played as a rape to heighten the cruelty of his imperialist power.
Most unsettling is the common soldier Williams who, in the wretched, mud-drenched English camp, challenges the disguised king by refusing to trust that his cause is “just and his quarrel honourable”. Henry rewards Williams after the battle with crowns, but Williams cannot be bought off so easily. The most powerful moment of the current RSC production is when Williams punches Henry, “the mirror of all Christian kings” in the face, enraged by his deception.
Shakespeare’s celebration of Agincourt is thus also a critique of the process of memorialisation, which creates elite superheroes but conveniently forgets sceptics like Williams in its list of casualties with “none else of name”. On this 600th anniversary, we would do well to remember these less savoury elements of the play – and the battle.
Alison Findlay, Director of the Shakespeare Programme, Lancaster University
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
Ebook Readers Weary Of Hearing These Comments
The link below is to an article that lists 10 things that ebook readers are weary of hearing.
For more visit:
https://media.bookbub.com/blog/2015/09/09/ebooks-vs-print-books/
Jamming with your toddler: how music trumps reading for childhood development
Liam Viney, The University of Queensland
Forget the Mozart Effect and Baby Einstein, take it easy on acquisitions for your two-year-old’s private library, and don’t fret if your three-year-old hasn’t started violin lessons just yet.
The key to unlocking a child’s potential intelligence and happiness may indeed lie in music, but succumbing to the commercial juggernaut that is the baby-genius-making industry may not be in either your child or your wallet’s best interest.
Instead, try making up songs with your toddler. A new study suggests that regular informal music-making with very young children may even have benefits above and beyond those of reading.
But there’s an important, interesting, and somewhat beautiful catch – for best results, make it shared music-making in your home.
In an analysis of data generated from a study involving more than 3,000 children, a University of Queensland team investigated the associations between informal home music education for very young children and later cognitive and social-emotional outcomes.
The team found that informal music-making in the home from around the ages of two and three can lead to better literacy, numeracy, social skills, and attention and emotion regulation by the age of five.
By measuring the impact of music and reading both separately and in combined samples, the researchers were able to identify benefits from informal music activity over and above shared book reading, most strongly in relation to positive social behaviour, attention regulation and to a lesser but still significant extent, numeracy.
Part of an Australian Research Council funded study titled “Being and becoming musical: towards a cultural ecological model of early musical development”, the study aims to provide a comprehensive account of how Australian families use music in their parenting practices and make recommendations for policy and practice in childcare and early learning and development.
Last month, the team was awarded the inaugural Music Trust Award for Research into the Benefits of Music Education.
Music and its relationship to mental and social development has long captured the attention of parents, researchers, even philosophers.
Science has shown that music’s effect on the brain is particularly strong, with studies demonstrating an improvement in IQ among students who receive music lessons. Advantages in the classroom have been identified for students who study musical instruments, and the effects of ageing on cognition may even be mitigated through lifelong musical activity.
So how is this study different, apart from its focus on early childhood?
Crucially, its findings are based on situations where the child’s musical activities were informal and shared, typically with a parent – essentially a playful social experience.
Simple and fun musical activities can have enormous power in developing numeracy and literacy: try improvising a counting song, or making up new rhymes to familiar tunes.
But the true power of musical play lies in the unique blend of creativity, sound and face-to-face interaction; the learning is strengthened by its basis in a positive, empathic emotional relationship.
http://www.shutterstock.com
Parents are increasingly enrolling very young children in specialist music classes – undoubtedly a positive development. Reading, however, is rarely “outsourced” in this way, and this study suggests that parents should feel encouraged and empowered in tapping their own inner musician before looking outside the home.
As with most aspects of parenting (in my personal non-scientific experience), there is no substitute for a parent’s personal involvement, even if it involves long-forgotten modes of behaviour such as taking simple pleasure in making sounds.
Being playful with sound is something we’re all born with – indeed, toddlers are humanity’s greatest virtuosos in that regard – yet too many are silenced over the years by the “better seen than heard” brigade.
It’s no accident that we talk about “playing” a musical instrument; a turn of phrase that too easily becomes sadly ironic if formal music lesson structures calcify into strictures.
http://www.shutterstock.com
So recapturing a sense of play (if you’re an adult) is crucial to the process of shared music-making, and this research invites parents to focus on the element of “playing” music with toddlers, using any tools at hand.
The human voice is a great place to start, and the kitchen cabinet contains a wealth of percussion instruments. Whistles and bells could be the next step, followed by a toy piano for more ambitious stage parents.
Long before conventional music lessons start, jam sessions with your toddler (not of the messy sticky preserved fruit variety) can be an enormous developmental asset.
You might even find it a two-way street – if children can teach adults anything, it’s how to play. So take the time, play with your child, and “play” music together.
Along with the newly-confirmed bonus benefits for baby, you’ll both be connected to music: a fundamental component of a happy and healthy life.
Liam Viney, Piano Performance Fellow , The University of Queensland
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
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