7 stories to read this weekend

And here I am, once again offering you seven interesting stories to read this weekend. Some of them are about tech, others about books and coffee. They are all good reads and I hope you enjoy them.

• The seductive foolishness of the Facebook phone: Michael Mace, one of the premier thinkers on mobile, believes that the F-phone is nothing but a chimera and could essentially turn out to be a folly for the newly public company.
• Platforming Books: Craig Mod is one of my favorite bloggers/thinkers and I can’t wait for him to write his next post. This post about the publishing business was something that struck a chord with me. He talks about the need for thinking about books as part of networked platforms. As we embark on our GigaOM Books journey, there are a lot of lessons here.
• How paperbacks transformed how Americans read: There is a lot of talk about Kindles and tablets changing how we read books. I thought it was appropriate to go back in time and read about another habit-changing innovation.
• Where has the retail investor gone? With all the talk about the Facebook IPO and the declining fortunes of Zynga, it is a great time to ponder the question with none other than Barry Ritholtz, who for some odd reason writes for old media when he has a platform of his own.
• Thanks to my new diet restrictions, I have to watch what I eat. As a result, I have set up Google alerts for all sorts of weird stuff. Here is one about cereal bars and how they are not as healthy as they pretend to be.
• As my staycation comes to an end, I offer you this post about digital scarcity and this one about how to manage email nightmares.
• Of course, all this reading means you need a great cup of coffee. I am a coffee snob and damn proud of it. Here is how you can be one.

Before I go, I want to ask for your help. I am looking to add 50 new sources of great stuff to read and would appreciate some recommendations. You can hit reply to this email and send me a link. And if there are posts or articles you want me to read and share with others, do give me a heads up. Have a great weekend everyone.