Weekly Geeks: 2009-04

This week's Weekly Geek is inspired by Dewey's Knit-a-Long, a mini challenge of Dewey's Reading Challenge. Dewey had other passions besides reading and blogging. Knitting was one of them. This made me think, what are the Weekly Geek's other passions?

#1. What are you passionate about besides reading and blogging? For example, are you crafty (knitting, woodworking, scrapbooking, model building)? Do you cook? Into gaming (computer or board)? Sports (player or spectator)? Photography? Maybe you like geocaching, rock climbing? Or love attending events like renaissance fairs, concerts? Music? Dancing? You get the idea.

Tell us why you're passionate about it. Post photos of what you've made or of yourself doing whatever it is you love doing.

#2. Get us involved. Link to tutorials, recipes, Youtube videos, websites, fan sites, etc, anything that will help us learn more about your interest or how to do your hobby. Maybe you'd like to link to another hobbyist whose work you admire or tell us about a book or magazine related to your interest.

#3. Visit other Weekly Geeks. Link in your post to other Geeks who've peaked your interest in their passion. Or maybe you might find a fellow afincionado among us, link to them.

For #3, you'll probably have to come back after other Weekly Geeks have posted.

You can really get creative here. Have fun!

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Round-up for 2009-03

Last week Ali challenged us to think about the classics. She gave us four questions, and allowed us to mix and match.

1) How do you feel about classic literature? Are you intimidated by it? Love it? Not sure because you never actually tried it? Don't get why anyone reads anything else? Which classics, if any, have you truly loved? Which would you recommend for someone who has very little experience reading older books? Go all out, sell us on it!

2) A challenge, should you choose to accept it: Read at least one chapter of a classic novel, preferably by an author you're not familiar with. Did you know you can find lots of classics in the public domain on the web? Check out The Popular Classic Book Corner, for example. Write a mini-review based on this chapter: what are your first impressions? Would you read further? (For a larger selection of authors, try The Complete Classic Literature Library).

3) Let's say you're vacationing with your dear cousin Myrtle, and she forgot to bring a book. The two of you venture into the hip independent bookstore around the corner, where she primly announces that she only reads classic literature. If you don't find her a book, she'll never let you get any reading done! What contemporary book/s with classic appeal would you pull off the shelf for her?

4) As you explore the other Weekly Geeks posts: Did any inspire you to want to read a book you've never read before—or reread one to give it another chance? Tell us all about it, including a link to the post or posts that sparked your interest. If you end up reading the book, be sure to include a link to your post about it in a future Weekly Geeks post!

Many people chose to answer the first and third questions, although every question did get answered. Some geeks love the classics, while others are a bit more apathetic. But everyone had something great to contribute to the discussion. Here is a sampling:

Both Chris Voss and hagelrat from Un:bound answered this week’s challenge. Un:bound is a team blog, and in a possible history making event, more than one team member participated. Very cool. I also love this line from hagelrat: “it's my pet theory that a girl who has nothing but classics on her bookshelves keeps nothing but mills & boon under the bed.”

In another potentially history making post, Weekly Geeks appears in Danish! Dorte kindly translated her post into English, as well. For which I am forever grateful. I did a double-take when I first saw her post, but then I noticed the helpful arrow for us English readers directing us to look below. Thanks for joining Weekly Geeks, Dorte!

Frances at Nonsuch Book included a beautiful mosaic of book covers in her post. All of the covers are from the same book, The Damnation of Theron Ware. Although I’ve never heard of the book, I found the first cover with the windows to be quite appealing. Frances also reflected on the role classics played in her own development.

Puss Reboots admits that “many of the books I read are older than I am.” She also talks about how she compares Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to Jay and Silent Bob. Dude! Awesome comparison. Go check out her post and enjoy the links!

I will confess to letting out a little woo-hoo when I read Terri’s confession that she feels “pretty inadequate about classic lit, considering I have a BA in English.” Sometimes it’s nice to know that English majors haven’t read it all. Terri also made a wonderful comment about comparing reading the classics to music…”it’s a bit like learning music theory and getting a good base of classical music before journeying off into other styles.”

Sassymonkey discusses how different the classics are from each other. She also mentions the required reading list she made for her boyfriend. Inquiring minds want to know…did he make it through the entire list?

Finally, a note about Aunt Myrtle. Poor Myrtle, I’m afraid we were a bit harsh on her. Although she did get plenty of good books out of the deal. I kind of want to be Aunt Myrtle, just to get the books.

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In other news…

At the end of each month we’re going to attempt to give shout-outs to the other Dewey-inspired events that are going on. Many of these events already have links over in the sidebar, but a little more linky love never hurt anyone, right?

Chris and Robin are hosting the Dewey Books Reading Challenge, complete with monthly mini-challenges and nifty prizes. This event lasts all year, and just happens to be dear to my heart because I’m participating and reading some incredibly good books. Go check out the blog for more info. Or this site to read some of the reviews of the participants. Betcha find a book you wanna read.

Jackie has started a new blog to continue the Bookworms Carnival. Info on the upcoming themes and hosts can be found at that site, The Bookworms Carnival. The 23rd Edition of the Bookworms Carnival will be held by Jessica over at The Bluestocking Society, where the theme is Books to Movies. Submissions are due by February 13th.

Also, Jackie has made mention of a Facebook blog network for Weekly Geeks and the Bookworm Carnival. Since I know squat about Facebook, I’ll give you the link and hope you all know what she’s talking about. :-D

There has been chatter about the continuation of Dewey’s popular Read-a-thon. As far as I know there are plans to continue (yay!) and the next Read-a-thon would be held in April. We will let you know more info once the planning starts.

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Weekly Geeks 2009-03

In the third Weekly Geeks of 2009, let's have fun with the classics. For our purposes, I'm defining a classic as anything written over 100 years ago and still in print. (If your memory needs jogging, see: Classic Literature Library for examples.)

For your assignment this week, choose two or more of the following questions:

1) How do you feel about classic literature? Are you intimidated by it? Love it? Not sure because you never actually tried it? Don't get why anyone reads anything else? Which classics, if any, have you truly loved? Which would you recommend for someone who has very little experience reading older books? Go all out, sell us on it!

2) A challenge, should you choose to accept it: Read at least one chapter of a classic novel, preferably by an author you're not familiar with. Did you know you can find lots of classics in the public domain on the web? Check out The Popular Classic Book Corner, for example. Write a mini-review based on this chapter: what are your first impressions? Would you read further? (For a larger selection of authors, try The Complete Classic Literature Library).

3) Let's say you're vacationing with your dear cousin Myrtle, and she forgot to bring a book. The two of you venture into the hip independent bookstore around the corner, where she primly announces that she only reads classic literature. If you don't find her a book, she'll never let you get any reading done! What contemporary book/s with classic appeal would you pull off the shelf for her?

4) As you explore the other Weekly Geeks posts: Did any inspire you to want to read a book you've never read before—or reread one to give it another chance? Tell us all about it, including a link to the post or posts that sparked your interest. If you end up reading the book, be sure to include a link to your post about it in a future Weekly Geeks post!

Do as many or as few of these as you'd like—and remember, you have all week! This is especially important for task #4, which is easier done after more people have responded.

Create your blog post, come back here and sign Mr. Linky with the url to the actual post, and feel free to leave a comment below. And don't forget that visiting other Geeksters and saying hello is part of the magic of Weekly Geeks!

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Geeky round-up for 2009-02

Another one of the things Dewey did so well with Weekly Geeks was a weekly round-up. In her weekly post, she would feature a few of the bloggers who participated in the prior week’s activity.

We’re a little slow in getting that part of Weekly Geeks off the ground, and since it takes many Geeks to carry out the tasks of one Dewey, the round-up will be in the form of a separate post.

Since the first week’s activity asked us to list our favorite blogs and subsequently increased the size of all our feed readers by 5 gazillion blogs, I’m sure you’ll forgive me if I skip that round-up and start with Weekly Geeks 2009-02.

Last week, an unfinished person and Joanne posed the following questions:

For those who have been with the group, either from the start or joined within recent months, what does being a member mean to you? What do you enjoy about the group? What are some of your more memorable Weekly Geeks that we might could do again? What could be improved as we continue the legacy that Dewey gave us? For those just joining us, why did you sign up for Weekly Geeks? What would you like to see here?

Erin from crazy comma momma is a self-confessed newbie who is already doing happy dances when the Weekly Geeks blog updates. I practically did a happy dance myself when I read that. Erin says she is new to book blogging and Weekly Geeks gives her a chance to get her feet wet. Welcome Erin! We’ll keep an eye out for that video of you doing the happy dance. ;-)

Megan at Leafing Through Life is a long-time geek. For her (and for a lot of people), Weekly Geeks is about community. Megan was “a particularly big fan of the weeks when we were asked to go out and visit some Geeks we hadn't seen before either to comb their archives or to find something we had in common or just to leave a comment to say "hey, I've been here" and post the links to our travels in our Weekly Geeks post.” “Links to our travels”…I just love that line, don’t you?

Julie at Booking Mama is another fairly new Geek. One of her New Year’s resolutions is to “to be a bigger part of the blogging community. In addition to leaving more comments, I also decided to start participating in Weekly Geeks. So here I am and here's to hoping that I stick with it!” We hope you stick with it, too, Julie! Although we won’t send the Geek Police after you if you skip a week.

Maree at just add books is in it for the fun. “For me, it's a fun thing to do once a week where I get to virtually hang out with lots of like-minded people :)…I really enjoyed the Weekly Geeks where we interviewed each other about what we were reading. I'd be happy to see a repeat of that one. Oh! And the quotes one, where we posted a quote a day on a specific subject. That was a lot of fun too.” Since I'm all about the fun, too, I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself, Maree!

Ms. Ulat Baku of Ulat Baku in the City sees Weekly Geeks as “a great platform that allows me to make new friends, exchange ideas and learn new things from people regardless of race, religion and background and that’s the main reason for my participation. Plus the fact that I love Mr. Spock to pieces and never had an appropriate post to feature him in my blog until now of course, LOL.” Well said, Ms. Baku, and may Weekly Geeks live long and prosper.

Many of you mentioned favorites Weekly Geeks that you wouldn't mind seeing again. We will be adding the suggestions to the list of themes, and as usual, if you think of any other ideas, feel send us an email.

We will try to post this weekly round-up every Friday. Additionally, once a month we're hoping to feature some of the other Dewey-inspired events that are continuing around the blogosphere. Look for that post next week. In the meantime, happy geeking!

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Weekly Geeks 2009-02: What It Means To Be A Weekly Geek

For our second Weekly Geeks of the new year and our second post without our founder Dewey, Joanne of The Book Zombie has these questions:

For those who have been with the group, either from the start or joined within recent months, what does being a member mean to you? What do you enjoy about the group? What are some of your more memorable Weekly Geeks that we might could do again? What could be improved as we continue the legacy that Dewey gave us?

For those just joining us, why did you sign up for Weekly Geeks? What would you like to see here?

Since it might have been a while or perhaps you're here for the first time, just a reminder from last week: Create your blog post, come back here and sign Mr. Linky with the url to the actual post so it can be found and feel free to leave a comment below. (Note: As of 1:20 AM, Eastern time, Mr. Linky was experiencing difficulties because the company was switching to a new server; if you're still having problems later Saturday morning, leave a link to your post in the comments.)

This post was written by unfinishedperson from an unfinished person (in an unfinished universe).

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Weekly Geeks 2009-01

Welcome to the return of Weekly Geeks! We took a break for six weeks to give us time to honor Dewey, regroup and decide how to proceed. It takes a village to keep Dewey's projects going - and that's just what this blogging village (blogage?) is doing. Although there will be different facilitators every week, this is the place to come for the Weekly Geeks theme, Mr. Linky and comments, so add this page to your favs.

So - shall we begin?

In the spirit of the amazing community building that Dewey was so good at, tell us about your favorite blogs, the ones you have bookmarked or subscribe to in your Google Reader, that you visit on a regular basis. Tell us what it is about these blogs that you love, that inspire or educate you or make you laugh. Be sure to link to them so we can find them too.

Another option: Reading goals for ’09 and wrap ups for ’08 have been pretty well covered by now on a lot of blogs and other memes. But if you haven’t done this, feel free to make that your first WG of the new year, in addition to or instead of the above.

Most of you know the drill, but for newcomers (welcome!), create your blog post, come back here and sign Mr. Linky with the url to the actual post so we can find it easily. In addition, leaving a comment is a nice touch. So go be Weekly Geeks! And don't forget to visit your fellow Geeksters and say hello.

I hope you're as glad as I am to have this meme return , and I'm sure Dewey is smiling her approval.

This week's WG brought to you by Terri/teelgee





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