When I read the news that scientists had captured and separated wild dolphins to investigate their use of “signature whistles” to call out to each other, the sounds that earlier research had concluded was a sort of name that individual dolphins used to identify themselves, I was touched. After all, it was clearly evidence of a deep and emotional connection between these very intelligent animals.
But, then I realized there was so much more going on. Continue reading
Hey, Nelson, why didn’t you identify today as Thanksgiving? And, what the hell is “Brumalia” anyway?
Well, I have been avoiding the use of moveable holidays to identify the dates in my daily reading. Also, I lament the fact that we have reduced the three-day Thanksgiving feast to a single day (yeah, yeah, I realize that a lot of people take a four-day weekend) so I thought I would honor the 30-day-long Roman feast of Brumalia instead, as a sort of protest against our truncated festivity.
Now, what have I read this morning? Continue reading
Yes, this photo is meant to be self-deprecating. Thank you.
I know you guys (the writers … guys and gals, technically) love yourselves some good query advice. So, here’s something I read at Hey There’s A Dead Guy: Benjamin LeRoy‘s “Three Tips for Querying! (Because everybody loves a list).” And, yeah, we do love a list. Also at Dead Guy is an interesting piece about that unfortunate dust-up over FridayReads.
GalleyCat discusses the movement to create a Literature category at YouTube. I’m all for it! And… as if the Quentin Rowan scandal wasn’t bad enough, Melville House reveals yet another case of blatant plagiarism in publishing. Continue reading
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
Accidentally left Raymond Chandler‘s anthology, The Simple Art of Murder
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
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
I finished Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp
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
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?
“Attrition is not a strategy. It is, in fact irrefutable proof of the absence of any strategy.”
– General D. R. Palmer
General Palmer’s words, in condemnation of US policy in Việt Nam, speak a universal truth that transcends that particular war, transcends warfare itself, and can be applied to any aspect of life. Including publishing.
Someone familiar with military theory might object that attrition is a valid strategy when you cannot quickly defeat your enemy, but the fact that there is no possibility for strategy doesn’t change the fact that you have no real strategy. Palmer’s observation stands: a policy of attrition proves that there’s no real strategy.
Attrition is also irrefutable proof of the lack of respect for those being attritted. That would be soldiers in warfare. In publishing? Aspiring writers.
Recently, a writer friend of mine (let’s call this person T) sent me a link to a story at The Onion shredding the pretensions of a bad writer who has no idea he’s a bad writer, called “Novelist Has Whole Shitty World Plotted Out.”
Explaining the link, T had added a simple message: “God, this makes me self-conscious as hell.”
There is no reason to be self-conscious, because T is one of the best writers I know, published or not, and one of the few writers whose voice moves me to envy. Reading Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
At the same time, another friend of mine asked me to read a story written by an acquaintance, whom we will call C. C has been writing for years, is well-educated, and well-versed in all the Do’s & Don’ts of writery. Yet, lurking in the first paragraph were half a dozen cringe-worthy mistakes that any decent writer should know to avoid. As I read on, it didn’t get better, so I reluctantly told my friend that I thought the story was quite awful.
We were each relieved to find the other in agreement.
Yet, while T is hesitant despite natural talent, C is determined and confident all out of proportion to reality. I had stumbled onto a perfect case study in the contrast between over-confident yet lousy writers and talented yet self-doubting writers, demonstrating the perverse influence the “Dunning-Kruger Effect” has on literature, a problem I have discussed before.
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