Your Forty-Third Reminder Of Inaugural Wonket Book Club Livechat With Author & NPR Guy Andy Carvin Tomorrow!
Mark your colanders, Wonkers, because the inaugural online meeting of our awesome little book club will be tomorrow (Tuesday 3/5/13) at Noon EDT. We'll be discussing Andy Carvin's Distant Witness: Social Media, the Arab Spring and a Journalism Revolution; our book review will go up at about 11: 45, and then author Andy Carvin will join us for a live discussion of his book from noon to 1 EST.
As an unabashed NPR fanboy, Yr. Doktor Zoom was initially a little worried about going all Chris Farley for this event -- "Hey, remember how you said social media is revolutionizing journalism and stuff? That was really awesome!" -- but in an email sent while we were scheduling this thing, Mr. Carvin suggested "One good way to mask it – ask me tough-ass questions. I can take it." Sounds like a challenge to us, so no softball questions, OK? (Also, Eeeeee! We totally got email from NPR's Andy Carvin!!!)
Here is something we would call a FAQ for this, if anyone actually asked these questions frequently:
Do I need any special software to see the chat?No, the actual chatting part will occur in the Sekrit Wonket Chatcave; we will scan your comments on the blog post for awesome questions, pose them to Andy, and then copypaste the conversation into the post, livebloog style.
Do I have to be here at noon eastern to see this thing?You will have to be here during the chat to ask a question, but the chat will be copied into a the book review / blog post, so you can see it later.
Do I have to have bought / read the book to participate?You really have never attended a book club meeting, have you! What are we going to do, tell your valuable ad-scanning eyeballs to go away?
I only go to book club meetings for the cookies. Will refreshments be served?What you eat and drink at your own computer is your business alone.
Do I have to wear pants?Why should Tuesday be any different from usual?
Also, since it's a pretty quick read, here are linkies if you want to grab the e-book right nao (and in fact, since the text contains a lot of links to online content, e-book may be the better format for this book):
Softcover $20 or multi-format e-book $10 at CUNY Journalism Press.
Kindle e-book (which provides a happy kickback to Your Wonkette) $9.99 at Amazon.
Nook e-book $10 at Barnes & Noble (but no kickback to Wonkette, alas).
Also, too, we should let you insatiably text-oriented maniacs know that our second book selection will be Denis Kitchen and Michael Schumacher's Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary, a biography of the great cartoonist / satirist whose L'il Abner comic strip started as populist satire, eventually veered into right-wing screamy stuff in the Nixon years, and paved the way for later artists like Walt Kelly, Garry Trudeau, and Berke Breathed. Do we have kickback-generating linkies? We most certainly do!
Damn, I bought the kindle edition, and I was gonna read it on my phone tonight but I forgot to charge my phone. <i>How did people read before there were long-life batteries????</i>
Plus, some asshole at work scheduled a meeting at 11:30. No way is that sucker going to be done by noon. So here&#039;s my question for Mr. Carvin in advance:
According to Wise Uncle Tom Friedman, Sage in Timesland, all the countries in the Mideast are failed states, except of course Israel. In his prescient 1999 book &quot;The Lexus and the Olive Tree,&quot; which got everything completely right and totally saw 9/11 coming, he argued that globalization, sushi, economic interdependence, and stuff he personally liked were the lynchpins of post-Cold War world peace. &quot;No two countries that both had McDonald&#039;s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald&#039;s,&quot; he observed, wisely and presciently and sagely.
So my question is: When some unnamed, downtrodden, worn-out Times reader finally snaps, should she beat Tom Friedman to a pulp* with a print copy of &quot;Hot, Flat, and Crowded&quot; or the kindle edition?
*Metaphorically speaking, of course.
they have some great books about illiteracy at the library...