Posts by Jolisa
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Busytown: She loves you, YA, YA, YA!, in reply to recordari,
I also really enjoy YA stories, particularly ones with fairies
Fair warning: the main fairy in GOTD ain't no Tinkerbell :-)
I found the Best Children's Books feature in this week's Listener very inspiring, bookshopping-wise. Being so far from the shelves of home, I lose track of who is publishing what, when, and it's a bit of a mission to get hold of things. What else have people read lately by NZ YA authors that they'd recommend to the rest of us? And YA authors from elsewhere, too, of course.
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Hooray for you lovely literate lot. I love all the responses here.
I absolutely agree that children are their own best filters when it comes to figuring out what to read, when. Our resident bookfiend recently set aside a perfectly good Susan Cooper time travel book because the emotional themes were too mature and thus "boring". But he is currently powering across the ocean floor, several thousand leagues at a time, in the hands of the wonderfully mad Captain Nemo. The wacky steampunk illustrations probably don't hurt!
(The Jules Verne is fodder for a school-mandated book report, which requires delivery via PowerPoint. I despair at the medium, but I'm also interested to see what he does with it.)
Anybody care to discuss what actually is* YA fiction*?
On my matitutinal constitional today, I listened to a great Books & Authors podcast in which Mariella Frostrup interviews three YA authors, all of whose books I felt moved to rush out and buy.* Their discussion of what constitutes "YA fiction" is super-articulate and interesting. Likewise the back and forth about their own reading histories, their inspirations, and what's at stake in these kinds of books. (It's the 21 November podcast on this page).
*Note for Craig: the gorgeous Russell Tovey reads one of the novel extracts :-)
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The iPad could be a contender for Tool of the Year. There'd be a bit of competition, mind.
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You know, Ross, I reckon if we dynamically geo-tag a few cycle-commuters (and any kids who bike to school, if there still are any), we'd quickly discover some well-established "desire paths" through the quieter streets. I know when I was a regular biker to school and varsity, I pretty quickly discovered which way was not just the most direct but the least nerve-wracking.
(Pizza delivery guys have a similarly expedient mental map of the city, which might coincide closely with cyclists' routes -- or might be exactly the streets cyclists would want to avoid, lest they get pizza-ed. Ask my brother Greg how I know this!)
Then we can paint those bike-happy streets green, publish maps thereof, and, as you say, install proper crossings for bikes at the main arteries.
There's this sort of thing, too: the UK cycle journey planner, and this Cambridge-specific one. We have the technology! We have the hive-mind! Let's use 'em.
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Meanwhile, in the civilised world, dedicated bicycle highways. Imagine!
Roehl is not content with making life easier for Copenhagen's inner-city cyclists: he wants to get suburbanites out of their cars and onto two wheels as well.
His goal is to hike the percentage of suburban commuters cycling to and from the city from the 37 percent it is today to over 50 percent by 2015.
Within the city, 55 percent of all commuters already travel by bike, according to the municipality.
Copenhagen's bike highways of tomorrow will be dotted with pit stops where it will be possible to pump up tyres, fix a chain and have a drink of water, Roehl says.
And synchronised traffic lights prioritising bicycles over cars will bring riders from the suburbs into Copenhagen "quickly and safely," he says.
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Sacha,
Ag, missed that completely! (Going for the bronze now.)
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to recordari,
No no, after you! #etiquettejam
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Random Play: Alt.Republic: The rolling mall, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Dedicated fire-engine lane?
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to Tom Beard,
I didn’t actually mean to say that Paul Henry was the literal combination of male and female pudenda: that would be far too insulting to said organs.
And yet, he is a classical tiresome ass.
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Hard News: The Public Address Word of…, in reply to recordari,
Doh. If you're glacial, I'm static, or worse, one of those retreating glaciers. As you were.