Browsing in quirky little bookstores is a pleasant way to pass the time. If this describes you, be sure to check out 10 of the Coolest Niche Bookstores From Around the World in this week’s Monday’s Link Roundup. And for a insightful look at the history of memoirs, don’t miss The New Yorker article But Enough About Me.
- This column will change your life. “Hofstadter’s law, conceived by the cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, goes like this: any task you’re planning to complete will always take longer than expected – even when Hofstadter’s law is taken into account. Even if you know a project will overrun, and build that knowledge into your planning, it’ll simply overrun your new estimated finish time, too, Hofstadter says. We chronically underestimate the time things take.”
- eBooks Gone in 5 Years? “The future of what we do, once we start to put books into this connected/network world is totally open, and that’s a very exciting thing for people who love books and who love the web.”
- Quick Tips for Better Interview Video. “Moving from audio only to video and audio recording is not a small transition. Frame composition, lighting, and background are only a few of the considerations now affecting oral history recording that previously- when only recording audio- were of less importance. With that in mind, there are five basic principles for capturing better video.”
- 10 of the Coolest Niche Bookstores From Around the World. “We all know about the plight of independent and specialty bookstores, so we won’t lament it again here. Suffice it to say, fellow book and bookstore lovers, that all is not lost!…Click through to see some of the coolest niche and specialty bookstores in the world, and since no list like this can ever be really complete, be sure to pitch in with your own favorites in the comments.”
- The Ultimate Guide to Publishing Your eBook on Amazon’s Kindle Platform. “The opportunities to grow and expand your business or ideas through publishing an eBook are limitless. With a insightful, compelling eBook, your words can instill valuable wisdom, actions, stories and ideas that can build trust and relationships with your audience. If you follow the seven steps below, you’ll never have to read another article on publishing to Amazon’s Kindle platform ever again.”
- How to Create a Timeline: The Power of Re-working Your Life’s Story, 1 of 2. “A timeline or lifeline exercise is a grid that allows you to have a bird’s eye view of your life, and to see the positive and negative shifts along the way on a single trajectory…Putting your timeline on paper is an opportunity to record vital information about your life and past. There are several benefits to completing this exercise.”
- But Enough About Me. “…memoir, for much of its modern history, has been the black sheep of the literary family. Like a drunken guest at a wedding, it is constantly mortifying its soberer relatives (philosophy, history, literary fiction)—spilling family secrets, embarrassing old friends—motivated, it would seem, by an overpowering need to be the center of attention…The greatest outpouring of personal narratives in the history of the planet has occurred on the Internet; as soon as there was a cheap and convenient means to do so, people enthusiastically paid to disseminate their autobiographies, commentaries, opinions, and reviews, happily assuming the roles of both author and publisher.”
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The New Year is hours away and many people are busy making resolutions. I’ve never been much of a resolution maker. But I do believe that it’s helpful to set some objectives and to work toward achieving them.
