It’s been several weeks since I finished reading the final book in the “All Souls” trilogy by Deborah Harkness, The Book of Life, and after writing a few reviews of it for various sites and chewing on my ideas for some time, I had the opportunity to attend Harkness’ book signing in San Francisco a…
Civil discourse. Sometimes it seems like an impossibility, a utopia, a thing of the past. In the age of instant publication of everyone’s thoughts to a potentially huge audience, and with no way of taking back a rash, thoughtless statement once it’s escaped one’s texting or posting fingers, it feels as if cyberspace (and, thence,…
Read more Here’s something radical: We disagree. We can still be friends.
I just finished reading a New York Times review of a book about letter-writing (I doubt I’ll have time to read the book itself, To the Letter, by Simon Garfield) and was reminded once again how much I appreciate and enjoy the written word. I suppose that should be obvious, given that I am a…
I wrote recently about dreams and that sometimes it’s just impossible to reach certain dreams and goals. Well, that’s tied in to other conclusions I have drawn about my own life. I’m in my 40s now and still have plenty of good years ahead, very likely, but I’m not 20 anymore. And I’m really generally…
So I was reading Josh Hanagarne’s blog, World’s Strongest Librarian, and he posted about using a fun little site called I Write Like, which uses an algorithm of some sort to analyze whose writing style your writing most resembles. Now I typically don’t get caught up in those cutesy types of things everyone posts on…
Read more If I’m going to take a “personality” test, of course it’s going to be literary
So I’ve been very proud of myself for the past month. I’ve been good about just eating well, keeping my portions reasonable, and not indulging much in sweets. I went three weeks without any ice cream, which is huge for me. I love ice cream (I have a solid four ice cream makers in my…
With today the third anniversary of my father’s death, I’ve been pondering what to write. I thought for a while I might take a particular “angle” to discuss, like organ donation. My father suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and was declared brain dead, so his body was viable, and my siblings and I all agreed…
After addressing my great discomfort with the number of strong and vulgar language in J.K. Rowling’s first book for adults, The Casual Vacancy, I looked at other bloggers’ reviews on the book, and I was perhaps a tiny bit surprised that few expressed any frustration with that issue. Several that I commented on basically did…
Read more Strong language in books: not so common as one might think
So I wrote a week and a half ago that it was time to take care of myself. I decided that it would help me to kind of “diet” for a week and work really hard at the gym to see if I could lose a couple of pounds and know that it was effective.…
I hate to say this, but as much as I hate the traditional publishing “system” as a writer, I’m mostly grateful for it as a reader. This past month I spent most of my time reading books that were either self-published or had originally been self-published and now had been picked up by a publisher,…
