Ready for Zero, a site dedicated to helping people pay down their debt for a life of financial bliss, just ran a blog article on 10 Cheap/Free Things for Book Lovers. The first item on their list, libraries, would certainly be on top of a list here at Bookish as well. But we would also not forget the Little Free Library movement (perhaps because there’s a LFL just a few blocks from Bookish HQ?) and Bookcrossing.
What would be on your list?
If you’re interested, I’ve been live-tweeting the latest volume of The Doris Diaries on Twitter (@wildsheepchase) as I read. Time is sparse these days so the live-tweeting has been happening in spurts, usually about an hour long, and at different times of day.
In this volume, Doris has a less-than-ethical relationship with “Dr. Abel Scott,” an intern who treated her at what is now Good Samaritan Hospital in NW Portland:
Dr. Scott is the one name in the book that has been changed. Perhaps it’s because he practiced in Portland for many years, or perhaps it was because he was married at the time. At any rate, it’s a tantalizing mystery and I wish I had asked Julia Park Tracey about it when she was in town for the Doris Diaries release party!
In this volume the Baileys move to California, and Arizona shortly thereafter. Doris gets a horse named Mac, who she rides every morning if she can. Adventure at the corral:
Apart from her adventures and romantic liaisons, Doris does show the promise of being a decent writer. She’s also quite grateful for surviving a burst appendix:
We’ve got about half the book still left to go, and word on the street is the relationship with Dr. Scott gets even more interesting. We’ll also see Black Tuesday (aka the stock market crash of 1929). Join me for some Doris dispatches!
We had a few pretty common meditations in MPub, and two of them were about the future of digital media in publishing and how digital media could be used creatively to tell good stories. At the time many of my classmates were enthralled by The Wilderness Downtown, a song by Arcade Fire and HTML5 website.
Personally, I wasn’t that impressed.
This week though, I happened to catch a website that I thought was doing really interesting things how they told a story using a website. Thin Ice: Exploring Mount Hood’s Glacier Caves is a big project set to kick off the 25th anniversary of Oregon Field Guide. Click that link and read the story. Scroll down and take note of images appearing as you read, and how multimedia ancillary material is presented. Background images are possibly the most thrilling thing about this page, as the photography is beautiful and the background actually changes as you scroll into each new chapter of the story.
Bestill my beating heart! In my mind, this site is a far better use of digital media and way more compelling than ebooks. As an ex-employee of Oregon Public Broadcasting, I am not surprised they’re leading the way in terms of both quality content and innovative use of media.
If that’s not quite enough, check out this behind-the-scenes preview video of Thin Ice: Exploring Mount Hood’s Glacier Caves on Oregon Field Guide, airing October 12th.
Thanks to Ed Jahn for tweeting about his project at just the right time to catch my attention!
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