Complacency sucks. We should all experience the bitter taste of bile rising in our throats at least once a day and now, thanks to a couple links I've found here and there, you're going to get that chance. I've a twofer for you here. If the former doesn't rouse your rebel blood and cause you to scream an unholy shriek of defiance then the latter most certainly will.
First off, Shaken & Stirred directed me to a little Library Journal piece entitled BEA Journal: Bloggers vs. Reviewers. Ah yes. The mythical rivalry between bloggers and reviewers. The fact that some bloggers can also be reviewers? Well, I'll just clip out a little piece of this article for your consumption. It speaks of the Ethics in Reviewing session that occurred:
I started the day off with a bang, sitting in (actually standing with notepad in one hand and trusty Nikon in the other) on the discussion of the growing influence of bloggers in the book world. It was a rehash of the ongoing bloggers vs so-called "real" reviewers argument, which is a good/bad one. This session, alas, was disappointing because the panelists all were legitimate reviewers, including a critic for the NY Times and a college lit professor, who also blog.Those folks aren't the people causing concern. It's others going by the handle of Book Girl, or Book Dog, or Bookasaurus, etc., basically book nerds with no chops who pound away on their PCs while their 18 cats prance in the background. Those are the people I wanted to see defending their legitimacy, not some Times ace.
You'll be pleased to hear that I've sicced all 18 of my cats on this writer (though a good 14 of them took two steps out the door and then promptly began attacking my doorstop instead).
Nothing like a bit of massive stereotyping to start your day off right, eh whot? Whatever you do, don't tell the poor fellow that the New York Times has started culling some of their reviewers from amongst the bloggers amongst us (or so I heard this past week-end). I don't think he'd be particularly pleased.
My second entry doesn't actually make me mad. How could it? I mean.... well see for yourself:
In case you can't quite read that, it reads The Sky's Not Falling: Why It's OK to Chill about Global Warming. I'd cry but I'm having too good a time laughing to do so. It's the children's faces that get me. They look so smug and self-satisfied.
You should definitely hear the Kidslit take on it too. She's the one who discovered it, after all.
I'm a little disappointed that there was no mention of bloggers blogging away in their basements. Isn't that the regular go-to stereotype?
I guess if it's literary then cats have to be involved in some manner. If it was sci-fi bloggers then the basement iconography would certainly raise its ugly head.
The right-wing global warming book might make you cry if you knew that the publisher's previous title, a picture books for kids entitled Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! has sold over 300,000 copies.
That may not sound like NYT Bestseller List numbers but I bet there are a lot of picture book authors who wish they could say the same thing.
How can we tell that global warming book comes from a new right-wing publisher? Two children on the cover, and they're both white males.
A firm with a more inclusive vision, or even any market sense of who's buying and reading books, would know that a female face would not be remiss, and a child of color might soften the fact that the poor people of the world will suffer worst from climate change.