Category — Microblog Mondays

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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I only read the headline this week, but apparently breaks on Wednesdays are more recharging than having a three-day weekend. Which we get this week: two days on, Christmas on a Wednesday, and two days back on if your office is open.

But I’m not a fan of the mid-week break. I love it when holidays fall close to a weekend, and feel pretty stressed out when they’re smack in the middle of the week. Even when I’m not hosting, and all I need to do is show up.

What do you think? Do you like having a mid-week Christmas, or do you wish the holiday backed up onto a weekend?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Another thought from Shaun Bythell’s Diary of a Bookseller. (Can you tell I marked up his book?)

On page 294, he tells a story:

In the afternoon a customer spent about an hour wandering around the shop. He finally came to the counter and said, ‘I never buy second-hand books. You don’t know who else has touched them, or where they’ve been.’ Apart from being an irritating thing to say to a second-hand bookseller, who knows whose hands have touched the books in the shop? Doubtless everyone from ministers to murderers. For many that secret history of provenance is a source of excitement which fires their imagination. A friend and I once discussed annotations and marginalia in books. Again, they are a divisive issue. We occasionally have Amazon orders returned because the recipient has discovered notes in a book, scribbled by previous readers, which we had not spotted. To me these things do not detract but are captivating additions – a glimpse into the mind of another person who has read the same book.

While that is a bizarre thing to say to a second-hand book dealer while in his shop (why did the person wander around if they don’t like them?), I’ll admit that I prefer new books, though I also buy used books. I like the idea of recycling and the cost of used books, but I love holding crisp, new books.

Do you like used books?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The Wolvog has been trying to get a sandwich from a new-ish grilled cheese bar in our town, but every time we’ve gone, they’ve been closed. Last week, the timing worked out that we needed dinner, I didn’t have time to cook, and the place was open. He got the grilled cheese sandwich of his dreams.

I jokingly said in the car as we pulled out of the parking lot, “You’re not supposed to meet your heroes.” I meant it in the “I hope you’re not disappointed” sense. (But… do you get it? Because he didn’t… a “hero” is a type of sandwich… Bad joke or terrible joke?) It turns out that he was disappointed. The sandwich was awful.

I met my hero––several times. Norton Juster. The writer who made me want to be a writer. I’ve had tea with him and dinner with him. I’ve hung out after a performance with him and conducted phone interviews with him. I got really really lucky that my hero turned out to be just as awesome as I hoped.

But it could have gone the other way. It could have been a bad interaction. You take your chances when you meet your heroes.

Would you want to meet your hero? Have you met your hero?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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So a fun thought from Diary of a Bookseller. The bookseller has something he calls the Random Book Club. Every month, he packages up a random book and mails it to the subscriber. So it’s like Stitchfix, only books, and it doesn’t sound like you get any say in the book you receive. And there’s no exchanging it for another book. So totally not my thing, BUT this idea later in the book is my thing.

On page 70, he writes, “I am considering organising a Random Book Club event in London – probably a talk by an author, but the audience won’t know who the author will be until the talk starts.” So you’d show up for an author talk, not knowing the person who is speaking until you’re already seated.

It appeals because it’s a fun surprise without the big time commitment. I would never want to lock up hours on a book that I had no interest reading, but I’d be totally down for listening to a random author I may not know for an hour. Or maybe I need a Random Short Story Club…

Would you go to an event like this?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Have you played with Merriam-Webster’s Time Traveler? It’s a feature on the site that tells you which words were first used in print during any year.

For example, in 1974, the words “direct deposit,” “guilt-trip,” “Higgs boson,” “smoking gun,” and “transgender” were all used in print for the first time.

Also “agony aunt,” which means that Downton Abbey wouldn’t have been calling their agony aunt an “agony aunt” back then. Hmmm… Though Merriam-Webster explains: “The date most often does not mark the very first time that the word was used in English. Many words were in spoken use for decades or even longer before they passed into the written language. The date is for the earliest written or printed use that the editors have been able to discover.”

What are five words from the year you were born?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.