The Monroe County, IN, Public Library compiled a list of some fifty cult fiction classics. Here are six of our favorites:

1. The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey
   
   
2. The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
   
   
3. Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
   
   
4. Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein
   
   
5. The Gunslinger by Stephen King
   
   
6. At the Mountains of Madness by H.P. Lovecraft
   
   

I was always interested in writing and even took a shot as an undergrad at a student newspaper job while attending Florida State but aside from one article on street construction in Tallahassee I was unsuccessful.

I moved on to police work and have been quite happy with my choice since the first day in the academy. I like the physical nature of the job. I love the diversity I experience every day, never knowing exactly what my assignment might be. It may sound hokey, but I like helping people and see the relief on their faces when we show up at a disaster or particularly nasty crime scene.

This tiny but power-packed entry comes from an outstanding blog called Gangrey that describes itself as "prolonging the slow death of newspapers." It highlights great writing from papers across the country. The entry appeared on 03/14/06:

This Fresh Air interview with David Mamet and Shawn Ryan is instructive for storytellers in any medium.

Mamet ...

The trick is to leave everything out. That's the whole trick to drama. It's like the ability to hit the fastball, it's the ability to leave out the narration. You've got to leave the narration out because anybody can say, "Well, Jim, welcome back from Antarctica. We haven't seen you since we cured cancer together in 1985. How's your wife? Is she still an albino?"

If you take out the idea that you can overburden the show with narration ... then the question is: What information is really, really needed? And what information can we really do without?

These are the five blogs that our design director, Tina Roth Eisenberg, checks out every day. Tina's own amazing design blog is Swissmiss.

Coudal's "fresh signals" are addictive. You'll see.

Designobserver. A must see for every graphic designer.

BBlinks. BB always finds the best links.

Advertising/design goodness. Tons of excellent advertising/design related finds

Core 77 is an 'industrial design supersite'. Enough said.

Don't forget: Send us your favorite blogs -- and tell us why you like 'em. Email us.

Adapted from "Bird Words," contributed by subscriber Ruth Beasley. Ruth writes about birds on her website Learning the Birds. She can also be heard on High Plains Public Radio , her local NPR affiliate in Garden City, Kansas.

A large part of learning the birds is the attempt to gain fluency in a new language. Bird words, I call 'em. Memorable words like melanistic, pileated, accipiter, and axillar -- none my spell-checker recognizes. These fine words permeate the bird books, meticulously staking out descriptive territory.

Birders are people for whom subtle differences are carefully noted, and it's important to get the lingo right. Colors are precise, with shades of tawny, bay, cinnamon, ivory, chestnut, and buff. I'm still figuring out the difference between sooty and slatey, mottled and splotched.

"I really love essays," says Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum. Celebrated for her incisive and humorous views on culture, she's the author of a highly-regarded novel called "The Quality of Life Report" and has written for numerous magazines, including the New Yorker, Vogue, GQ, Harpers and Travel & Leisure. She's also published a collection of personal essays in a book called "My Misspent Youth." We talked to Meghan about why she holds this literary form so dear.

In an earlier Dog Eared we told you about the one hundred books the National Education Association picked that make great reading for children and young people. Here are some more, the recommended "Books for Young Adults."

1. Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
   
   
2. The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
   
   
3. Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls
   
   
4. The Cay by Theodore Taylor
   
   
5. The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare
   
   

To see the entire list, check out the Teachers First website.