We Are the Cheeses
Posted by: Keir Graff
Yesterday morning, at Booklist CoffeeTM, I turned to Katharine Fronk and said, “The Artichoke Is a Lonely Hunter.”
“The Great Broccolini,” she replied.
“Are you speaking in code?” asked Brad Hooper.
Katharine and I had been following, enjoying, and contributing to the #VeggieLit hashtag started by Chris Vaccari of Sterling Publishing (@christhebookie). Naturally, the Booklist staff started throwing out their own contributions, prompting me to remark, “this is like live tweeting.”
“You mean a conversation?” came the inevitable retort.
Well, yes and no. Twitter memes mimic conversation in that each participant vies to one-up the other—but there’s no eye contact. And, true enough, we were losing eye contact around Table 3 in Miriam’s, the break room in the basement of ALA. People were looking at their laps, only raising their heads when they had a new title—”Don’t Let the Pigeon Peas Drive the Bus”—to contribute.
Then, in a stroke of genius, following a particularly long pause, Katharine said, “We should do Cheese Lit . . . Jane Gruyere.”
And #CheeseLit was born.
July 21st, 2012 at 1:24 pm
The Feta Tollbooth
July 27th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
[...] Last Friday, we amused ourselves by coming up with the cheesiest book titles ever. It was both a lot of fun and a sobering reminder of the havoc Twitter can wreak on an otherwise productive workplace—fortunately, the meme was book-related so we can claim that it was, however marginally, in support of the work we do here at Booklist. (The rest of you are on your own.) There were well over 200 #CheeseLit tweets in all, and I’ve shared some of our favorites below. Please note that though many people suggested East of Edam, I’m only giving credit to the first one I saw. Ditto The Velveeta Rabbit. [...]