Monthly Archives: November 2011

What ELSE Has J Been Reading? [Bonus Edition, 18 Nov 11]

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Wow, I spoke too soon.  Normally I publish the daily reading around noon, and I should have waited today, too.  Lots of cool stuff since then.

Ellie Robins at Melville House talks about a Guardian piece on Melville House‘s Not The Booker Prize party, in which Sam Jordison discusses “whether literary criticism [in broadsheet book reviews] adds anything to our appreciation of books, and whether the limited pools of reviewers and books reviewed skews the picture of what there is to read out there.” Continue reading →

Category: Blogroll, My Two Cents

What’s J Been Reading? [Chinita’s Fair, 18 Nov 11]

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Accidentally left Raymond Chandler‘s anthology, The Simple Art of Murder, at home, so I was not able to read further into the short story “Pickup On Noon Street.”  Where has J been reading Chandler?  On the DC Metro, to and from work.

So, hey! Remember yesterday when I pointed you to Juliette Wade‘s discussion of gender in fiction?  She specifically talks about Ursula Le Guin‘s The Left Hand Of Darkness.  What do you know, a rejection letter for The Left Hand Of Darkness is featured in Flavorwire‘s “Famous Authors’ Harshest Rejection Letters.”  If you’ve ever gotten a rejection letter, it’s a fun read!  Continue reading →

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What Has J Been Reading? [Vespasian’s Birthday, 17 Nov 11]

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After my brief detour through Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp, I am back into Raymond Chandler‘s anthology, The Simple Art of Murder.  Specifically, the short story “Pickup On Noon Street.”  Lots of archaic racial stereotypes, so I am waiting to see if the story rolls into some redeeming qualities.

In science news, Jupiter’s moon Europa is believed to have shallow subsurface lakes that connect to the deeper moon-wide ocean.  Hard sci-fi writers … On your mark! Get set!

On the writing front: Continue reading →

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What Is A Book?

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Here’s a little chart for all of the oh-so-cooler-than-thou coolsters out there who like to show their anti-hip hipsterdom by poo-pooing technology, and strut their appreciation for traditional literature by displaying their ignorance of its history.

So, you say you prefer “real” books to Kindle and Nook?  What people read on Kindle and Nook are real books.  When you say “real” books, you’re talking about codices — singular codex — which, early in the Christian Era, largely replaced the scroll format that had dominated book presentation for thousands of years.

The Book of Genesis is a book whether its rolled up around a stick, bound up in a stack of leaves, or zapped to your ereader as a series of 1’s and 0’s.

Yes, we often use “book” as a synecdoche for “book in codex form.”  But, regardless of format, the book is the words, not the format through which the words are presented.  Here are some images to explain the concept: Continue reading →

Category: My Two Cents | Tags: , , ,

What Has J Been Reading? [Birthday of the Federal Reserve and LSD, 16 Nov 11]

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I finished Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp, and now I must say that I love it.  It’s the most brilliant piece of crap I have ever read, filled with absurdities and despair and flippant disregard for social norms.  Dedicated “to bad writing” it lives up to that threat, but it’s bad writing as obviously written by a writer who knows he’s writing badly.  The result is hilarious.

We now know what color moths were way back at the dawn of the Age of Mammals.  How? Scientists are some clever motor-jammers, that’s how.

At Melville House, a couple of good stories: Continue reading →

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Odd Thought on Processed Meats

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Braunschweiger … SPAM for classy people.

Category: Odd Thoughts

What Has J Been Reading? [America Recycles Day, 15 Nov 11]

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Okay, you know what?  I’m really starting to like Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp.  Sure, it’s lazy and a bit too clever for its own good, simplistic and superficial, and full of potty humor so lame that it would make a 12-year-old roll his eyes.  But, a good deal of it is inspiredly moronic and/or moronically inspired.  It’s not what I would call “literature” but, as a parody of literature, it’s not half bad.  In some places, it is (if you’ll pardon the cliché) laugh-out-loud funny.

How did I miss the 160th anniversary of the publication of Moby-Dick yesterday?  Well, Melville House reminds me, and publishes a copy of the remarkable original contract for the book.  “Most striking … is how similar this is to a modern publishing contract, down to the wording in a lot of places.”

Also, there is an intriguing cast-bronze buckle dated to 600 CE, discovered buried on the Seward Peninsula.  Yeah, that’s way up in Alaska.  And, if 600 CE + Alaska + cast-bronze artifact doesn’t make you go “huh?!” then maybe you and I can’t be friends.  (Just kidding, of course we can.)

BEST READS OF THE DAY: A tie between an interview with author-songwriter John Wesley Harding (no, not the guy who “shot a man just for snoring too loud” … that was John Wesley Hardin) and a fantastic letter to the National Post about Philip Marchand’s review of Stephen King‘s 11/22/63.

Category: Advice From A Dude, Blogroll

A Serious Business Question About The Quentin Rowan Scandal

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I hinted at this story a few days ago, with a teaser link.  Essentially, it was discovered that Assassin Of Secrets, the debut novel by Quentin Rowan, contained multiple sentences that were pilfered from other novels.

According to an excerpt from an emailed confession cum explanation, Rowan says: “Once the book was bought, I had to make major changes in quite a hurry, basically re-write the whole thing from scratch…”

Okay, okay. Stealing sentences from other people’s novels (dishonestly and without ironic intent) is a Big NoNo, but what I want to know is why a debut novel that was clearly not ready for publication was already bought?!  More importantly, why was Rowan allowed to “skip the line” in front of other debut authors who are repeatedly told to have their novel ready to go before even considering a query letter to an agent?

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Odd Thought on Political Talking Points

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To reframe the controversy surrounding possible links between injection mining and earthquakes, I propose the industry begin referring to fracking as “deep earth moisturizing.”

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What Has J Been Reading? [Robert Fulton’s Birthday, 14 Nov 11]

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Today, I put down the Raymond Chandler for a bit to start reading Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp on the suggestion of an acquaintance who noted similarities with my novella On The Head Of A Pin, which is also about a detective who meets Death.  So far, I find the book funny and clever, perhaps too clever, as if Bukowski is trying very hard to appear clever.  Also, I find it a bit childish and superficial.  I have seen it discussed as a riff on Chandler, but it reads more like what a Middle School boy might think is a funny take-off on detective fiction rather than a grown man’s literary commentary on it.  There are lots of sex and scat jokes, many of them treadworn.

I don’t want to get ahead of myself (I’m only on 22 of a 51-chapter book) but if you really want to understand the difference between Pulp and Chandler, read Pulp and what Andrew Mathis says about Chandler in The King Arthur Myth In Modern American Literature.   Also, I am discovering that Death + detective ≠ same story, although I am certainly better off being aware of Pulp and the comparisons readers will certainly be tempted to draw with Pin. Anyway, enough about that.

Author Elizabeth Spann Craig guest blogs at Writers In The Storm, sharing “15 Tips For Writing A Mystery.”  Reading through them makes me want to scrub On The Head Of A Pin once again.  But, no!  Must stop polishing and submit.  (My last scrub, which was supposed to be a final grammar-spelling check, ending up adding a full grand to the word count, which is exactly the sort of thing that made the last “final grammar-spelling scrub” turn out to be not-the-last.)

Continue reading →

Category: Advice From A Dude, Blogroll | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
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