Book Tidbits 12: Wordle, Publisher's Websites, and more on Story.

• I have a new toy! Note the tag cloud above, which was generated from the words most often used in this blog. Yep, that's courtesy of my new toy, Wordle. Of course, Wordle isn't really a book tidbit. But hey, it does fun stuff with the printed word, so I deem it deserves a mention.
• In a previous post, I lamented other people's lament that Filipinos don't read. My position is that we do, though most of the reading is not what some people  would call high-brow. Then again, as a teacher, I've also often heard the complaint that youngsters nowadays don't read. Again, my position is, they do. They text a lot, they read online a lot, etc. However, this article at the Telegraph gives a good perspective on this issue. The main point? People read, but have become unused to good and difficult reading.
• Neil Gaiman throws his two cents in on the apparent dichotomy between literary fiction and "genre" fiction. This Guardian blog post examines his introduction to a new short story anthology, aptly titled Stories. In Gaiman's intro, he asserts that we, as readers, want more than good writing; we want stories. 
• Check out Huffington Post's Best and Worst Book Publisher's websites. Of course, it's American-centric, but interesting nonetheless. However, what I found more interesting was the follow up feature on Best Publishers on Facebook and Twitter. Consequently, I'm following more people on Twitter.:)
• And because I finally discovered McSweeney's website, care of the links above, I came across this hilarious imaginary monologue of that font we all, at one point or another, must have used--Comic Sans. Makes me think of what we could get Times New Roman to say.