Perils of a Keyword Culture

I had a thing in mind to write about today, but something happened.

In my post from Wednesday, I wrote, in part, about my distaste for e-readers, like the Nook and Kindles. As is my usual practice, I "tweeted" that article for my Twitter and my Facebook H&R followers on my blog's "off" day. Of course, Tweets are public, unless you set them not to be so. I hash-tagged my "tweet" (good God, it feels ridiculous using this terminology) with "#kindle"; therefore, it was seen by "Kindle Review" --  a Twitter account that, it seems, promotes and reviews Kindle products.

Well, the Kindle Review "favorited" my post.

Did they read it? Or, did they just see #kindle as a hash tag and "favorite" it automatically? I think we both know the answer to that.

If they had read my piece, they would have known that if more people like me were in the world, their site would have no raison d'etre. Nope. It is all about sharing, these days -- all about networking with the community. [insert robot movements here]

And, maybe, here lies is the key to a paradox I have been feeling ever since I started chirping my anti-community sentiments. I speak, all of the time, about individualism and against the compulsive need people seem to feel for "community" and "sharing" everything, yet I write a blog. Let's face it: every writer of a blog is trying to gather a "community" about him. But this little Twitter incident helped my to unravel the paradox.

"You Can't Sniff a Kindle"

Sorry I'm late. I'm recovering from a depressing night at the bookstore.

We went to Barnes and Noble. While I prefer the dusty old shops of New York and Philly to the crispy-clean rows and coffee corners of the mega stores, it was still always nice to know I could get what I needed when I needed it with a short car trip. Now, not so much...

We needed books for my sons' summer reading projects and I needed a new escape.

Time was, my wife and sons and I would accrue a pile of books and spend way too much money every time we went to the bookstore. Now, not so much...

Karen couldn't find a book she was looking for, even though it was listed as "in stock." They had none of the  Lloyd Alexander books (!?) that I really wanted my older son to consider reading (somewhere along the line I lost or gave away my first volume of the Prydain series...)