Readers

Earlier this week, GalleyCat readers responded to "an urgent need" by generously sharing audiobooks with military personnel overseas through Operation Warrior Library.

According to organizer Audrey Herbst, the program received a heartwarming response from our readers: "we have received more than 20 offers of audiobooks in the last day ... it looks like we will have several hundred CDs getting to Germany in time for Thanksgiving ... GalleyCat helped us collect over 1,500 books this year, more books than we raised since the inception of the program!"

Organized by novelist Paul Malmont and Col. George Reynolds, this literary supply chain ships books to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you are a writer or publisher looking to participate, you can write warriorlibrary [at] gmail [dot] com or visit the website for more information.

Too many authors never manage to find a group of writers in their real-life community. For these stranded scribes, GalleyCat discovered a virtual writers' club that's always looking for members.

Every Monday night in the virtual world of Second Life, author Joan Kremer (pictured, as her Second Life avatar) hosts a Writers Symposium within the computer-generated walls of the Story Mountain Center for Writers--a writing camp built in cyberspace. In case you've never visited, Second Life is a virtual world where computer users can customize an online persona and interact in a completely virtual environment.

Here's more about the symposium, from the post about writers' resources in the virtual world: "Writers gather around the fireplace on the main floor of the Story Mountain Lodge ... They can share any form of written creative expression--from novels, to short stories, to memoir or other creative nonfiction, to poetry and even song lyrics--as long as it's their original work...One at a time, writers read their work aloud, using voice chat."

Like Alaska watchdogging Russia, GalleyCat readers are tirelessly patrolling the literary frontiers of political discourse for mixed metaphors. Over the weekend, a few readers wrote in with examples of muddled symbolism ripped from the headlines of the Zeitgeist.

An alert reader from Manic D Press caught this in a recent speech from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger: "...let's fix the budget problem once and for all. Let's not kick that can down the alley and let someone else be responsible for it."

Novelist Ed Park singled out this chilling quote from The New York Times: "Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican, said he was 'resolute' in his opposition to the measure because it would betray party principles and amount to 'a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan's coffin.'"

Another alert reader spotted this on an episode of Heroes: "It was like a long night after a bad taco." And, as that above clip shows, Saturday Night Live had fun with Sarah Palin's metaphorical gymnastics, as Tina Fey delivered a thicket of competing imagery: "We're gonna promote freedom, usher in Democratic values and ideals and fight terror-loving-terrorists."

Keep emailing your favorite crazed metaphors. Soon we will have conclusive proof that we are all characters in a pulp fiction novel being typed by monkeys.

Sarah Palin made a big splash in the spiderwebs of the Internets last night, mixing metaphors about political leaders and warplanes. BoingBoing linked to an illustrated version of this quote:

"As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska."

Just like Calculated Risk catches wild similes in the financial press, you should be the first line of defense against the rising tide of purple prose. As guardians of the printed word, GalleyCat readers should monitor these breaches of metaphorical boundaries. Or maybe we should encourage them, in the interest of literary innovation.

Either way, email us your favorite contorted figures of speech from this madcap election season for one mind-bending post.

Just in case you weren't able to follow up on yesterday's post about getting kids to read more books, I finally got hold of a video clip that would successfully embed. So here you go...

I wasn't quite able to get the embedded video of WABC's Sunday morning feature promoting youth reading to work, so you'll have to settle for this photo of authors Jane O'Connor, MAC, and Scott Westerfeld in the studio. It's worth clicking through to hear (and read) their advice on how to get kids of all ages excited about reading books; I was especially struck by the reminder from all three writers that reading is a social activity—and that the more people reading a book, the better it gets. (And, as they point out, you don't always need an online social network to get kids talking to each other about books.)

Something I keep stumbling on, usually while Googling other things, is the Telegraph's list of the 110 books everyone ought to have read, which was published over the summer. Divided into handy categories like "Romantic Fiction" and "Books That Changed The World," the list provides brief and sometimes-hilarious synopses of classics in all genres -- 'Madame Bovary,' for example, is described like so: "Flaubert's finely crafted novel tells the story of Emma, a bored provincial wife who comforts herself with shopping and affairs. It doesn't end well."

So! I've read 37 of the "Best Books", a figure that includes exactly zero from the "History" category and everything in the "Children's Books" section. How many have you read? Are there any especially glaring omissions? HINT: We have comments now! USE THEM.

On a recent episode of MTV's fake reality show 'The Hills,' Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag reached a pinnacle of fake drama in their fake breakup when they divvied up the contents of their fake, fake, fake bookshelf. "Empires of the Sand, that's your book, right?" Spencer asked Heidi. She said that it was. Who knew that Heidi was interested in the military history of the Middle East? Other titles visible on the bookshelf include Legacy of Ashes, Tim Weiner's bestselling history of the CIA, and a book called The Movie Business, which is "the definitive guide to getting your movie made."

Look, someone had to do this.