Oldbie.org

Children's literature is big business these days. Just go to any mega-chain bookstore and check out the square footage devoted to the kids. It's fantastic that there are so many options for young readers, but the popularity of children's literature is hardly a new phenomenon.

The bookn3rd blog, which focuses on book history, has some great links and commentary for rare children's book scans from the early 20th century. My favorite is Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder Book For Girls & Boys, from 1893. The color plates (see the thumbnail to the right) by noted illustrator Walter Crane are absolutely amazing.

Rare Children's Books at the Library of Congress (from bookn3rd.com)

Also see: Children's Book Online: The Rosetta Project

Cross-posted from Geekdad

Posted by Michael Harrison at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My friend Laura recently started up a blog called b00kn3rd.com that focuses on all things related to bibliophilia: rare books, the modern bookselling trade, and the history of books. I have to admit, I'm much more up-to-speed with the book trade than I was before I added her blog feed to Reader. She has a lot of fun with the subject, and it really comes through in her posts. My favorite so far: scans of old advertisements from the Georgia Tech archives.

Posted by Michael Harrison at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I removed Kotaku from Google Reader this morning. When I opened up the MacBook to check my feeds, there were 156 items. After reading 'til 99 items, I realized that I had skipped every single Kotaku item present. And of the 57 items read, over half were Kotaku authored.

I'm not a hardcore video gamer anymore. While the only "next gen" console I have is the Wii (and some would argue its classification as "next gen"), I'm still interested in news about new games for other systems. On the other hand, I really don't care about Sales Charts, Australian or otherwise. I'm sure someone does, but it's not me. On that note, while cute, I typically skip right through clever video-game-themed Jack O'Lanterns and the editors' daily Night Notes to one another.

And jubblies? Seriously. Couldn't care less.

I thought a bit about what video game news I actually care about, and I drilled down on the Kotaku site to those categories. And then I tried to add the RSS feed to Google Reader. But that didn't work. So I searched for feeds, and couldn't find anything. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong place, but I can't really find a way to only get the posts I care about, and ignore the rest.

So, 'til I can figure that out, I removed the feed. My item count dropped from 99 to 53. Kotaku accounted for almost 50% of my feed reader items.

Which brings me to a point which will require another post later on... there is a happy medium in blogging, between posting a ten page opus once every week, and posting fifty bite-sized snacks every single day.

Posted by Michael Harrison at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)