Weekly Reader

Let's Banish Busyness
"I work with someone who begins every conversation by telling me how busy she is. I don't mean some conversations, or most conversations; I mean every single conversation. Whenever I am about to talk with her, I ask myself, "I wonder if she will tell me how busy she is?" And every single time, she does. Is she accomplishing a lot? No; less than most. But is she "so busy?" Oh, yeah." -- Allison M. Vaillancourt, Chronicle Vitae, 6/10/14

The Classroom as Arcade
"Telltale fast clicks of laptop arrow keys gave away my distracted student from 30 feet off. So engrossed was he in a 1980s role-playing game that he barely noticed when I leaned in to whisper how entirely inappropriate his behavior was during my digital humanities class at Dartmouth College. As a noted visiting technology and culture speaker held forth on participatory culture and Wikipedia — in which my students had expressed an avid interest — I was shocked as he and many others openly engaged with their Facebook pages." -- Mary Flanagan, Inside Higher Ed, 6/6/14

How Reality Became the Hot New Thing in YA
"In 2010, St. Martin’s editor Sara Goodman grieved when she was outbid for an adult manuscript she adored. A year later, when she got the chance to read a new, contemporary YA novel by the same writer, she acted with deliberate speed. 'I pitched it before anybody in-house had read it, so I’m sure there were people who know my reputation for issues-driven YA who probably thought, ‘Okay, she loves it, but this will be another tough sell,’  Goodman says. Then the manuscript made the rounds and Goodman says the reaction from colleagues was, 'Run, don’t walk, to get this manuscript under contract.'"-- Sue Corbett, Publishers Weekly, 5/2/14