Archive for June, 2010

Winners of “Heroes” Reader Challenge

Thank you to everyone who participated in our “Heroes” Reader Challenge, inspired by Brad Meltzer’s bestselling book Heroes For My Son. We definitely got a little warm and fuzzy feeling reading about your heroes. Here, in no particular order, are our three winners, each of whom will receive a signed copy of Heroes For My Son. Congrats!

“I learned to read, I learned to sing, I learned to share, and I learned to care…all at the knee of my blind and deaf grandfather. I learned to really look, take time to see, listen carefully and hear clearly. I learned that a 5-year old cannot sneak past her grandpa, no matter what his challenges and capabilities. I dedicate my doctoral work in education to my first and best teacher, my grandpa!”
ggarner58

The most heroic deed is not celebrated, not even known. Manifested everyday in common people who suffers in silence for their loved ones. No need to look far and beyond, just true and discover that heroes are amongst us, in each one of us!
ladybeth22

My grandmother, a teacher and friend. A college-educated and working mother many years before the norm, her well-lived life was of joys and tragedies, memorable days and thousands more simply ordinary. She was a smart, funny, generous, imperfect woman who lived 97 years always looking forward to tomorrow.
thehappywordsmith

Thanks again to everyone who participated. Don’t forget to check out our new Reader Challenge: 10 word Summer Memories.

10 Word Summer Memories

Two days ago I announced a new creative challenge: 10 Word Summer Memories. I challenged you to share your favorite summer memories in just 10 words. This challenge has clearly hit a note; there have been some really fun entries. I thought it would be fun to share (in no particular order):

  • “Jersey Shore, sunburned shoulders, going to bed on ironed sheets.” by eileenwei
  • “Cape Cod, big house, hooded sweatshirts, COLD ocean, horseshoe crabs…” by lskohn
  • “No school, no shoes, Good Humor bells, fireflies, water sprinklers” by patk
  • “1968, Berkshires, bestfriend, silent nights, blue-eyed farmer, homemade donuts” by livinonthecrowrock
  • “Watermelon under the tree, blueberry popsicles, corn on the cob” by kogawa
  • “Summer afternoon library books crumple a quilt under the elm” by bookmonster
  • “Cold chocolate milk from the milkman, only twenty-seven cents” by deirdre1952

 
You can read all the memories here; there’s also still time to add others. Have a field day!

DailyLit News: Summer Starts

Note from the CEO
School’s out for the summer! The kids are thrilled, and although it’s been years since I’ve taken my last final exam, I’m as excited as they are. Now we just need to bust out the sunscreen and head to the water. Hope you all have a great beginning of summer!

Susan Danziger
Founder and CEO, DailyLit
sdanziger [at] dailylit [dot] com

Summer Big Read: Huckleberry Finn
What better way to launch the summer than with Mark Twain’s classic summer story of fun along the Mississippi? Join us in reading The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—for the first time or the umpteenth. Find it here.

Reader Challenge: 10 Word Summer Memories
We all have favorite memories of warm, lazy days of summer: an afternoon on a sunbleached dock, a family vacation, a runny ice cream cone at the county fair. We’re challenging you to share your favorite summer memory in just 10 words. Share your mini summer moments in our Reader Challenge Forum.

Readers’ Summer Reading List
We asked what you were planning on reading this summer, and you responded with a wonderfully diverse list. Here’s a sampling (and there’s still time to add your own list here):

The Sookie Stackhouse books—erinpayton
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes. This is for 9th grade Honors English—spectrekitty
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson and Shanghai Girls by Lisa See—Moengey
Anna Karenina; The Great Gatsby; Catch 22; Moby Dick; The Count of Monte Cristo; A Tale of Two Cities; Dracula; 1984—digiworks8
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri—lolabean
The Crucible by Arthur Miller—hoelisha
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro—sdhomecare
War and Peace and American Prometheus—Ichasson

DailyLit’s Book Channel
Check out our book channel for recipes from Emeril’s latest book, Farm to Fork, which shows you how to use organic and locally-grown produce just in time for summer harvests. There’s also Heartbroken Open, an inspirational memoir about the woman who learns to live after her husband (author of “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff Stuff”) unexpectedly dies. And there’s Critical Care, a powerful, touching look at a hospital’s cancer ward through the eyes of a nurse. You can find these excerpts (made available courtesy of HarperStudio), and other bestselling, award-winning picks in our Book Channel.

Classic Shorts
With all this talk of summer reading we wanted to remind you about Classic Shorts: Eight Stories for Summer, a great collection curated by our friends at Poets & Writers. These shorts from literary masters—Tolstoy, Fitzgerald, Chekhov, Poe, and more—are ideal for getting some “serious” reading done without facing the 663 installments of War and Peace. Find Classic Shorts here. (Oh, and if you’re feeling inspired, War and Peace is here.)

Today in the Book Channel: A Publishing Insider Pick

Our publishing insider Carl Lennertz returns to the Book Channel today with an excerpt from Freshwater Boys. This collection of short stories that take place in Michigan–near the great freshwater lake, naturally–is a great pick for summer.

And of course, it wouldn’t be Carl if he didn’t also include a chatty introduction for DailyLit readers, with a few tips of his hat to publishers and bookstores who have been doing good work lately. Enjoy!

Sign up for the DailyLit Book Channel for hand-picked recommendations and excerpts from great books like those selected for Oprah’s book club and the newest titles from bestselling authors.

Question of the Week #76: Summer Literary Romance

June 21 is officially the first day of summer, so it seemed a perfect week to borrow a question first asked over at The New York Times.

“Summer reading, for all its suggestion of soft breezes and cheap thrills, can be an awfully fraught proposition. Sometimes you turn down the lights at the beach house or lakeside cabin only to discover that the genteel Italian travelogue or much-hyped cyber-thriller you’ve brought along is rather dull company.”

Have you ever had an unexpected literary summer fling? Let us know in our Question of the Week forum.

Happy Bloomsday!

As we mentioned in our Question of the Week this week, today, June 16, is Bloomsday. Named after the hero of James Joyce’s Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, today’s a day to celebrate all things Joyce: marathon readings (up to 36 hours!) of Ulysses; walks around Dublin to retrace the events of the novel; Edwardian costumes; and all kinds of other Irish-themed events.

As for what Joyce would have thought of all this, I love this quote from James Quin of the Joyce Center in Dublin. I hope it inspires you to celebrate!

“If you look back to 1954, Bloomsday was seen to be the preserve of a group of loons and drinkers, people like Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O’Brien, who weren’t considered very respectable people in Ireland by any standard of that time. Joyce fitted perfectly with them, and they fitted perfectly with Joyce…. Joyce would have loved it. Bloomsday isn’t high-falutin’, it isn’t academic, it isn’t reserved for a certain class of person. Ulysses is about ordinary people, ordinary lives, ordinary days. But those ordinary days make up lives that are lived, and lived through storytelling in the ways we create our own stories around us all the time.”–James Quin of the James Joyce Centre, Dublin, Ireland, in the National Post


Question of the Week #75: Happy Bloomsday!

June 16 is Bloomsday, a celebration of Irish writer James Joyce during which people relive the events in his novel Ulysses, all of which took place on the same day in Dublin in 1904. Revelers often dress in Edwardian costume and retrace Ulysses hero Leopold Bloom’s route around Dublin via landmarks such as Davy Byrne’s pub.

Which character’s path from which book would you like to retrace?

Share your ideas in our Question of the Week forum.

The New Yorker’s “20 Under 40″

The New Yorker recently published a list of 20 young writers who “who capture the inventiveness and the vitality of contemporary American fiction.” The list has created a lot of buzz online–and disagreements about who should and shouldn’t be included. We wanted to share the list with you to hear your thoughts and to help you discover new writers.  Here they are (and you can read more about each writer at The New Yorker). What do you think?

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 32
Chris Adrian, 39
Daniel Alarcón, 33
David Bezmozgis, 37
Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, 38
Joshua Ferris, 35
Jonathan Safran Foer, 33
Nell Freudenberger, 35
Rivka Galchen, 34
Nicole Krauss, 35
Dinaw Mengestu, 31
Philipp Meyer, 36
C E Morgan, 33
Téa Obreht, 24
Yiyun Li, 37
ZZ Packer, 37
Karen Russell, 28
Salvatore Scibona, 35
Gary Shteyngart, 37
Wells Tower, 37

Question of the Week #74: Merchandising Books

Our friends at book trade-blog GalleyCat asked this question a few weeks ago and we want to hear what you think. How would you merchandise your favorite book?

For instance, for Mark Twain’s Innocents Abroad you might sell cigars, random bones of random saints. Or for Moby Dick, a miniature white whale. Or this one from GalleyCat: “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson): um, nothing that would be legal to sell.”

Put on your marketing caps and share your ideas in our Question of the Week forum.

Question of the Week #73: Summer Reading Lists

Many students have summer reading assignments to complete. What’s on your summer reading list?

Share yours in our Question of the Week forum.