In the Newspaper

A perfect day to stay inside and read. So did I pick the new pre-pub novel I just started and can't put down? The kids' book everybody's talking about? The supposed funniest YA book of last year? Nope, I chose the newspaper.

And even though I've avoided Twitter, David Carr's article, Why Twitter Will Endure made me want to join in the fun.

Here's a bit from the beginning:
In the pantheon of digital nomenclature — brands within a sector of the economy that grew so fast that all the sensible names were quickly taken — it would be hard to come up with a noun more trite than Twitter. It impugns itself, promising something slight and inconsequential, yet another way to make hours disappear and have nothing to show for it. And just in case the noun is not sufficiently indicting, the verb, “to tweet” is even more embarrassing.

Then it gets better, and makes Twitter even more tempting to join:

At first, Twitter can be overwhelming, but think of it as a river of data rushing past that I dip a cup into every once in a while. Much of what I need to know is in that cup: if it looks like Apple is going to demo its new tablet, or Amazon sold more Kindles than actual books at Christmas, or the final vote in the Senate gets locked in on health care, I almost always learn about it first on Twitter.

But I'm a book person, so I turned to the Book Review. And guess what? I now know what resolutions a few best-selling authors are making in the new year.

Hint: Margaret Atwood "must finish the bird classic I'm reading- the unique and sublime 'The Peregrine' by J.A. Baker. Must continue with my plan to read all the Dostoyevsky novels I haven't read...I want to read Lorrie Moore's latest novel--she's such a good writer."

Nick Hornby vows to combat literary clutter. Atwood will stop skipping around (Bad habit to break: skipping around from book to book," she says.)

Now that's a novel idea. Stop skipping around! No literary clutter! I think I'll make these personal resolutions. Then again, what fun is that?