Veronica Roth’s Divergent trilogy is super popular at the moment. While you’re waiting in the queue for Insurgent, here’s some stuff to read or do:
- Read Free Four: Tobias Tells the Story on the Divergent Facebook page (it’s one of the tabs). Although I wouldn’t do this if you’ve not read Divergent yet. It is, as the title suggests, Four talking about his first meeting with Tris. Ah.
- An interview on goodreads.com. Here Veronica Roth talks about interesting things like how her dystopian society of factions started out as a utopia, and what authors and ideas have influenced her.
- Do a faction quiz, to find out where you’d end up.
- Visit a fan site for much info, like Divergent Lexicon, Divergent Fans, Divergentish (fan art), the Factionless livejournal community.
It’s like a growing internet phenomenon.
Last year – in June, in fact! – it was announced that Pottermore was, well, something, but we weren’t sure what. Then special people got to play while they were beta testing. Now everyone can! You can sign up to enjoy Pottermore: a unique online Harry Potter experience from J K Rowling. Here’s a sneak peek:
The 74th Hunger Games are nearly upon us (attendance is mandatory). In the intervening two (!) weeks, you can familiarise yourself with the politics of Panem: visit the official government webpage. It has really cool landscape navigation (fancy scrolling right instead of down!). You can become a citizen (District 4’s population could do with a boost). Or find out if the trackerjackers are particularly bad this season, or keep up to date with Capitol news. Plus more.
(You can also pre-purchase tickets to the film – the first showing as at one minute past midnight on Thursday the 22nd of March.)
Here’s a Top 10 list of the most popular searches on the library’s Easyfind catalogue in January 2012, followed by some examples of “when good searches go wrong” (don’t try those at home).
Top 10 Easyfind Searches
the hunger gamesOther interesting popular searches include: Eragon, Glee, Robert Muchamore, Cassandra Clare, Naruto, and building android apps.
Strays, Orphans and Waifs
<3 typos
If you’re looking for readalike suggestions (or a way to waste much time), then try this. It’s a very cool home-made (by someone very clever) visual book-recommender thingy, based on Amazon’s large database of items. It uses the information Amazon gathers about customer purchases to create links (myriads of links!) between your favourite titles, and other similar ones.
For example, here’s The Forest of Hands and Teeth by Carrie Ryan using the gizmo. If you are using a mouse with a scroll button, scrolling will zoom in and out, revealing a really large web of possibilities. Another example: Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green.
Very cool.
(found via mediabistro.com)
… or something. The Facebook Data Team recently compiled a bunch of data from Facebook (what else would they do?) that eventually spat out Memology 2011. Points of interest include the top ten ranking topics of the year, the top ten status trends of the year and the fact that somehow Rebecca Black managed to stay off all of the lists. Pop over and have a look to see if anything you “like” or talked about charted this year. While you’re on Facebook, make sure you “like” us on our official Teen Blog page and maybe we’ll be a noteworthy meme in 2012.
If you tell What do you love? what you love, it will come back with a whole page of different links, tools, pictures, and whatever else Google can find. Cats? Joe Jonas? Sleeping? Those frozen croissants you can get that you bake for 15 minutes and then eat? Just type it in and brrrrrrrowwwwse
As keen users of the internet you may already know this! But! In case you didn’t, and you know someone who downloads lots of movies, music, and television shows, then read this:
From the first of September the Copyright (Infringing File Sharing) Amendment Act 2011 becomes law, meaning that if you’re caught downloading copyrighted material from dodgy places you – or whoever owns your internet connection – could get in a lot of trouble. The new law makes it easier for the copyright holders to get you, basically; you get two warnings, and then, if you’re caught again, you get fined (up to $15,000). Although it begins at the beginning of next month, any alleged infringements made 21 days before then can (and probably will!) be considered a mark against you. This means that any filesharing from the 11th of August will count. That is tomorrow!
Here are some handy links. Do tell people, since any kind of illegal downloading will endanger whoever pays for the internet connection used.
The Act in its entirety
3StrikesNZ
Wikipedia
Stuff news article about the Act
NZGamer article about the Act
What is Pottermore.com? I do not know. I heard a rumour it had something to do with cellphones, but I forget my source. The Guardian has some theories also. Obviously it is Harry Potter-related, somehow. An online game? What do you think it might be? Comment below and if you’re right (what it actually is will be announced on Thursday/Friday) then we will somehow highlight your prescience. A prize for the ages!
UPDATE: Well now we know what Pottermore is! Kind of! Some sort of e-book shop/fan site I think. Sian got it right, pretty much, in the comments. AWESOME.
Here are the first photos from the Hobbit film, btw. Have you seen any of the actors around the city? I tend to come across them in supermarkets.
If you have an e-book reading device such as an iPod Touch or an iPhone*, you can download e-books for free using your library card. All you need to do is search for “Overdrive Media Console” in the Apple App store, download said media console and then browse the library’s growing collection of e-books.
Here are some new YA e-book titles:
The Adoration of Jenna Fox, Mary Pearson* This is also true of other e-book readers, like the Sony Reader, the Kobo (but sadly not the Kindle). For a complete list and more info go here.
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