The Truth Versus Twilight
This site, a collaboration between the Burke Museum and the Quileute Tribe, aims to set the record straight about the culture that forms the backdrop for Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight saga.
Made famous by the recent pop-culture phenomenon Twilight, the Quileute people have found themselves thrust into the global spotlight. Their reservation, a once quiet and somewhat isolated place, is now a popular tourist destination for thousands of middle-school-age girls and their families. In the wake of the popularity of the book and film saga, the Quileute Tribe has been forced to negotiate the rights to their own oral histories, ancient regalia and mask designs, and even the sanctity of their cemetery.
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In collaboration with the Quileute Tribe, this site seeks to inform Twilight fans, parents, teachers, and others about the real Quileute culture, which indeed has a wolf origin story, a historic relationship with the wolf as demonstrated in songs, stories, and various art forms, as well as a modern, multi-dimensional community with a sophisticated governance system. We also hope to offer a counter narrative to The Twilight Saga’s stereotypical representations of race, class, and gender, and offer resources for a more meaningful understanding of Native American life and cultures.
10 Tweets That Summarize the Book The Lord of the Rings
“Here’s a quick summary of this sprawling tale, in the form of ten tweets that characters might have made at various points in their adventures.”
2011 Shirley Jackson Awards Nominees
The Shirley Jackson Awards are given annually for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. The awards are given for the best work published in the preceding calendar year in the following categories: novel, novella, novelette, short story, single-author collection, and edited anthology.
Storytelling Animals: 10 Surprising Ways That Story Dominates Our Lives
Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, offers a list of “10 hidden ways that story saturates our lives”:
- neverland
- dreams
- fantasies
- religion
- song
- video games
- TV commercials
- conspiracy theories
- nonfiction
- life stories
iBorg: I have become them
In the ocean of ebooks-vs-printed books controversy, this unpretentious little piece by Erica Sadun for The Unofficial Apple Weblog stands out. Read how a recent evening made her realize “I have been assimilated. I am become Borg. I have betrayed the trust of my fellow ex-librarians. . . . I’ve lost the dead-tree itch. I am e-woman.”
The rise of e-reading
In surveys taken in late 2011 and early 2012, the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that one-fifth of American adults (21%) report that they have read an e-book in the past year.
The rise of e-books in American culture is part of a larger story about a shift from printed to digital material. Using a broader definition of e-content in a survey ending in December 2011, some 43% of Americans age 16 and older say they have either read an e-book in the past year or have read other long-form content such as magazines, journals, and news articles in digital format on an e-book reader, tablet computer, regular computer, or cell phone.
Those who have taken the plunge into reading e-books stand out in almost every way from other kinds of readers. Foremost, they are relatively avid readers of books in all formats: 88% of those who read e-books in the past 12 months also read printed books.2 Compared with other book readers, they read more books. They read more frequently for a host of reasons: for pleasure, for research, for current events, and for work or school. They are also more likely than others to have bought their most recent book, rather than borrowed it, and they are more likely than others to say they prefer to purchase books in general, often starting their search online.
You can read the key findings or download a PDF of the complete report on this site.
