Saturday, October 12, 2019

Antipodean Spring is a good season for bookstores - Berkelouw

Hitting the Books: Nero, fiddling from orbit as Earth burns



The Newest Marvel Rising Special Introduces Shuri to the Secret Warriors' Girl GangShuri, the smartest person in the world, and absolutely one of the coolest. Now's a great time to be a Shuri fan; after Black Panther made her a household name, she's been appearing all over the place, and it's been fantastic. . ..

Sequed to downunder: The majority of girls want to take charge of their future and tackle the biggest issues facing them and all of us collectively, but sometimes lack confidence to step up. This research shows that young women and girls – if educated, supported and inspired by those around them and the society as a whole – are a powerful force for social change.
She has a plan: the unique power of girls to lead change



School Maintenance Worker Gets Laid Off, Writes A Hallmark Channel Christmas Movie


“At the time I wrote this, I had lost my job after 37 years with an engineering firm. They called me in on a Wednesday afternoon and said, ‘We got to let you get, a reduction in force.’ So here I was at 56, wondering what am I going to do with my life,” he said. He took a year off to write. – Chicago Tribune


Chicago mashup masters The Hood Internet have been pretty quiet lately — their last mixtape was released more than two years ago. But in the west, a shadow stirs… In the same vein as their 40 Years of Hip Hop video, the duo has released a musical tribute to 1979, combining 50 songs released that year into a tight 3-minute mix.

Two scotches a day keeps the doctor away

Design: Rhys Tranter

The World Photography Organization has shared some of the early entries for the 2020 Sony World Photography Awards with In Focus. Here are a couple of my favorites (from Khanh Phan and F. Dilek Uyar respectively):

2020 Sony World Photography Awards






Summer is a good season for bookstores. As the weather warms, more foot traffic passes by on the street. Front doors can be left open to entice wander-ins. The relaxed flow of summer reading lends itself to spontaneous finds plucked from the shelf instead of purposeful winter tomes. And visitors tend to linger as the daylight hours lengthen.

At least some do. There’s another type of customer encounter that happens at least once a shift at the used bookstore where I work, sometimes a dozen times. A customer walks in, beelines to where I’m helming the front desk, and asks a variation of the same question: “Do you have this specific book?”

I’ve worked at the register for two used bookstores—the nonprofit Housing Works Bookstore in New York City’s Soho and the cooperatively run Adobe Bookstore in San Francisco’s Mission District—so I’ve fielded this question hundreds of times. It’s usually easy to answer. Often I know immediately that we don’t have the book in question, simply because it’s a new release. Used books have to be circulated to the public, digested, and then passed through households and among friends like persistent rumors before they make their way to us. For older titles, our inventory isn’t catalogued and changes daily, but I’m more than happy to search our stock in the relevant section, with occasional success.



Research: Arts, Sports Might Help Cut Homelessness


“Meaningful activity might be an essential component of youth homelessness prevention. This includes resources that encourage social inclusion (e.g., community and recreation centres) and natural supports. For example, neighbours may be able to help facilitate housing retention once a young person leaves the streets.” The Conversation