Version 7.0ish. Digital Humanities. Running. Pedagogy. Linux.

Via I-Anya, I recently found out about a series of Harry Potter fanfics that being published by Random House. How cool is that? It is nice to see good fan fiction taken so seriously. Sadly, The Decline Of The High Elves is only in Spanish, but I hope there will be a English translation soon. I really like this quote from the author, Francisca Solar, via a BBC article about the publication:

“When I read the fifth book, I was so disappointed – I’m a very critical reader, and I’m a huge fan, so the expectation of this fifth book was great,” Solar said.

“I took the principal characters and I did a story that is more rich than Rowling’s story, because you can have access to the thoughts and feelings of all of the characters.

“In the Harry Potter saga, you can only have access to Harry’s feelings and thoughts. That is a partial view of the Potter universe.”

• The Reading Experience has another post about John Dewey up.

• One of my favorite pieces of Transformers fan fiction is A Chance In A Million. Now that I think about it, it might have been the first one I ever read too when I got back into the fandom in 1997.

• Scott over at Conversational Reading finds War & Peace to be a bit of a disappointment. I started reading it back in high school but never finished it. Maybe I will pick that up again this summer.

• It seems that I link to a Marjane Satrapi interview almost every week. This week’s interview is from Nerve:

I have to tell you something: I never felt as free as when I wrote Chicken with Plums. When I write about women, and obviously when I write about myself like in Persepolis people relate [the text] to me. In this book, the main character in is a man. I could hide behind him, yet in some ways, he is me. I can be very cynical, but I can also die of love.

• Incoming Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is interviewed over at Mother Jones:

Third, I want to take a look at some of the good things that are being done around the rest of the world that are almost never discussed in the United States. How often is it discussed that the American people work the longest hours of any industrialized country in the world? The two-week paid vacation is almost a thing of the past; meanwhile in Europe you get four to six weeks vacation, and maternity leave with pay. We don’t know about these things. I want to take a look around the world and see what workers are receiving, and compare that to the United States” from an educational point of view.

Whoops, I missed last week’s weekend reading post. By the time I realized it, the weekend was pretty much over. Therefore, here is two weeks worth of things for you to check out:

• Jane over at Game Girl Advance isn’t all that impressed with the new Playstation 3. I’ve, more or less, lost track of video games (modern ones at least) the past few years…I am still catching up to most PS2 games besides Grand Theft Auto!

• Derik over at MadInkBeard reviews the new graphic novel based on the 9-11 commission.

• Watching this time attacker blow through Castlevania is depressing. The original Castlevania has always given me a lot of trouble.

• One of my favorite Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan fiction series from a few years ago was Mining For Gold.

• Project Gutenberg is archiving nearly one hundred year old issues of The Atlantic Monthly. Here is an issue from 1887.

• You can read about Portuguese author Jose Saramago in this essay over at The Modern Word.

• Via ReadySteadyBook here is an article about the new Fagles translation of Aeneid.

• Conversational Reading reports that the new Jean-Philippe Toussaint book, about French soccer star Zidane, is only seventeen pages long.

• Also from Conversational Reading is a new review of Italo Calvino’s T-Zero.

Worth reading this weekend:

• This article from Wired highlights a lot of the stuff I hate about Myspace. Thankfully there is a Greasemonkey script to get rid of a lot of it.

• I had no idea until recently that Borges’ maid wrote a book about him.

• Torill over at the excellent Thinking With My Fingers blog has a great post about gaming and time. I am particularly interested in her thoughts on addiction.

• Tough Love by C.N. Winters is an excellent Buffy The Vampire Slayer fan fiction portraying the aftermath of a hate crime against Tara.

• Not only is Marjane Satrapi one of my favorite contemporary authors, she is also an excellent interviewee. This interview with the Star Tribune is no exception:
  
  Q So no superheroes, huh?
  
  A Not really. The problem with superhero comics is that most of the characters are men so there is no way that I can identify. And the woman always have big breasts and long legs. The only character that can be a little bit seducing is Catwoman, but she’s so mean. And then you have Wonder Woman, but you don’t believe with these big breasts she can go and make justice in the world.

As some of you might know, I am a pretty avid reader and advocate for fan fiction. We can get into why in another post. I read a lot of Transformers fan fiction, especially over at Lexicon. Recently I have had the pleasure of reading a lot of Stormy’s work over there and have been so impressed by it that I have to link to them here. If you have any interest in Transformers at all, you need to check these out and Stormy’s other work:

• Darkness Visible-An interesting look inside of Decepticon life before the great ark crash. I love the characterizations of those portrayed in here, especially a young and eager Starscream.

• Fire In The Wires-The Combaticons & Stunticons try to decipher their origins and why they are how they are. This is one of the most interesting fan fic pieces I have ever read. Stormy takes a plot hole I’ve always been curious about and weaves an elaborate and fascinating story.

• The Last Decepticon-The end of the Decepticons, as seen by one of their crypt keepers. I especially like the nuanced discussion of the differences in how each race tends to their deceased.

• Turn To Rust-Dead End has always been one of my favorite Transformers. His pessimistic attitudes remind me of myself a lot. Here, right after the end of Transformers: The Movie, Dead End stands up and tries to regroup the Decepticons on Charr. An interesting character study about a under appreciated Bot.

After reading their final new episode for a couple weeks, I have to say I am very impressed with this season’s Watchers Virtual Series. I really like the first year, last year was kind of bland, but this year has been very impressive. I am especially interested in a certain character’s uh, recent “turn” so to speak. In my head I can picture a lot of great things they can do critically, story wise, and politically. There is a lot of potential here.