To Nominate?

In preparation for what is likely to be a very heated penny war, Professor Steinberg is accepting nominations for Sigma Tau Delta's annual 24-hour Marathon Reading. The first ten nominations will enter the competition. Thus far, we have received three nominations:

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
American Gods by Neil Gaiman
The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K Rowling

Unhappy with the selection so far? Nominate your choice! Stop by Professor Steinberg's office in Bliss 205 with $5 to propose your pick!

To Raise Money for The American Cancer Society?

This year, we are proud to announce that Sigma Tau Delta will have its very own Relay For Life team. Each year for the past several years at The College of New Jersey, an organization called Colleges Against Cancer (CAC) has organized this event, raising money for The American Cancer Society. Relay For Life will be held at The College of New Jersey from Friday, April 1st until Saturday, April 2nd.

If you would like to sign up for our team and walk with us (the registration fee is $10), please go to the event's homepage at the following link: TCNJ Relay For Life Registration. Once you get to the website, click on "Join a Team" and select "Sigma Tau Delta" from the drop-down menu. Each member who raises at least $50 will also receive a free t-shirt!

Check out our team page, and please donate to our team.

Our goal as an organization is to raise at least $1000! After only two days, we are already 12% towards our goal. With the event 56 days away, we can possibly double or triple our donation to The American Cancer Society!

To Meet Online?

Due to today's inclement weather, our first Sigma Tau Delta meeting of the Spring 2011 semester will take place in the "logged chat" section on SOCS. Our president, Todd, sent out the following message to members this afternoon:

Because of cold, wet, icy and generally treacherous weather today, we have decided to not meet on campus. Instead, we will hold our meeting in the "logged chat" room on SOCS at 4:30 today. You can join us in ENGL HONR in SOCS. Then click the "logged chat" tab on the lefthand side toolbar.

If you can make it please join us as this is our first meeting of the semester and we will be talking about lots of fun and interesting things like: an upcoming Applebee's fundraiser, scrabble tournament, the conference in Pittsburgh, etc. However, if you cannot make the meeting, the logged chat will record what has been said so that you can read it at your leisure. Take care and I look forward to meeting with you all in cyberspace!

To Trade Books?

Photo courtesy of bookmooch.com

Have you ever heard of a swap meet? Have you ever heard of a swap meet for books?

I just learned about a new website, called BookMooch where people can trade books that they don't want anymore for books that they do want, which another user has posted. Apparently the website is free to sign up for, and all a person needs to pay for is shipping.

How does the website work? People can search for books in a variety of ways: by genre, by recently added, by country (yes! the website is International), by language, by title/author, by topic, etc. Then, once a person finds a book they want, they can swap a book of their own with that user.

Skeptical? Intrigued? Would you be willing to swap your books for "new" ones?

~Kristen

To e-read?

This Christmas I was turned into a hypocrite.

Since the advent of the e-reader, I've been a fierce opponent. Nothing compares to holding a book; it's weight, it's smell, it's texture. I demonstrate my love for literature by demolishing books. I fold pages, highlight, write myself notes, write "witty" remarks that I hope someone someday sees. And the Kindle? The iPad? The Nook? Where is the new book smell? It's replaced by cold, clean, computer screens. Sure, it's "green," but in this case, I shut out the pleas of the sprouting resident Loraxes and acquire books like an addiction. Sorry, trees.

Materialism and book sniffing aside, the e-readers have always frightened me as an aspiring writer. What does this new technology mean for writers? Is it good or bad? What will happen to bookstores? The only bookstore in my town, an Annie's Book Stop, recently went out of business. I'm devastated. Is this just a prelude of what's to come? Will there be a time when bookstores will be completely extinct?

I received a Kindle for Christmas.

Though I am still terrified for the future of bookstores, though I prefer print above all technological advances, I'm afraid I've been won over. Here's how I am choosing to justify myself: I am not replacing my beloved books. The Kindle is merely allowing me to mobilize my addiction. I can be a nerd everywhere and instantly, download the classics for free (it is unbelievable how many books are free), listen to a book while I'm driving, play electronic Scrabble and read the newspaper on a train. I can even write notes and highlight passages.

I will still buy print books. There are certain authors' work of which I need the physical representation. I don't foresee that ever changing. It's my perhaps naive hope that there are enough people who share my "archaic" need for paper. Hopefully they will be enough to save bookstores (and newspapers for that matter). I'm hoping that the e-reader will remain a supplement to print, rather than render it obsolete. Again, I know it's naive. For the time being, however, I'm enjoying the coexistence of the two.

-Katie Brenzel

To Read Literature in New Ways?

I couldn't resist blogging about this New York Times article about the Victorian Books project that exploited Google's scanned corpus of Victorian literature. The project searched for key words characteristic of Victorian literature and attempts to draw conclusions about the nature of the Victorian mindset as exemplified in that literature.

Although the method doesn't replace good old-fashioned reading, rereading, and close-reading, it does suggest that the digital age does hold the possibility of allowing new insights into literature. I would really like our chapter to think about how the digital revolution has changed the way we read, not just what we read (blogs, websites, social networking sites).

--Felicia Steele

To Convince Others of the Value of Literature?

As the American economy seems to be in free-fall to an unimaginable bottom, I ask myself if what I am doing has any sort of real world value. If money is tight, I reason, why would anyone pay anything for the chance to read great literary works, or to argue on paper about what literature means to us, or to discuss literary themes with others? Should Americans today focus only on business concerns, and is literature or language a luxury with which no one can afford to concern themselves?

Of course, I both hope that literature is still of value, and fear that these sentiments are shared by few. We inheritors of the Western tradition "own" many of the world's literary gems -- come to think of it, we humans taken collectively own all of the world's literary gems. We need not ever experience war ourselves, but Homer's Iliad or Crane's Red Badge of Courage still have the power to teach us. We may never ourselves be the victim of genocide, but the Diary of Anne Frank moves us. We need never fall in love to enjoy Austen's Pride and Prejudice. So, keep reading, and keep believing in the value of literature.