What I’m reading

David Thompson explains why “an estimated 98% of humanities scholarship goes uncited or unread” with a superb example.

More evidence for the Stratford Theory of Numbers is here. (Except that my theory is about journalists, and I don’t know of any journalist who would know their P value from their elbow.)

Chad Taylor likes Iron Man 2; Deborah Ross doesn’t.

The Fundy Post has a go at corporate bollocks-speak.

And as always Allie at Today is My Birthday! is funny.

Actually what I’m really reading is, tonight, Helen Palmer’s 1961 classic A Fish Our of Water to my children, plus John Freeman’s excellent Shrinking the World (I’m chairing a session with him at the Auckland Writers & Readers Festival next week, so I have to read it twice – no hardship, honest) and also the entire shortlist – all 16 titles – for the 2010 NZ Post Book Awards. In a matter of days we five judges will be making our selections of the winners in the four categories: general non-fiction, illustrated non-fiction, fiction and poetry. We will be locked in a small room in Wellington until we have finished. It could take five minutes; it could take five hours.

Either way I will need a large drink afterwards. And then, quite possibly, another one.