Lev Grossman on how not to write your first novel.
100 actual titles of real eighteenth-century novels (and some nineteenth-century ones).
10 lessons from life as a dominatrix.
Molly Crabapple on the guest workers of Abu Dhabi.
Showing posts with label book titles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label book titles. Show all posts
Thursday, August 07, 2014
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Linkage
Trying to gear up for a run - have already curtailed notion of a long one, now just need to get myself out the door for something. Residual fatigue is an obstacle, and hay fever season is upon us; also, not as warm as one might think in April - but really all this just means that I am still very tired!
Miscellaneous linkage:
E. L. Konigsburg has died. I loved so many of her books so much, including the iconic Mixed-Up Files, but I think my two absolute favorites must have always been A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (what an amazing title aside from everything else - though as someone who has recently felt a bit scathed by 1-star Amazon reviews, I feel slightly relieved to see the vitriol being spilled on this lovely book and its title!) and Father's Arcane Daughter, which I am sorry to see has been retitled My Father's Daughter in the reissue - one of the things I loved as a child about Konigsburg's books was that they made no concessions to imagined notions of children's vocabularies!
At the Guardian: Sebald on Rousseau, Wood/Sinclair/Macfarlane/Self on Sebald.
This is uncanny. (Via Charles. Whole site is very compelling.)
Best thing I saw on the internet this week. (Courtesy of my dad.)
Miscellaneous linkage:
E. L. Konigsburg has died. I loved so many of her books so much, including the iconic Mixed-Up Files, but I think my two absolute favorites must have always been A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver (what an amazing title aside from everything else - though as someone who has recently felt a bit scathed by 1-star Amazon reviews, I feel slightly relieved to see the vitriol being spilled on this lovely book and its title!) and Father's Arcane Daughter, which I am sorry to see has been retitled My Father's Daughter in the reissue - one of the things I loved as a child about Konigsburg's books was that they made no concessions to imagined notions of children's vocabularies!
At the Guardian: Sebald on Rousseau, Wood/Sinclair/Macfarlane/Self on Sebald.
This is uncanny. (Via Charles. Whole site is very compelling.)
Best thing I saw on the internet this week. (Courtesy of my dad.)
Tuesday, July 10, 2012
Thursday, December 22, 2011
A plan
I made my chart...
I bought my supplies...
(I don't know why Blogger will only import these pictures in sideways rotation! That is irksome.)
Let the wild revision begin!
I will now take advantage of the fact that it's 58F and sunny to go and scout a few of the three or four neighborhood locations that I intend to make more use of in the next draft. My plan for the next three weeks is pretty clear. I will go to Philadelphia this weekend for a couple of days, arriving home Monday evening. I then have three full weeks of writing time before school starts: week of Dec. 26, week of Jan. 2, week of Jan. 9 (I'll be in Cayman for a spell, Jan. 7-15). I should be able to eke out a couple more weeks of decent writing time once school starts, but a practice of morning writing during the semester can only be sustained for so long, and I know it will collapse a couple weeks in. So the next 2 weeks are designed to generate as much new material as possible, then the week in Cayman I'll take the whole thing apart and put it back together again with new pieces, doing blow-by-blow start-to-finish revisions over the rest of January. Get a good new version to my editor by Monday, Jan. 30, and let it sit for 1.5 months so that I can do my final tough pass through over spring break in March.
I do think the book needs a new title: The Magic Circle is fine, but a little too bland. (The Bacchae on Morningside Heights was abstruse and unpronounceable, but is still of course how I think of the book in my head.) I will see if some obvious name emerges as I work on the next round.
Let the wild revision begin!
I will now take advantage of the fact that it's 58F and sunny to go and scout a few of the three or four neighborhood locations that I intend to make more use of in the next draft. My plan for the next three weeks is pretty clear. I will go to Philadelphia this weekend for a couple of days, arriving home Monday evening. I then have three full weeks of writing time before school starts: week of Dec. 26, week of Jan. 2, week of Jan. 9 (I'll be in Cayman for a spell, Jan. 7-15). I should be able to eke out a couple more weeks of decent writing time once school starts, but a practice of morning writing during the semester can only be sustained for so long, and I know it will collapse a couple weeks in. So the next 2 weeks are designed to generate as much new material as possible, then the week in Cayman I'll take the whole thing apart and put it back together again with new pieces, doing blow-by-blow start-to-finish revisions over the rest of January. Get a good new version to my editor by Monday, Jan. 30, and let it sit for 1.5 months so that I can do my final tough pass through over spring break in March.
I do think the book needs a new title: The Magic Circle is fine, but a little too bland. (The Bacchae on Morningside Heights was abstruse and unpronounceable, but is still of course how I think of the book in my head.) I will see if some obvious name emerges as I work on the next round.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Saturday, February 06, 2010
Closing tabs
I have spent much of the last week in a pleasant haze, in subway cars or during the later-evening couch hours mandated by the anti-insomnia protocol which forbids computer time at night, induced and maintained by the first five books of Dorothy Dunnett's House of Niccolo series.
There is something very comforting about knowing how many of them there are - eight books in this series, and then a whole other six-book series. I love multi-volume series (also very pleasant is discovering a crime novelist of excellence who has already published six or seven volumes in his or her series which can then be consumed at a steady but more or less voracious pace over the course of four or five days); I think that these are not in the end up to the standard of Patrick O'Brian on the one hand or Susan Howatch on the other, but I am now very much looking forward to reading the Lymond books once I finish with these.
Further link miscellany:
This year's "oddest book title" contest. (A number of these books inevitably sound to my ears highly worthwhile!)
Shackleton's whisky excavated from beneath floorboards of polar hut!
At the New Yorker, Macy Halford on the importance of e-mail to romance (with commentary by Abigail Adams) (courtesy of Amy).
On Thursday I saw Parsons Dance at the Joyce. The dancing was excellent, the music perhaps to a somewhat lower standard (though not as dire as I feared - it is a truly bizarre endeavor, though, with famous opera arias set as lavishly orchestrated pop songs - "La donna e mobile" as torch song really made me want to laugh! - it is the East Village Opera Company and their music can be sampled here if you are curious).
By far the highlight of the evening was the short prelude before the main piece. It is called "Caught," and it is truly spectacular - it takes advantage of the kinds of theatricality and athleticism one associates with Cirque du Soleil, which seems to me a very good idea indeed. The combination of strobe lighting and unbelievable jumps and timing truly makes it seem as though the dancer is flying through the air due some occult power - it is very "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," I loved it! There is a link here which gives some of the flavor of it, but the essence is exactly what cannot be captured on film or digital media - the staggering part of it is the way that after the flying sequence you suddenly see the dancer standing quietly at the back of the stage, only the sheen of sweat and the heaving ribcage speaking to the effort that has just been expended. Really magical!
(A good dinner afterwards, too, at the Viceroy Cafe. I had a steak salad - slabs of rare beef served on a heap of mesclun salad with balsamic vinaigrette and roquefort cheese, with cucumber, tomato and avocado laid out delicately around the plate - and a truly delicious helping of tiramisu.)
There is something very comforting about knowing how many of them there are - eight books in this series, and then a whole other six-book series. I love multi-volume series (also very pleasant is discovering a crime novelist of excellence who has already published six or seven volumes in his or her series which can then be consumed at a steady but more or less voracious pace over the course of four or five days); I think that these are not in the end up to the standard of Patrick O'Brian on the one hand or Susan Howatch on the other, but I am now very much looking forward to reading the Lymond books once I finish with these.
Further link miscellany:
This year's "oddest book title" contest. (A number of these books inevitably sound to my ears highly worthwhile!)
Shackleton's whisky excavated from beneath floorboards of polar hut!
At the New Yorker, Macy Halford on the importance of e-mail to romance (with commentary by Abigail Adams) (courtesy of Amy).
On Thursday I saw Parsons Dance at the Joyce. The dancing was excellent, the music perhaps to a somewhat lower standard (though not as dire as I feared - it is a truly bizarre endeavor, though, with famous opera arias set as lavishly orchestrated pop songs - "La donna e mobile" as torch song really made me want to laugh! - it is the East Village Opera Company and their music can be sampled here if you are curious).
By far the highlight of the evening was the short prelude before the main piece. It is called "Caught," and it is truly spectacular - it takes advantage of the kinds of theatricality and athleticism one associates with Cirque du Soleil, which seems to me a very good idea indeed. The combination of strobe lighting and unbelievable jumps and timing truly makes it seem as though the dancer is flying through the air due some occult power - it is very "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," I loved it! There is a link here which gives some of the flavor of it, but the essence is exactly what cannot be captured on film or digital media - the staggering part of it is the way that after the flying sequence you suddenly see the dancer standing quietly at the back of the stage, only the sheen of sweat and the heaving ribcage speaking to the effort that has just been expended. Really magical!
(A good dinner afterwards, too, at the Viceroy Cafe. I had a steak salad - slabs of rare beef served on a heap of mesclun salad with balsamic vinaigrette and roquefort cheese, with cucumber, tomato and avocado laid out delicately around the plate - and a truly delicious helping of tiramisu.)
Monday, August 31, 2009
Life in literature
Spreading like wildfire, but most immediately pasted in from Maxine's wonderfully noir version, my life according to books I've read this calendar year (2009):
Describe yourself:
The Girl Who Played With Fire.
How do you feel?
It’s Beginning to Hurt.
Describe where you currently live:
Lush Life.
If you could go anywhere, where would you go?
Swimming.
Your favorite form of transport:
The Dragon Waiting.
Your best friend is . . . ?
A Fortunate Age.
You and your friends are . . .?
Outliers.
What’s the weather like?
American Pastoral.
Favourite time of day?
Daylight Noir.
What is life to you?
The Mind-Body Problem.
Your fear?
A Case of Conscience.
What is the best advice you have to give?
Hold Tight.
Thought for the Day?
Getting a Grip.
How I would like to die:
The Best of Times.
My soul's present condition?
Dreaming By the Book.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Sunday, August 02, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
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