First Links for 2009

I ignored my reading backlog last week and glommed down Tom Piazza’s Katrina novel, City of Refuge. It was nothing short of amazing. Not an absolutely perfect book (once in a great while the characters become leaden) but still, an extraordinary book of an extraordinary time. As Miriam says in a comment on an earlier post, I am still thinking about the characters.

More juicy-juice for you:

Found by way of one of my new Facebook friends, this pro-marriage, anti-hate collection, “Please Don’t Divorce Us.”

We’re contemplating taking vacay for Inauguration Day and hosting a brunch (locals… are you interested?). But if you just want to relive the joy of election day, this collection of front pages by Poynter is pretty darn cool.

A Pew recent poll of (predominantly male) digirati pundits found that “The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.” This is news? Travel anywhere outside the U.S. — in many parts of the world, the cell phone is the de facto connection device.

Due to my travel/conference schedule (coming soon!), I think I’m just going to miss the BooksAlive! 2009 literary festival in Panama City this February, but if you’re around, you don’t have to.

See this great library sculpture at Pima County Public Library.

GalleyCat has produced a fabulous “year in publishing” post series.

Hey you Southern localvore writer types: Michael Pollan will be speaking at the Georgia Organics conference, which is March 20-21.

Here’s a delightful NPR story about how to bake a better cookie. The breathy explanations by the chemist/baker make it all quite worthwhile.

Computers, Freedom, and Privacy is holding its 2009 conference this June in D.C. I was irked with them for years due to their EFF connection (long story, has to do with a library director harassed for planning to implement RFID) but I’m thawing out.

This post on Twitter types isn’t half-bad in terms of explaining who you’ll find.

Unshelved takes on Free Kittens. 😉