It's 'Weird Science' All Over Again...

So, after sucking it up and finally staying up late to get my reading on, I finally feel a little bit better about my workload. I am currently reading ONE book (at the start of the week, it was 3). This one had a the latest of all the review deadlines - until August 1st - so I really got to make sure I get this one done in a short amount of time. I was initially worried when I read the description...

It's about two boys building a robot. A girl robot. With all the dumb jokes you can imagine.

Finally reading the book? It's not as bad as I thought. In fact, it's surprisingly readable. It's a lot like "Swim the Fly" in two ways - one, boys are going to primarily like it and two, it fits nicely into that 10-13 age range for kids when I never know what to suggest for them to read. Fifty pages in, they've already found the robot (in one father's lab, naturally) and the she-bot has escaped their house to go run amok.

Bonus points on how they download their Facebook interests into the robot's hard drive.

There's a nice little website for the book here. But really... did the author Paul E. Watson see Weird Science? Or that episode of 'Batman Beyond' that Shiri Appleby did a voice for? This idea has been done for. I'm still going to read his book, and probably give it a nicer review than it deserves. But... c'mon. REALLY!?

Your Tweets R Diff. Than My Tweets

I'm reading this book for Kirkus Reviews this month, and had to take a time out to say... I'm actually really enjoying it. Not necessarily because it's well written; I'm going to have to read a lot more to determine that, but really because... I am their exact intended audience. This book is written for people who use Twitter for their organization. I use it to represent my library. The author works for Twitter and is pointing out things I could improve on, and they are things I know I should be doing better.

They are also using a lot of case studies, but made the point that "you might not be using Twitter like everyone else is using Twitter" - or words pretty much to that effect. I don't mean to be the party poop, but... why do people even write books on Twitter then? If every situation is different, and there's no real framework to follow ... is writing about social media even helpful? Instead of helping me improve my best practices on the damn website, these are the thoughts this book is giving me write now.

I also should not write blogs at just before 5:00 AM. At least I'm reading.