All right, this kid is a spoiled brat. I never once had a reaction like this at Christmas–my parents would never have allowed me to spit in the faces of their presents. But also, this kid’s attitude toward books makes me sad.
Besides, I keep begging everyone to give me books for Christmas, and no one listens!
Merry Christmas, Word Pirates.
Lots of writers are on Twitter. A good deal of them seem uncomfortable as they go through the motions of “social media” or so marketing-oriented that you kind of want to slap them. Margaret Atwood has found her own weird and totally awesome way to use Twitter. Her Twitter updates are genuine, personal … and often confusing. But some of her latest exploits on there are making me insanely happy (and a little jealous).
One Twitter user recommended Atwood’s books to a friend. Atwood replied with a “thank you,” which would be the end of it for most people. Well, you can see the whole exchange here … but it ended with Atwood designing superhero costumes for the person who recommended the books and her friend. What? That is the best in the world! You say you like some books and then the author draws special superhero costumes for you. That is the BEST.
Here’s one of them:
Want some advice from Ford Madox Ford on how to tell if your novel (or any novel, really) is any good? “Open the book to page 99 and read, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you,” he said. It may sound arbitrary. But if you think about it, page 99 is far enough in that you should have already established your characters and setting … so whatever is on that page is representative of the tone and heart of the book. It would be in full swing by that point but not far enough along to be mired in who did what or how this ties to that. (Although you could chose page 87 or 102 for the same purpose.)
A new site called Page 99 Test is taking that advice seriously and will soon allow people to upload page 99 of their novels for criticism from internet people.
“I Write Like” is a fun site where you paste in some of your writing, it does some sort of comparison against a database of famous writers, and tells you who you write like. I can’t tell what it’s looking for … and it doesn’t seem very accurate. (For instance, it told Margaret Atwood she writes like Stephen King.) But it sure is entertaining.
I went a little nutso with it and put in several different types of my writing. What I got back:
My essay writing is like … Chuck Palahniuk
My fiction writing is like … Stephen King
My correspondence is like … Stephen King
My blog post writing is like … Kurt Vonnegut
Conclusion: Stephen King is an awesome writer? Margaret Atwood and I write a lot a like?
Note: I got all meta and put this post in (every part of it before “Note”) and got Vonnegut again. So perhaps while I am inconsistent in my writing tone and style overall, my blogging is distinctly Vonnegutesque. Vonnegutian?
When you think of Ernest Hemingway, what comes to mind? Did you say shoes? If so, then you and his son Patrick have a lot in common. He’s working with an Oregon shoe company on a line of Ernest Hemingway shoes. Because, you know, Hemingway loved shoes.
“Hemingway was very fond of loafers,” Patrick said. … “I love that you can wear these without socks. I hate socks. Hemingway hated socks, too.”
Some sons publish their dead fathers’ unfinished work, while others put their dead father’s name on a line of El Salvadorian leather shoes divided into the angler, literary, and sportsman collections.
I am imagining pretentious college students backpacking through Europe hoping to fish and run with the bulls while wearing expensive literary loafers. As a woman, there is no footwear for me in the Hemingway line.
I’m more excited about the literary puns than the manly shoes. My favorites so far:
For Whom The Gel Soles and Movable Feets (from @DRUNKHULK)
Shoe at First Light and the Snowshoes of Kilimanjaro (not as clever, sadly from me …)
Side note: He calls his father Hemingway? Is that because he’s being quoted?
What do Jackie Collins, William Faulkner, Dave Eggers, Virginia Woolf, and Steven King have in common? According to
Perhaps distant dogs are a way for novelists to wink at one another, at their extraordinary luck for being allowed into the publishing club. When an author incorporates a faceless barking dog into his novel, he’s like an amateur at Harlem’s Apollo Theater rubbing the Tree of Hope—he does it because so many others have done it before him, and it might just bring him some luck.
Some authors do this on purpose to great affect; others use it to buy time or cheat a mood. The article is a little tongue-in-cheek, but it reminds us to pay attention to our tics and make sure every word is there because it matters. Now I’m going to pay attention today–do I hear any dogs barking?
Immediately after the NY Times Paper Cuts blog bemoaned the lack of reciprocity between visual artists and novelists, saying that painters don’t incorporate books into their art the way novelists incorporate the visual arts into their stories, I saw this fun project by Jane Mount called Ideal Bookshelf.
Mount takes the favorite books people choose to represent themselves and does a painting of their ideal bookshelf. She says:
We show off our books on shelves like merit badges, because we’re proud of the ideas we’ve ingested to make us who we are, and we hope to connect with others. I think this is endearing and charming. When I paint someone else’s bookshelf and they have the same book I do, I feel inordinately joyful about it, and about them.
Of course, the Times blogger wasn’t talking about literally using books or images of books in art. But seeing an artist portray a shelf of books as a window into an individual’s hearts, minds, and souls is surely a fun way for the two arts to join forces.
Off to work on what my ideal bookshelf would be! What’s yours?
A publisher in Hamburg, Germany has converted some old cigarette vending machines into book dispensers. The books are all new titles from Hamburg authors. Forget about iPads or e-readers; this is the new distribution method I want to sweep the nation. Also: Reading is more healthy than smoking.
I think I want my book sold this way!
via Bookninja
