I was considering doing a Top Ten list of books I read in 2014, but then I realized that lists are not how most of us experience reading.
We read things and they interact with other parts of our lives in ways that often run perpendicular to any quality in the writing itself. A list of the “best” books I read in 2014 might not convey as much meaning as telling you about the adventures in reading I had.
So, that’s what I am going to do instead…
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
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
After my brief detour through Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp
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
Today, I put down the Raymond Chandler for a bit to start reading Charles Bukowski‘s Pulp
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.)
“I’ll Be Waiting,” a short story in The Simple Art of Murder
A science piece at Reuters about the end of a 520-day isolation experiment intended to simulate the psychological pressures of a manned mission to Mars. Best line in the story: “A previous 420-day experiment ended in drunken disaster in 2000, when two participants got into a fistfight and a third tried to forcibly kiss a female crew member.” Which one of these two experiments do you think would make a better story?
A story at Jacket Copy about right-wing terrorists taking their cues from a wannabe author’s online manuscript cum “field manual, technical manual, and call to arms.”
Best-sellers “… are promotional jobs based on a sort of indirect snob appeal, carefully escorted by the trained seals of the critical fraternity, and lovingly tended and watered by certain much too powerful pressure groups whose business is selling books, although they would like you to think they are fostering culture.”
– from “The Simple Art of Murder” in The Simple Art of Murder
BEST LINE OF THE DAY (from The Rejectionist’s review of Anonymous): “I find complaining about scholarly inaccuracy in a Roland Emmerich film to be analogous to expressing displeasure that Transformers does not correctly represent the mechanics of the internal combustion engine.”
“Spanish Blood,” a short story from The Simple Art Of Murder anthology by Raymond Chandler.
“Habeas corpus,” an ironically titled essay on the non-necessity of murder in crime fiction, by Lynne Patrick at Hey There’s a Dead Guy In The Living Room. And, in the same vein, I’m catching up on the shenanigans at Slushpile Hell.
A science piece at the New York Times about how causing senescent cells to self-destruct could prevent many of the symptoms of aging. Sounds like forced retirement for the microscopic set!
