Archive for the ‘Question of the Week’ Category

DailyLit’s Question: Books into Better Movies

DailyLit’s Question of the Week is: which book’s movie adaptation improved on or was comparable to the original book? You can share your thoughts here.

Thanks to @Golem100 for the suggestion.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

DailyLit News: Banned Books Week

The latest DailyLit news should be arriving in your inbox today. In case you miss it (or want a jump start on it), here it is:

Note from the Founder

It’s Banned Books Week so we’re celebrating books that have been banned through the ages. From Alice in Wonderland to The Bible, I’m always amazed at which books have been banned. So I figure what better way to celebrate the week than by picking up (or in DailyLit’s case, signing up for) a book that’s been banned. Anyone up for it? Let’s all band together against banning books!

Cheers,

-Susan

Susan Danziger
Founder and CEO, DailyLit
sdanziger@dailylit.com
Twitter:@susandanziger, @dailylit

Vote for Your Favorite Banned Book

Which is your favorite banned book? You can vote here for one of these in DailyLit’s library or any others that may have been banned:
-Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species (a classic)
-Henry David Thoreau’s On the Duty of Civil Obedience (get inspired)
-Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (learn first hand why it’s controversial)
-Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (I can’t believe that was banned)
-And then there’s The Bible (need I say more).

We’ve created a special category on DailyLit of Banned Books where you can find other possible entries.

So, what’s your favorite banned book? You can vote here now.

Creative Challenge: School Jitters

Now that our kids have settled into school, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. But before we forget those first day jitters, I thought it would be fun to ask about your own first days of school. So in one sentence, describe a scene or memory from that time. Recall how you felt here.

Highlight: Back to School Video Courses

With back to school time, I thought I’d feature DailyLit’s expanded library of Khan Academy Video Courses. My kids have used them for basic math, and I’ve watched ones on the French Revolution and biology (I admit, I’ve stayed away from ones on differential equations and organic chemistry). You can find the entire DailyLit library of video courses here, including ones on investing, probability and even brain teasers. Why should kids have all the fun.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 43 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Grammar Pet Peeves – DailyLit’s Question of the Week

I admit it. I’m a stickler for grammar. I cringe when people say “different than” instead of “different from” — or when people don’t know the difference between an adverb and adjective (”I’m doing good” instead of “I’m doing well”. ) So I thought I’d take this opportunity, in honor of our kids going back to school, to ask what your grammar pet peeve is.

You can enter your grammar pet peeve here.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Your Favorite Words

I recently asked DailyLit readers to identify their favorite words. Here are a few I thought you’d enjoy:

-Epiphany. Whoever thought to put a “piff!” in a divine manifestation was a genius. (by nordtomme)

-Flabbergasted or juxtaposition. I love them both (by Oskar3)

-Serendipity (by BlueVelvet)

-Gigglepuss (by PamelaBart)

-Bookkeeping (2 o’s, 2 k’s, and 2 e’s…all in a row).
Gobsmacked (Completely dumbfounded, shocked. From the Irish word “gob” meaning “mouth”) (by moengey)

-Sesquipedalian – Having many syllables (literally means “a foot and a half long”) (by sonata58)

-Serenity: Lifetime goal, haven’t achieved it yet. (by nomad)

-Whimsy. it’s a delight to say! (by hfeldman)

-Persnickety (by artofambivalence)

-Frolic (by dreamdust)

-Egotistical. Or disingenuous. They’re both words with a good kick-in-the-pants vibe. (by Untzboy)

-Frack (by Golem100)

-Sprezzatura. (sprezzatura is the art of doing a difficult thing with grace, thereby making it look easy). (by moengey

-Shenanigans! (by lynnie600)

-Awkward – what my 7 year old son called the Orchid when he gave it to me for Mother’s Day. We now always refer to it as Mum’s awkward! (by nmetz)

-Stone (by Jonn)

-Stone… ditto that! and smooth; soothe– the smooth stone is soothing to feel (by DayLily)

-Tattoo: the word is onomatopoeic for the way they were originally administered.
Expelliarmus and Jiggery-Pokery from Harry Potter, and from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon: Hocus-Kadabera, and Abraca-Pocus. (by Xena1)

Other favorite words can be found here. You can also add your own favorites here as well.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Which Book Title Best Describes You?

DailyLit’s question this week is: which book title best describes you? And as a corollary, describe yourself using only book titles. Enter your titles here.

Thanks to DailyLit reader “vanhaz” for the idea.
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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

DailyLit’s Question of the Week: Which Word Would You Import?

This week’s question is inspired by a blog post written by The Economist that asks the question: “which word would you import?” It refers to words in other languages that can’t be translated properly into English and cites as examples words like “sang-froid” or “schadenfreude” that, as The Economist puts it, “exactly fulfil a linguistic need, but unaccountably never got invented in English and so were accepted in their native form as soon as they were introduced.”

So are there words you wished existed in English that exist in other languages? Which word would you import? You can enter it here.

(…and thanks to The Economist for the idea).

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

DailyLit’s Weekly Question: Your Perfect Day

In case you missed the question this week, it’s “What’s Your Perfect Day?”

Mine would begin in a cafe in Paris sipping cafe au lait, reading The International Herald Tribute and biting into a warm croissant. I’d then visit the Shakespeare & Company bookstore followed by a jaunt through the gardens of the Picasso Museum. I’m writing this while sitting in the DMV. Nice to think about this perfect day — quite the contrast.

And yours, what’s your perfect day? You can enter it here.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

DailyLit News: Time to Chillax

In case you miss the latest arriving in inboxes today, here it is:

NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER

I think we have it all wrong. We should all be taking off the month of August. There is absolutely no reason we should be sitting at our desks, pretending to work when we could be out by the water “chillaxing” (that is, chilling and relaxing). So I thought I’d highlight the next best thing: a few short stories to transport ourselves to other lands and various creative challenges to keep our minds off work.
So cheers, to chillaxing!
-Susan

Susan Danziger
Founder and CEO, DailyLit
sdanziger@dailylit.com
Twitter:@susandanziger, @dailylit

SHORTS AND TAILS
Here are some short stories and tails (well, OK, tales) for some light summer reading:
-Margaret Atwood’s White Horse (meeting her was one of the high points of the year; what an amazing woman!)
-Jhumpa Lahiri’s Hell-Heaven (one of my favorite authors)
-Classic Shorts (featuring stories by Fitzgerald, Chekhov, and Poe; selected by editors of Poets & Writers literary magazine)
-Grimm’s Fairy Tales (I still can’t remember the difference between Rapunzel and Rumpelstiltskin; can you?)
-Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (I’ve been meaning to re-read this novella — or do I just think I’ve read it?)
-E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View (always transports me to Florence!)

VOTRE PASSEPORT, SI’L VOUS PLAÎT

Even if you can’t swing a trip to France or Spain this summer, you can armchair travel with Berlitz Essential French Phrases or Berlitz Essential Spanish Phrases.

HIGHLIGHT: CREATIVE CHALLENGES

At least look as though you’re getting serious work done by tackling one of these past creative challenges (or just check out other readers’ contributions):
- 50 Word Challenge (write an extremely short story with a beginning, middle and end)
-10 Word Summer Memories (quick, before you forget!)
-Summer Love in One Sentence (who can resist?)
-What’s Your Favorite Word? (Mine is “chillax” — introduced to me by my 11 year old son as in, “You need to chillax, Mom.”)
-And then for a couple of aspirational, thought-provoking challenges: What’s Your Sentence? (need to think of a sentence that describes your life) and Before I die… (enough said).
-Your Perfect Day (our latest challenge: “What does your perfect day look like?” Mine would start in a cafe in Paris reading The International Herald Tribune, eating a freshly-baked croissant and sipping cafe au lait; I’d then hang out at Shakespeare & Company bookshop followed by a stroll through the gardens of the Picasso Museum.) And yours? What’s your perfect day?

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Revisiting 10 Word Summer Memories

I thought it would be fun to revisit some past creative challenges, and I came upon this one that asked folks to describe summer memories in exactly 10 words. You might enjoy taking a look at these 10 Word Summer Memories, and they might inspire you to add your own. Here are a few:

#
Jersey Shore, sunburned shoulders, going to bed on ironed sheets.
eileenweirJun 28, 2010 8:26 am
•  Cape Cod, big house, hooded sweatshirts, COLD ocean, horseshoe crabs… (by lskohn)
•  Jersey Shore, sunburned shoulders, going to bed on ironed sheets. (by eileenweir)
•  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 other summer memories here; add your own as well.  Have a field day!

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

Reading Vegetables before S’Mores

We got a letter from our 9 year old son who’s at sleep-away camp, and in it, he described that his favorite camp food was s’mores (no surprise). I suppose sensing our disapproval (there was none, by the way), he added: “I’m not allowed to eat s’mores without first eating vegetables.”

It got me thinking about trashy summer reading and whether we all shouldn’t have a dose of “vegetables” — that is, substantive reads — before diving in to our beach reads.

I wonder which “s’mores” you’ve been reading, and if you have some “vegetables” you’ve been tackling this summer. Serve up your ideas here.

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DailyLit is the leading publisher of serialized books in digital form. Selected to be the #1 Book Website by the Sunday Times, DailyLit has sent over 40 million book installments. DailyLit’s books and series are all free and feature bestselling and award-winning titles. Installments can be read in fewer than 5 minutes and can be read wherever you receive email, including on any computer, Blackberry, or iPhone.

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