The February 20 issue of the Guardian contained something remarkable, 28 authors offering advice on how to write fiction (see here and here). It’s a hugely varied recipe book, ranging from terse to wordy, from flippant to earnest, but it’s definitely worth scanning. I noted the following snippets that chimed with me:
Diana Athill: ‘Read it [...]
Max Magee at The Millions, in a post eagerly anticipating three new releases, points me to The Ask, described by one review as ‘brilliant bile,’ by an author new to me, Sam Lipsyte. Literary savagery is just what this reader is looking for.
I’m encouraged by a Grist post: ‘Does Facebook deserve the hell it’s catching from Greenpeace?’ Apparently Facebook’s planned humongous data centre in Ohio will be powered by local utility Pacific Power, which is mostly coal-based. Greenpeace is recommending (and I agree) that the social networking giant should use its size and clout to pressure Pacific [...]
As a recent dropout from the corporate sector, the feral attacks on climate science and the scientists themselves are quite transparent to me. What puzzled me was why this savaging seems to actually work – doubts about climate science do seem have escalated. Why?
Bill McKibben, in ‘The attack on climate science is the O.J. moment [...]
Last week’s reading:
My first Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs, is a refreshing revelation. Moore’s highly individualistic writing style, all quirky similes and metaphors, laced with lyricism, is nothing like what I tend to read. As with other stylistic writers like Cormac McCarthy, I found the going slow because I needed to roll the [...]
Last week’s reading:
Parrot and Olivier in America is Peter Carey at his most exuberant, wild almost. Recounting the fictional tale of the trip to the new, troubling democratic nation of the United States of America by French nobleman Olivier-Jean-Baptist de Clarel de Barfleur and an artistic servant thrust upon him, John ‘Parrot’ Larrit. Carey succeeds marvellously in retelling [...]
Last week’s reading:
‘What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?’: Jimmy Carter, America’s ‘Malaise,’ and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country is an intriguing single-topic book by Kevin Mattson, an Ohio historian. He tells the story of the critical speech given by Carter on July 15, 1979, covering the energy crisis causing [...]
Three films over the last year captured my heart because, I belatedly recognized, they’re set in the 1960s music scene. Make no mistake, The Boat that Rocked, Taking Woodstock, and Nowhere Boy are all superbly crafted movies, but what tugged at my emotions was their overt affection for the period. Nostalgia had struck me!
Nostalgia is [...]
Last week’s reading:
Robert Harris’s Lustrum is the second of two novels recounting the life of Roman philosopher/orator/lawyer/politician Cicero. Harris can write smoothly and entertainingly about any subject, modern or ancient, Lustrum being a good example. It’s an enjoyable and intriguing read, although the five-year period covered by this book is telescoped at the end, at [...]
I’ve been tardy in staying on top of the complex (of course it is, otherwise why my nagging ongoing fascination?) field of personal genomic testing. Thank goodness I do regularly check Daniel MacArthur’s pitch-perfect Genetic Future blog. Wednesday’s post alerted me to two fine ’status report’ reports: one from Mark Henderson of The Times and the [...]