Hugos: Connie Willis won’t be presenting; George RR Martin has written quite a bit about his opinion (I don’t entirely agree with him); a good background article if you want to know what’s happening. There’s SO MUCH MORE going on in this area, but I’m not even attempting to gather all, or even half the articles I’ve read.
The Guardian posted a terrible article about the rise of fantasy where all the writers mentioned were men. And then they posted this almost equally dubious response. However, Maureen K. Speller had a fantastic breakdown of the issues with the original article.
Jon Ronson wrote a questionable article about internet shaming for the NYT and now someone has made public a really terrible line from his book (the line has been cut, but why would you write it to begin with?)
I generally love The Book Smugglers, but I think the first post in their new Decoding the Newbery series, about The Crossover, got it really wrong and is dismissive of a book lots of people have loved for good & valid reasons.
How Daughter of Time led to the rediscovery of Richard III. Not gonna lie, this made me tear up a little bit. (via Melissa Wiley)
Fascinating post about seeing book covers as a synesthete (via Kelly Jensen)
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas’s complete list of Story Girls posts! I love the ones I’ve read and definitely want to check out the others.
This Toast article about Old School Livejournal felt so familiar.
Courtney Summers started an awesome campaign called #TotheGirls, which took off yesterday and got covered in a bunch of major media places.
The Audubon Society vs. Jonathan Franzen is my new favorite ANYTHING.
Forms of Govpurrnance made my day recently!
By Singing Light 
8 replies on “Links from around the web 4-15-15”
fantastic bunch of links this week – thanks!
Thank you! There’s a lot that’s been going on.
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I was perplexed by the Decoding the Newbery post. Is the point of this series to bash on award books and show why they don’t really deserve it? I wouldn’t say The Crossover is the best book ever, and maybe not even the most distinguished children’s book of the year, but I don’t think it’s as bad as she makes it sound.
I really love The Crossover and I think it’s a hugely valuable book. It gives us a thoughtful honest voice that we don’t get often enough. Is the plot groundbreaking? No. But the Newbery is not awarded solely on that basis.
(I was at Midwinter when the awards were announced this year and people were screaming with excitement, because they loved this book and thought it was important. I hate to see that so easily dismissed.)
I could see her points about how the book is vague on character and setting, but the voice was so fresh and inventive and original. Her analysis seemed overly curmudgeonly to me. Oh well, let’s see what comes.
I really LOVED The Crossover. I think it totally deserved the Newbery. Ner. Amazingly, because I am I “setting is character” kind of gal, I didn’t even notice the lack of setting (in my head it was Philadelphia) – the free-verse form ALLOWS you to fill in your own town. My lame-o review is here, but I think this book is certainly one of the best I’ve read this year: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1274004306
I loved your review! This is what I WANTED from this series–thoughtful, in depth analysis of the award winners. I’m waiting to see what happens with the rest of the series.