Tagging poll

[oyceter]

Hey all,

So we're still working out how to revamp the current tagging system, especially since we've run against the 1000-tag limit twice in about two months.

From comments here, it seems as though most people use the author tags, and a few people would like tags with even more granularity (i.e. tags to find entries by who posted).

However, given LJ's tag limit, it doesn't seem feasible to keep all the tags on LJ, unless we cut down on what we tag. Currently, the author tags comprise of about 500+ tags, with the rest being a mish-mash of genre, race, ethnicity, nationality, and subject.

We've also been thinking of using our Delicious to tag posts on the comm and using a combination of Delicious + LJ. The combination would be something like keeping all the author tags on LJ and then putting tags for other things on Delicious.

A geeky table with benefits and downsides!

	LiveJournal	Delicious + LJ combination
Benefits	All in one place Users can tag their own entries We know how it works	No limit on tags Ability to search on a combination of tags (ex. find all the entries on books set in India posted by sanguinity) Some tags still viewable from LJ
Downsides	Limit to number of tags, meaning we will have to not tag certain things No ability to narrow down searches	Hard to keep coordinated Putting the tags solely on Delicous means fewer people will see them More work for mods

[Poll #1429226]

Out of India, Bindi Babes and Dead Gorgeous

[anitabuchan.livejournal.com]

14. Out of India: An Anglo-Indian Childhood by Jamila Gavin

Out of India is an autobiographical account of Jamila Gavin's childhood. She's the daughter of an English mother and an Indian father, both teachers and Christian missionaries. She grew up in India, first visiting England at 5, before settling there aged 11, experiencing life in England during and after WW2, and life in India during the struggles for independence and the Partition. However, as this is a book for children, she doesn't go too deeply into any of these events, instead describing day-to-day life for her and her family. And she's good as descriptions: they're beautiful and evocative.

I enjoyed it, and I think it would be a very good read for children in the right age group.

15. Bindi Babes by Narinder Dhami

Bindi Babes is about three sisters, the coolest girls at their school. Everyone loves them, even the teachers, and it's entirely possible that if anything happened to any of them, the world would end. At first, I did wonder if they were the biggest Mary Sues ever, but after reading for a bit I started to think that Dhami was just having fun. All three sisters are very self-absorbed and more than a little conceited, but funny enough to just about get away with it.

The story focuses on what happens when their aunt arrives from India, determined to stop their dad spoiling them (as he has been doing since their mother's death). Meanwhile, at school, an Ofsted inspection is coming up and making the teachers panic. The aunt was the character I liked the most, and I have to admit I loved the scenes where she foiled the girls' plans to get rid of her.

16. Dead Gorgeous by Malorie Blackman

Nova's parents own a hotel, where they live with Nova, her sister Rainbow, and their little brothers. Nova's unhappy with her life, jealous of her older sister, and suffering from bulimia. Then she sees a gorgeous boy in the lobby: Liam. Ten years ago, Liam stormed out of his house after an argument with his dad. Now, he's a ghost, trapped in the hotel.

Dead Gorgeous is sometimes funny and sometimes sad. It's got lots of great (and mysterious!) characters, all with their own problems and issues. I liked that it wasn't a romance, but instead focused on family (Nova and Rainbow, Liam and his brother, all of them and their parents). I like most of Malorie Blackman's books, but I think this is one of my favourites by her.

13-15: 20 Fragments from a Ravenous Youth, UFO In Her Eyes, Blonde Roots

[puritybrown.livejournal.com]

13: 20 Fragments from a Ravenous Youth
14: UFO In Her Eyes, both by Xiaolu Guo

20 Fragments is a revised version of Guo's first novel in Chinese, which she wasn't happy to see translated into English as it was. It's an episodic novel about a young woman who leaves a remote rural village to try and make a life for herself in Beijing. She takes many educational courses, does various menial jobs, gets work as a film extra, has relationships with unsatisfactory men, writes a screenplay that nobody is interested in producing. There's not much of a plot -- it is as fragmentary as the title implies -- but the snapshot vision Guo presents of contemporary Beijing in all its ferment is quite compelling.

UFO In Her Eyes has been reviewed as sf in at least one place, which it doesn't really merit; it's essentially a mundane novel about the "progress" currently sweeping China as seen from the perspective of yet another remote rural village (I'm sensing a theme -- probably because Xialou Guo grew up in a remote rural village). The story is told through documents -- interviews conducted and reports written after a UFO sighting draws the government's attention to this village which has been essentially ignored for most of its existence. The "development" that comes in the wake of the sighting is cruel and indiscriminate and takes no notice of the villagers' own desires, resulting in as much destruction as creation.

Neither of these novels were quite as compulsively readable as A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers or as starkly, austerely perfect as Village of Stone; it seems that Guo reinvents herself with every novel, each time trying out new things. Both of them are excellent, and I recommend them.

15: Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo

This has been reviewed a few times here. A very pointed, funny, and often harrowing satire in a vividly virtuosic style. If it was Africans who conquered Europe and enslaved Europeans, what then? This isn't the only possible answer, but it's a well-imagined and compelling one.