NPR Story on the Nerdfighter Community

Yesterday on NPR, Here and Now host Robin Young interviewed the parents of Nerdfighter Ester Earl, who was the inspiration for Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. The interview celebrates the power and positive influence of the Nerdfighter community in ways the directly intersect with my dissertation – online communities of readers and the role of empathy. 

Thoughts on Willems and the Giesel Award

This is super-cute, but how can winning a Giesel Honor be a surprise to him? I mean, doesn’t he win either an honor or the award itself every year? I can only think of one year in the history of the award when he wasn’t awarded something by the Giesel committee.

Reading Empowerment

If a character appears only at the beginning and end of the story, is he always there lurking in the background, waiting for the right time to appear… or is he simply absent from the action? The former feels like reading empowerment where there isn’t any – keeping him central even when he isn’t seen. The latter is reading the character as disempowered – relegated to the sidelines while other people take action. So to what extent is empowerment in the interpretation, not implicitly in the text?

VEDA 3 – BOOK SUGGESTIONS! – YouTube

Hank Green recommends books! Including one by Marie Brennan, a former regular attendee of ICFA. Awesome!

Fans Make the Best Critics

Morton Oliver, from his review of Constance Penley’s book in the Nov 20, 1997 issue of Nature:

“People who are not fans find it hard to understand the nature of the fan’s relationship to his or her field, be it Arsenal football club, the Grateful Dead, Star Trek or whatever. The fans are experts, they are enthusiasts, they are critics and they are creators, writing stories, publishing ’zines and remixing bootleg tapes. They know the details and they delight in spotting the mistakes, but at the same time they imbue with value and significance whatever it is they’re attached to. They are a community of consumption convinced it is central to the whole process of production.”