Book Review: The Hunger Games

December 12, 2011

The 20th century had Lord of the Flies; the 21st century gets The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins). The Lord of the Flies stripped away the trappings, mental and emotional, of civilizing influences. It was a window into a very private world – who are you when no one in authority is watching over you? The [...]

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Twilight Graphic Novel Covers

December 10, 2011

So, I’ll preface this with my Twilight stance, like any person mentioning Stephanie Myer’s stories seems to have to do. I haven’t watched the movies. Haven’t read the books. And, perhaps because I’ve already been through an Anne Rice infatuation when I was a teenager, I have no current plans to do either. But for [...]

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Short stories: David Foster Wallace

December 9, 2011

Harper’s has a collection of David Foster Wallace’s short stories that were published in the magazine throughout his life. I haven’t read all of them yet, but I did read “The Depressed Person” and “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men.” I’m not sure you’re supposed to like them; they’re the kind of short story that is [...]

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Toni Frissell

December 8, 2011
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Another Vote for Grit

December 2, 2011

Christoph Neimann has this to say in a recent 99% article: Ultimately, my whole approach to what I do is 95% effort and 5% talent. I really see it as a sport. You probably won’t become a tennis player if you don’t stand on the court for six hours a day and whack balls over [...]

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Spam of the Day

November 28, 2011

Q: What is the correct response to the following? Name: Sylvia Abernathy Email: sylviaabernathy61@gmail.com Subject: Powerful Internet Marketing Message: We found your weblisting on one of the back pages of Google. Wouldn’t you rather be up front?  Our experts in Search Engine Optimization can help you become more visible and more productive.  A quick email [...]

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NaNo Pep Talk from Brandon Sanderson

November 24, 2011

One of the lessons I learned as a storyteller was how to refill the creative well while doing other activities. You can do it while driving, exercising, eating . . . anything that doesn’t take your full attention. During these times, many writers I know run through plots in their heads, feel out character personalities, [...]

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Sunday is Neil Gaiman Day

November 20, 2011

In honor of Neil Gaiman doing a guest appearance on the Simpsons today, here is a brief collection of Gaiman-related links: Preview clip of the Simpsons – Season 23, Episode 6 – “The Book Job” (courtesy www.guardian.co.uk) Neil Gaiman is a prolific Twitterer: @neilhimself Trending twitter topics stemming from Neil’s appearance on the Simpsons: #BritishFonzie [...]

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Magic Realism

November 19, 2011

More Murakami… I don’t think this well will ever go dry. “I live in Tokyo,” he told me, “a kind of civilized world — like New York or Los Angeles or London or Paris. If you want to find a magical situation, magical things, you have to go deep inside yourself. So that is what [...]

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Haruki Murakami on Writing and Jazz

November 18, 2011

Fantastic blog post on youmightfindyourself.com by Haruki Murakami on how jazz taught him to be a writer. He says: One of my all-time favorite jazz pianists is Thelonious Monk. Once, when someone asked him how he managed to get a certain special sound out of the piano, Monk pointed to the keyboard and said: “It [...]

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