Linda Griffin mentioned this on her blog: This is a site for swapping used CDs, books, DVDs — get stuff you haven’t seen just for the cost of postage. Very cool!

Yesterday was the National Day of Listening (see post by that name below). I called up my Uncle Fred in New York. He’s 78, the youngest and last of my maternal grandparents’ five kids. We spent a wonderful 35 minutes or so on the phone before he got tired.

Among the many cool things I learned: My dad was a bit of a hothead. After graduating from Officers Training School at an Army base in the south, he punched out someone who called him a Jew-boy when he was defending an African-American friend.

He got busted; lost his lieutenant’s bar. But eventually earned it back.

I’m proud of you, Dad!

And I am grateful to Uncle Fred for his excellent memory. I recorded the conversation, and will do so with additional talks we’ve planned, and circulate them to relatives.

You can do this, too. Remember the Storycorps motto: “Listening is an act of love.”

From his blog:

Ask the Editor: The power of the opening sentence – 6 tips

Q : Why is the first line so important?

A : Agents and acquiring editors will quit reading if your opening sentence doesn’t zing. Any writer seeking publication or the devoted attention of a reader browsing in a bookstore needs to craft that first sentence, revising, revising, revising, until it just hums.

One way to prepare for this is to read your own favorite first lines. Here are a couple of mine, followed by 6 suggestions for what makes a good first sentence.

More (thanks, Cliff Pickover)

The Costco magazine just arrived, with some interesting stuff. I just signed up for DailyLit.com, which delivers books to you via email in small daily chunks. Lots of classics are free; current titles are generally $4.95.

What do you think about this?

The New York Times has this report from the book-publishing industry:

Talk about a business of extremes. In less than a week the book publishing industry has been set abuzz by the news that one publisher is so uncertain about the economic climate that it has temporarily shut its doors to most manuscripts while another is celebrating a banner year by handing out extra bonuses to all its employees.

The bad news came from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, a company formed from the union of two venerable publishers of authors like Philip Roth, Jonathan Safran Foer, Günter Grass and J. R. R. Tolkien.

More

StoryCorps and NPR (National Public Radio) have declared Friday after Thanksgiving “National Day of Listening”:

STORYCORPS LAUNCHES “NATIONAL DAY OF LISTENING”
NOVEMBER 28, 2008
Acclaimed oral history project encourages Americans to interview a loved one the day after Thanksgiving

NEW YORK – StoryCorps, the most ambitious oral history project ever undertaken, will launch the first annual National Day of Listening on November 28, 2008.
On Thanksgiving, Americans and their loved ones gather to share a meal, express their gratitude and reminisce. On the day after Thanksgiving, this November 28, StoryCorps is asking Americans to linger a little longer in the Thanksgiving spirit and honor a loved one by conducting an interview about his or her life.
It takes only an hour to participate, using recording equipment readily available in most homes - from video cameras to tape recorders to computers or even pen and paper.

“Looking a loved one in the eyes and asking about his or her life is one of the greatest gifts we can give one another,” says StoryCorps founder and MacArthur “genius” Dave Isay. “The simple act of listening tells them how much they matter, and documenting that conversation for posterity tells them that they won’t be forgotten.”

StoryCorps encourages Americans to set aside time on November 28th to record a conversation with a grandparent, an aunt, a neighbor, a soldier or a client at a local soup kitchen. The not-for-profit has created a simple tool kit of easy-to-use instructions, pointers, and sample questions at
http://www.storycorps.net.

Sample questions from the website’s online Question Generator include: What is your happiest memory? What are you proudest of in your life? What is the most important lesson you’ve learned? How do you want to be remembered?

StoryCorps supplies tips for recording these interviews and simple instructions on how to archive and preserve them. For the National Day of Listening, StoryCorps will also recommend ways to upload and share stories online.

Over the past five years, StoryCorps has recorded more than 20,000 interviews with more than 40,000 individuals in fifty states across the nation. Each week, millions of Americans listen to StoryCorps’ award-winning broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition.

Fifty of StoryCorps’ most emblematic stories have been collected in the New York Times bestseller Listening Is an Act of Love, which has just been released as a Penguin paperback.

The Library of Congress and NPR are the partners of this year’s National Day of Listening.

About StoryCorps
StoryCorps is the largest oral history project ever undertaken. Founded in 2003 by Dave Isay, StoryCorps gives pairs of participants the opportunity to leave a legacy in sound for future generations. Across the country, everyday people have visited our soundproof booths to record a 40-minute interview with a loved one. One copy of the interview goes home with the participants on a CD, a second copy goes to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. To date, StoryCorps has recorded more than 20,000 audio interviews with 40,000 participants. Excerpts of select stories are broadcast weekly on NPR’s Morning Edition. For its ground-breaking public service, StoryCorps was awarded a special Institutional Peabody Award in 2007, an honor bestowed only once or twice a decade.
Special initiatives launched by StoryCorps include the Griot Project, the largest African American oral history project since the WPA Slave Narratives of the 1930s (in collaboration with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture); The September 11th Project, an effort to record at least one interview to commemorate each life lost on 9/11 (in collaboration with the National September 11 Memorial and Museum); and the Memory Loss Initiative, which brings StoryCorps to individuals, families and caregivers struggling with Alzheimer’s disease.

Wahoo! It was wonderful! I can’t wait to see all the books that will result from this event in December and January!

Watch for the next one I’ll be scheduling soon.

An entertaining post on this “big” argument: “Books are dying: Yes or no?”

Guy Kawasaki tweeted about Springpadit, a beautifully designed all-in-one on-line “notebook,” with convenient lists; picture pages; a calendar; address book; maps; and much more. Free for now — it’s in beta. Check it out. Seems like a great place to store stuff as you’re researching for your book, for example.

(But keep a copy somewhere!)

You can save money and get a better product by devoting a little thought to what you send out. Check out Shannon’s article on Biznik.