Category Archives: Site Administration

Last night I went to a parent-teacher conference at my son’s school. The teacher, who has thirty years experience as a teacher at all grade levels and has taught students who have smashed through their testing (especially in math…Jesus Christ), went through the curriculum to educate us parents on our kids’ progress. Even at the kindergarten level, the kids learn math, science, Chinese poetry, physical education, and reading/writing. “But,” she said, “the most important subject we teach is social studies. In social studies, they learn about world history, accepting different cultures, being open-minded to knowledge, and getting along with others. Working together is something that they’ll keep forever. In social studies, they learn to treat each other with respect and to take care of one another. This is the most important lesson I can teach them.” It reminded me of the title of that famous book: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

We now have a Facebook page. It’s here:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/BigWOWO/146680088737761

If you’re in the mood, click “Like.” I know the WOWO blog mostly has anonymous commenters, but if you want updates on your FB, feel free to join. I’ll admit that I have no idea what the benefit of a Facebook page is, but I’m thinking that maybe we can make it a place where people can share articles outside of what goes up on the blog. If anyone has any other ideas, feel free to share. Also, feel free to pass this along.

Just wanted to remind everyone that we’re discussing the Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz on April 11th.  Catwalq has generously agreed to begin the discussion with a review and guest post.  I just finished it on Friday, so if you’re interested in discussing the book, read it and sound off on April 11th.

My four day break is over.  It was nice to get away for a little while.  I might do this every weekend from now on.  Screen-free weekends are good for the soul.

I’m making a change to the Review categories.  From now on, I’m going to break down the works I review by category, particularly between “popular fiction” and “literary fiction.”  After a couple years of writing reviews, I realize that it’s unfair to compare literary fiction with popular fiction–they’re too different from one another to be in the same category.  While there is a hierarchy in terms of literary quality, I don’t think there is necessarily a hierarchy in terms of enjoyment; I enjoyed “The Godfather” much more than I enjoyed “Adam Bede,” and the Godfather arguably did more to promote Italian American cross-cultural understanding than any work of literary fiction.

Just wanted to throw a quick thank you to all of the bigWOWO readers and commenters.  This site is now two years old, so we’ve been doing this for two whole years!  This was a good year, with lots of great discussions, podcasts, and insights.  We accomplished a lot.  2010 for me, was a much better year than 2009, both personally and on this site.  Traffic still pales in comparison to the non-black sheep Asian American sites, but hey, it’s a small party where everyone knows your name (or screen handle).  Thank you for everything, and stay safe in the new year.

We’re trying something new right now.  If you posted a comment in the last 24 hours, we’ll get it back.  Thanks for your patience.

Also, if you’ve registered before, would it be too much to ask to re-register?  Sorry about that.

Other than that, post below if you have any issues, and we’ll try to get to work on resolving them.