Merry Wanderer of the Night:
weekly geeks

Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.
-W. Somerset Maugham (1874 - 1965) -
Weekly Geeks started in April 2008. Its brainchild was an effervescent and energetic blogger named Dewey who envisioned a weekly event which would unite the book blogging community. She posted a weekly assignment - a question, a task, a theme - to be completed and posted on the Geeks' individual blogs and linked at the main assignment post. It turned out to be wildly successful.

And then a heartbreaking notification appeared on Dewey's blog on Tuesday, November 25, 2008. The person who seemed to be everywhere in the blogging community, the quintessential community cheerleader who everyone seemed to know and love, had died - leaving a huge hole in our ranks. In the spirit of keeping Dewey's community efforts alive, several bloggers got together and decided to give Weekly Geeks its own space and carry on what Dewey had started.

Over the last nearly three years, the team keeping this blog running has ebbed and flowed. Mostly we've tried to be consistent in posting each Saturday and doing a wrap up each Friday. But, over the last several months not only has our focus as a team struggled, but participation in the weekly assignments has slowed to a trickle. There are those bloggers who come back week in and week out, and sometimes we see some new faces in the links, but overall attendance has sharply declined.

So after some discussion, the Weekly Geeks team has decided that it is time to end this event. We believe that Dewey would approve - she was never someone who hung onto things that were not working. She was willing to look critically at her own inventions and change them up or simply let them go if the community did not seem as excited about them as she was...and so we are taking our direction from the spirit of the person who started this event.

A great deal of thanks are due those individuals who have in some way stepped up over the last three years to help out here, or give us ideas, or participate by posting to their blog one of the assignments. Without the book blogging community behind us, this event would have closed down a long, long time ago.

This is probably also a good time to announce that Weekly Geeks was nominated for the BBAW Best Meme award for this year. The Weekly Geeks team is incredibly honored to be recognized in this way - thank you to those who submitted a nomination!

This blog will remain up, at least for awhile, so that those who wish to may browse the links or read the assignments - perhaps find inspiration for their blog.

This will be the final Weekly Geeks "assignment"...share one of the following on your blog:

• If you knew Dewey - a favorite memory of her, or one of your favorite "events" which was Dewey-inspired.
• Browse the topics here and re-post one of your favorites

Are you familiar with Daniel Pennac's Reader's Bill of Rights?

1. The right to not read.
2. The right to skip pages.
3. The right to not finish.
4. The right to reread.
5. The right to read anything.
6. The right to escapism
7. The right to read anywhere.
8. The right to browse.
9. The right to read out loud.
10. The right not to defend your tastes.

I thought it would be fun to choose one of these rights and post about it. You could share with readers why you "love" that right, or how that right fits you in your reading life. For example, if you LOVE to reread books, you might post about why you love to reread books. You could write about almost anything this week!

It's still the first week of August, but many of you, like me, may be already in the back to school mode. For us, it's only two weeks away! So I thought I'd do a back to school edition of Weekly Geeks and ask you these questions:

• What's your favorite bookish school memory?
• Did your teacher read aloud to you? Do you remember what book it was?
• Do you remember what books you checked out at the school library?
• What was one of the first book reports you did for school?
• Do you have a favorite book or author that you first heard about from a teacher or school project?
• Do you have a not-so-pleasant bookish memory from your school days?

This month readers have been participating in Orange July - a fun event which encourages participants to read books which have either won or been nominated for the Orange Prize for Fiction. I have been participating, and it got me thinking about literary prizes in general. I have my favorites (the Man Booker, the Pulitzer, and the Commonwealth Writer's Prize, to name a few)...and, like many readers, I haunt the lists and have fun tracking my reading from them.

So, I thought it might be fun for this Weekly Geeks to focus on the literary prizes. There are tons of them...some very well known, some a bit obscure. Wikipedia has a fairly comprehensive list of literary prizes throughout the world which you might want to browse.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write a post about any of the following...or take this challenge and run off in your own direction with it - write about anything to do with literary prizes:

• Do you haunt the literary prize lists? And if so, which are your favorites


• Do you participate in any reading challenges which revolve around reading from a specific literary prize? Tell us how successful you've been and give us a link to the challenge and the books you've read for it


• If you are unfamiliar with reading from literary prize lists, check out the Wikipedia link above and chose 1 or 2 prizes that intrigue you, or 1 or 2 prizes that are obscure...and share them with your blog readers


• Tell us about a little known prize whose winners or nominees you've read and loved.


• Write about a prize winning author you love and share any book review links to their work


• Do you keep a running tally of the books you've read for a particular prize? Share a link to your tracking page.

Remember to have fun! And then come back and share a link to your post here!

As late as about six months ago and even further beyond there were a slew of post floating around the blogosphere regarding the format of the books we read. The posts that generally attracted the most controversy were the post specifically focused on ebook versus paperback. We all have seen these or even did a few on our own blogs.

Now that we are six months into 2011 I would like us Geeker’s to take a look at our reading so far and see how far we come within that time in our reading. This introspective look has nothing to do with social networking – that's for another time..

I want us to look at changes, whether it has happened and if it has been a good thing or a bad thing for you.

Here are the criteria

• Did you have a hard and fast mindset in regards to your reading a year ago? (paperback, ebooks etc)
• Are you still true to that format?
• If you have tried another format (ebook, audio) – Share your experience?
• What was it that made you tried something out of your comfort zone?
• If you have not tried another format – Why?
• Give a brief over view of where you are at with your reading now, eg, load of paperback lying round, or the out of sight out of mind e-reader putting your mind at each or life as you know it have toss you a curve ball and forced you to think outside of the box?
• How do you feel about different output method now?

As always have fun with this topic….

We all have our favorite bookish quotes. Some well known, and some not so well known. This week for our geeky assignment I thought it would be fun for us to share some of those favorites. It can be just one favorite that you'd like to highlight, or a whole list. It can be quotes from books, or quotes about books and reading. You can tell us where the quote is from, and/or who said it ... or you can create a quote quiz and make you readers guess. (Guessers! No fair googling!) Whatever you decide, have fun!

I thought this week, I'd give you two activities. You may do both activities OR you may choose one over the other.

Option 1: Write a post (or leave a comment) with suggestions for future weekly geek topics! Share as many ideas as you'd like! Be as creative as you want. Or if you can't think of any "new" topics of your own, consider listing your top five topics from the past, from our archives.

Option 2: Write a post about your genre prejudices or your genre allergies. (I tend to be allergic to westerns, for example.) Are there genres that you haven't read that you avoid at all costs? Are there genres that you don't take seriously? Would you be willing to try something new? (Or someone new!) Consider asking for recommendations and challenge yourself to get outside your comfort zone a bit. Alternatively, you may want to write a post about one of your favorite genres and recommend titles to newbies. Which books would you recommend to those readers who are new to that genre?

I decided to dig deep into the Dewey archives and revisit one of my favorite Weekly Geeks of all time: Social Awareness (first posted by Dewey in May 2008).

Choose a political or social issue that matters to you. Find several books addressing that issue; they don’t have to books you’ve read, just books you might like to read. Using images (of the book covers or whatever you feel illustrates your topic) present these books in your blog.
Remember to come back to this post to link up your post about Social Awareness...and be sure to visit other Geeker's blogs!!

The year is five months in and I think it’s time to take a look at some of the positives of our industry so far. I am challenging you not to find the over the top or even the everyday things but that something unique that has happened to you during the course of your interaction with a book, readers, bloggers or any aspect of the book world within the last few month that you thought WOW or even aaahhhhh
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This weeks challenges has two part

Part1:
Name name’s and share with your readers one, two or five of the unique little things that has made the last five month a pleasure for you. Give a little love whether it’s to a book readers or blogger or just mention that little bit of unexpected surprise that came your way over the past few month.

Here are some suggestions:
Got a recommendation that totally blew you away.
Read something outside of your normal genre that you really liked.
Found a little brick and mortar store that made the different to your book find.
Is there a blogger that just clicks with you.
Has your anticipated book lived up to your expectation.

Part 2:
Did you recognize it at the time and did you send or pass on your pleasure in some way. Whether via email, a review or even just sharing the info with someone else.

As always please leave your links on comments and do have a great reading week this upcoming week.

This week I thought I'd go with one of Dewey's original weekly geek themes.

1) In your blog, list any books you've read but haven't reviewed yet. If you're all caught up on reviews, maybe you could try this with whatever book(s) you [hope to] finish this week.

2) Ask your readers to ask you questions about any of the books they want. In your comments, not in their blogs. Most likely, people who will ask you questions will be people who have read one of the books or know something about it because they want to read it.

3) Later, take whichever questions you like from your comments and use them in a post about each book. I'll probably turn mine into a sort of interview-review. Link to each blogger next to that blogger's question(s).

4) Visit other Weekly Geeks and ask them some questions!

I thought I would add another option to Dewey's original project (not that it needs improvement).

In between books? Can't decide what to read next? Do you have a (small) stack of books you're trying to choose between? Share what you're thinking about reading with other weekly geeks, and ask for advice on what to read next!

So the other day I was looking back at past blog posts of mine and I came across an old meme that made the rounds through the book blogs years ago. I thought it looked fun enough to do again and figured it would make a good Weekly Geek idea for us this week.

You know how when someone asks you who your favorite author is? And you feel a bit crazy coming up with just one? Now is your chance to come up with 26 (at least) favorite authors by making a list of them ABC style. (See my above link from the past for an example.) There are no rules, list a couple per letter if you feel the need. Skip a letter if you draw a blank. Make it be categories if you want to. For instance, a favorite YA author list. A favorite classic author list. A favorite "new to me" author list. A favorite mystery author list.

Or simply an all time favorite author list... from A to Z!

Be sure to come back and add your link, and then visit the links of other participants. Have fun!

This weeks we have a treat, Corey from Literary Transgressions is taking over the reigns and sending us to not only have a look at our bookshelves, but to celebrate their creators.

From the keyboard of Corey:

As Weekly Geeks itself proves, we book-bloggers never get tired of talking about our books. We write about the genres we like, the favorites we have, those recommendations we hated, our preferred length, where we like to read, and even identify new illnesses associated with our reading habit, like B.B.D. (Blurry Book Disorder), P.A.B.D. (Post Amazing Book Depression), and S.B.S. (Shiny Book Syndrome.

Suffice it to say, we like to think about our reading.

But how often to do we stop and appreciate the more practical things that make our reading possible or easier? Things like bookmarks, book weights, cookbook stands, and, perhaps most importantly, the bookshelf.

Since April 8 was National Carpenter's Day (apparently), I thought it would be fun to take the opportunity to celebrate that piece of carpentry most cherished by those of a bookish persuasion: the bookshelf. If we have a National Carpenter's Day (and frankly national holidays for almost everything else under the sun), we should also have a National Bookshelf Day (or, heck, a whole week since this is "Weekly" Geeks!).

So join me this week in posting a picture of your bookshelf (or a selection of your bookshelves if you have more than one) and, if you're really into it, some stories about your bookshelf. Where did you get it? Do you have a love/hate relationship with how much or little it holds? And how did you choose which books to keep on this particular one? How do you organize your books on the shelf?

Share as much or as little as you like about your bookshelf, but don't forget to come back here and add a link to your post via Mr. Linky!

One of my favorite things to do whenever I'm in a new home is to check out other people's bookshelves, so this will be a great opportunity to do exactly that, but virtually. Once you've posted, take a wander around our cyberhomes, visit other Geeks, and leave them a comment, too.

Spring has sprung...the flowers are coming up, baby animals are being born, everything is green and new. Many of us are spring-cleaning or organizing, rethinking and pondering changes...and so I thought it might be fun to look back on the first quarter of 2011 in books, as well as our anticipation for the beginning of the second quarter of the year. Write about any or all of the following:

• The best books you've read so far in 2011
• Books published in 2011 you've read that have lived up or NOT to the hype
  
• Something new or different you've added to your blog
• Organizing books - do you have a new system, new bookcases, or are you simply getting rid of things to make room for the new?
• Changes you are making from the first part of the year to the second part of the year
• Most anticipated book releases in April, May and June 2011
• How your reading changes from the winter months to the warmer days of spring
• Is there a book you've read in the first three months of the year which you think will make your top ten list for the year? Share it with us!
  

I thought this week we could talk about books and movies. Do you have a best list? a worst list? Perhaps a why-oh-why list? Which movies (based on books) would you recommend most? Do you always compare the book and the movie? Or are you able to enjoy each separately? Does a film have to be faithful to the book to be good? Are there any films that you like better than the book? Has a movie ever inspired you to pick up the book? Are there any books that you'd love to see as a movie? Do you have a music playlist--soundtrack--for a book?

This is an original Dewey Weekly Geek idea! I remembered that I nabbed Dewey's list of ideas from her blog before it closed down, so since I've run out of my own ideas for the time being, I looked over that list and decided we should try this one.

The idea is simple. Tell us ten things about you with regard to books and reading. Let your imagination run wild!

For instance: New or old? Hard back or soft? One or lots at a time? Bookmarks or not? What genres? What authors? Favorites? Habits? Stuff you like. Stuff that bugs you.

I think you get the idea. You don't necessarily need to use my thoughts above of course. Those are just to get you started. And when you are done, we should be able to get a nice big picture of your reading/bookish personality.

Have fun with this! Be creative! Then be sure to visit around to other participants to see how you compare to everyone else's bookish personalities.

Mark, get set, GO!

Words make up our daily life, some we we hate, some are never to be spoken and some are so over used we wish they would just disappear.

Every few years the body in change of maintaining the upkeep of dictionaries do a cull – it’s not yet due for a little while but I do my best to adopt a words every few months just to keep some tried and proven words afloat (that's the way I like to think of it anyhow).

While I can understand why a cull is needed as with each era, century or decade that passes some words become outdated and things need to be simplier and easier to use and unfortunately words falls into this category that need to be streamlined.
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Another factor that affects the longevity of words are new phases, new group dynamics or even new tech evolution that have an impact on our social culture like the wave of social networking craze that’s sweeping the nation at the moment, it brings about a whole new set of words that needs to be absorbed into the language database.

I am definately a pro-word ( meaning culling as little as possible) person, the more convoluted the better for me. In the big scheme of things I am probably a dinosaur – I still use words like Vitamin G, Cognisant and Vacivity. A little of that has to do with my everyday environment and a little bit of stubbornness as well as I find it hard to believe we will eventually loose some "tried and proven" words.

This weeks challenge has four parts

1 - I would like to make you all parents and send you over to Save The Word.org to look at all the words that are either not being used enough or are due for a cull probably within the next couple of years. Adopt a word.
2 – What is your pet peeve word? – the word that makes you grind your teeth with either it’s over use or being used out of context.
3 – What is a word you adore, or a word that you feel is not used enough. Irrespective of meaning or even era it’s a word that you just love
4 - Lastly what is your opinon on word culling or the rise in "text speak" that's happening now..

Please leave you links on comments and do have a great reading week this upcoming week..

February is fast coming to an end - the shortest month of the year, and the only month with less than 30 days in it. It's short and sweet.

So, I thought it would be fun to talk about skinny books and short stories...the kind of reads we turn to when time is of the essence or we want to savor a great story in just a few pages.

This week's Weekly Geeks post is all about keeping things short. Write about any, some, or all of the following:

• Do you prefer reading short books or chunky books? Why?
• Do you enjoy novellas? Tell us about some of your favorites.
• Are you a short story reader? Tell us about some of your favorite short story authors. Is there a favorite collection of short stories you've read and can recommend?
• What makes a good short story?
• Do you shy away from short stories? Why?
• Review a book which is less than 200 pages long.
• Go through your TBR stacks and come up with five short books you can't wait to read - tell us a little about them.
• Write a unique post of your own ... as long as it in some way relates to short stories or short books.

Choose a time of your life--childhood, middle school, high school, college, etc--and create a time-capsule post to share with your readers. Include anything you like--favorite books, favorite authors, favorite series, favorite genres, favorite songs, favorite albums, favorite musicians, favorite movies, favorite tv shows, favorite toys, favorite games, favorite styles, etc. You can make it as general--or as personal--as you like. If you're brave, you might even include personal pictures! (Though that is NOT a requirement!)

If your focus is on books, on reading, perhaps you'd like to mention if you've ever reread any of your 'favorite' books from this time. And if you have, what did you think? Have you out-grown any favorites? Or do you love them still? What do you think makes a book timeless or dated? Perhaps your favorites are out of print, which ones would you love to see brought back into print?

On Monday it's Valentines Day here in the US, which means love is in the air! Many of us have been talking about love all month, but I thought it would make a perfect Weekly Geek-ish type assignment to suggest a post that included anything about love that moves you.

Some ideas:

- favorite love stories.
- favorite romantic movie.
- favorite love songs.
- favorite romantic get away.
- a personal loves story you'd like to share.
- favorite couple in books, movies, TV or real life.
- things you like or don't like about romance.
- anything love related you can think of!

Hopefully you get the idea here. Have fun! I look forward to seeing what LOVE stuff you come up with!

B.B.D. (Blurry Book Disorder) : When one can no longer keep characters and storylines straight. Often brought on by reading multiple books from the same genre in a short period of time.

By the end of last year, I had a terrible case of B.B.D. I was mixing up couples, plot points, and even authors. Not only was I reading far too many books at that point (yes, I said too many - even I didn't know there was such a thing), but I was also reading a lot of books from the same genre. I would really love to work not getting to that point this year.

So here is my general plan for avoiding B.B.D. in 2011:

• alternate genres with each book if possible - I'd really like to follow each YA I read with an adult book even if it's from the same genre, this really helps me.
• read at least one book a month from a genre outside of my norm - I'm hoping that by expanding my reading horizons, I'll be better able to remember storylines.