BookTalk.org News: 9/1/2009
BookTalk.org News: 9/1/2009
• Live Chat coming up on Thursday, September 24th at 9:00 pm Eastern. We'll be talking with author Todd C. Riniolo about his book, "When Good Thinking Goes Bad." Please mark your calendar and try to join us. This should be as fun and educational chat and all BookTalk.org members are welcome to participate.
• We have a brand new chat room now. There are more features and we shouldn't see any of the previous bugs and issues with this new software. A few things should be mentioned about this chat room. First, when you desire to leave the chat room please click the "Leave Chat" button in the upper left corner. If you simply close the window your name will still appear in the right sidebar as being in the chat room. Clicking that button logs you out.
The other thing I wanted to point out is that there are now several ways to tell when people are in the chat room, how many people and who those people are. Look up in the top green navigation bar (with all the links) and you'll see a link into the chat room. NExt to the link you'll see the number of people currently in the chat room in brackets. For example: Chat [3]. Also, in the list of BookTalk.org members online (below the Shoutbox), you will see a little asterisk next to the names of people in the chat room. And lastly you will see the names of all people in the chat room over in the right sidebar in the "BookTalk.org Chat Room" block.
• I'll now point out what books we have on the current menu:
- House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski (August & September 2009)
- When Good Thinking Goes Bad by Todd C. Riniolo (Aug. & Sept. 2009)
- The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins (Sept. & Oct. 2009)
- Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman (September & October 2009)
"Smoke and Mirrors" is a book of short stories. Some of you might find this appealing not only because short stories are fun to read, but because your personal schedule doesn't afford you the opportunity to participate in some of the longer book discussions. Reading a short story is less of a time commitment than reading a full novel of non-fiction text.
• If you've led a recent book discussion and didn't receive your free book please shoot me a private message. Remind me of the book discussion you led and give me your choice of books. I'll ship you a free book right away. All book discussion leaders will be receiving a free book provided they live in the United States. As I've mentioned before, shipping books internationally costs over 5x as much as shipping within the United States. Here are your book choices
http://www.booktalk.org/books-available ... t4515.html
• What do you all think of the idea of a new forum for sharing personal writing? It would be for short stories or other pieces of creative writing.
• Thanks go out to Stahrwe and Penelope for their donations in August, Krysondra for her donation in July, and The Real Macai for his support in June. Your generosity is extremely helpful and I sincerely appreciate it.
• For those that were not able to attend the live chat with Dr. Frans de Waal here is the transcript. I haven't cleaned it up to make it easier to read yet, but it is still readable. Enjoy.
http://www.booktalk.org/primates-and-ph ... -f110.html
• At some point in the upcoming months we'll be upgrading our forum software from phpBB2.0 to the latest version, phpBB3.0. The newer version is much nicer and has additional features that will make our forum experience even more enjoyable. But such an upgrade will cost over $300 so any assistance you feel compelled to offer will be greatly appreciated. I've been holding off on doing this upgrade for months due to the cost.
Thank you for reading this news email. I'll see you on the forums.
Chris O'Connor
www.BookTalk.org
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