Notes in the Margin Weblog

Here’s a list of some of the things I’m thankful for as this Thanksgiving weekend winds down:

• family and friends, even though they’re scattered all over the country
• the Internet, which, in addition to enabling us to learn anything we want to know, also allows us to keep in touch with family and friends, even though they’re scattered all over the country
• thick, warm wool socks, which I wear all winter long
• the election of Barack Obama
• the abundance on my Thanksgiving table and in my refrigerator
• glucosamine and chondroitin, which–at least so far–are keeping my 60-year-old joints working painlessly
• libraries
• the next generation, which is turning out very nicely, if I do say so myself
• the approaching end of George W. Bush’s Presidency
• music
• human resilience, especially in children
• flowers
• audiobooks for listening to while exercising
• the handiwork of my massage therapist and personal trainer (see above reference to glucosamine and chondroitin)
• fuzzy warm pajamas and fleece-lined slippers
• Excedrin
• Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center
• the fact that Sarah Palin is not going to be the next Vice-President of the United States
• hot cocoa
• the aroma of turkey soup simmering in the kitchen

Just as holiday decorations appear earlier and earlier every year, The New York Times is getting an early start on making its gift-giving suggestions. So, with all proper fanfare, here are some of its lists:

100 Notable Books of 2008

This is the first page of a multi-page listing of books in the categories of fiction & poetry, and nonfiction.

Notable Children’s Books of 2008

This short list includes at least something for all ages.

Holiday Gift Guide: Books That Tower Above the Rest

Here Times book reviewers Janet Maslin and Michiko Kakutani offer their “10-Favorites lists of books that we enjoyed enough to buy for friends.”

The Internet vs. books: Peaceful coexistence - Los Angeles Times:

Books require a different sort of communion with one’s subject than the Internet. They foster a different sort of memory — more tactile, more participatory. . . . For literary works, books are still, and most likely always will be, indispensable.

In the Los Angeles Times Beau Friedlander, editor of AirAmerica.com, weighs in on the debate over whether the Internet is supplanting printed books. Tangentially, he also addresses the question of whether the Internet is making us dumber; his answer seems to be that books and the Internet provide us with different kinds of information that are useful in different situations.

Ultimately, Friedlander quotes Markos Moulitsas Zuñiga, founder of the political website the Daily Kos:

Google makes it possible to learn anything, near instantaneously. Like natural selection, there are species that adapt to the changing environment around them and thrive, and others die off.

Books | “Promised Land” looks at books that shaped who we are | Seattle Times Newspaper:

Some books are so well-known that almost no one actually reads them. They have had so much influence that we ‘know’ them merely by living in the world they have helped create. And yet, as the distinguished poet, novelist and critic Jay Parini demonstrates in ‘Promised Land: Thirteen Books that Changed America,’ there’s a lot to learn by giving them another (or a first) look.

The Seattle Times reviews Promised Land: Thirteen Books That Changed America by Jay Parini.

Michael Crichton Dies - ArtsBeat Blog - NYTimes.com:

Michael Crichton, the author of the blockbuster science-fiction novels ‘Jurassic Park,’ ‘The Andromeda Strain’ and ‘State of Fear,’ has died. He was 66.