Weekly Webcrawl: Libraries, Women in History, Special Needs, and Amazonian Fan Fiction

While cruising my Titter feed, I came across this little jewel of fluff journalism. The author, seems to think that libraries are nostalgic places for old people, and there is little use for libraries in the modern age of a search engine in every bit of personal electronics. He even riffs on Farenheit 451, making an assinine parallel that would likely enrage Bradbury's ghost. There are numerous obvious fallacies in his arguments, that the internet is free, and more. I love libraries, and discovered many authors and genres that I never would have if I'd not haunted libraries as an adolescent and teenager. The two Stephens, King and Donaldson, to name just a few. Rita Meade, over at Book Riot, does a great job at pointing out the various and sundry flaws in the arguments presented in the article, so I'll refrain from treading the same ground.

Another post that caught my attention was a guest post from the supremely talented Kameron Hurley at A Dribble of Ink that challenges our the lazy acceptance of the historical narrative that marginalizes women, people of color, etc. This is a fantastic article and it would criminal of you not to take a look.

And then along Chuck Wendig comes to steal my thunder and manages to mash up the library controversy and his thoughts on Hurley's post. Read his thoughts here.

Lastly, I wanted to link to a post by Peter Orullian over at the excellent Bookworm Blues. Peter's call for compassion as part of the Special Needs in Strange Worlds series is incredibly moving and has guaranteed to touch a nerve for all of the parents out there. After reading this, I resolved to rectify my lack of exposure to Orullian's work. There are other posts in this series that beg for your attention as well, but this one is the one that spoke most directly to me.

And since Twitter is all abuse about Amazon's foray into publishing fan fiction, here are a few excellent examinations of this development.

• A Publisher's Weekly article on the subject.
• Chuck Wendig's reactions.
• A brief response from Robert Jackson Bennett.
• John Scalzi sounds off as well.
• Jim C. Hines weighs in.
• And lastly a few words from Matt Forbeck.