Settling back into a routine is very good!
A few links of interest:
Maxine offers a useful list of her Twitter likes and dislikes. (I cannot get into the Twitter vibe, it seems; I've had an account for a while, and I look over there occasionally to see if anything has changed that might make it more appealing to me, but it gives me an irritable feeling of being peppered with unwanted pellets of information and really I mostly steer clear of it. For some reason Facebook seems much more innocuous, though I do appreciate Twitter's utility for those who are actually following news closely as it develops - that is not me, though!)
A fascinating piece, of particular interest to novelists and would-be novelists, by Alex Shakar at the Millions about getting a 300K novel advance in 2000, then having his book come out just after 9/11. Interesting glimpse of Bill Clegg there... (Link courtesy of Sarah Weinman, who by the way has a grasp of Twitter's potential and best Twitter practice that is matched by few of the other users I "follow" there!)
Also at The Millions: highly anticipated books of upcoming months. Lots of extremely desirable stuff there: I think I am especially excited to get my hands on the next installments from George R. R. Martin and Lev Grossman, Colson Whitehead's zombie novel (Colson is also a gifted Tweeter!), new novels from Helen DeWitt and Lauren Groff, Neal Stephenson's Readme and Haruki Murakami's 1Q84, but the biggie there for me is Alan Hollinghurst's new novel, which is already out in England and which I think I will go ahead and order from the Book Depository (free international shipping, to the Cayman Islands as well as the US...).
And after I do one piece of work that cannot be postponed (overdue reader's report on a journal article), I am going to get back down to work on BOMH...
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It makes sense that twitter wouldn't appeal to you -- it is to facebook what facebook is to blogs, one's tweets do not agglomerate into a personality. My own twitter obsession was originally a replacement for my internet boggle obsession: I was drawn to hashtag memes like #oneletteroffsongs etc.
ReplyDeleteyou are so right on Twitter. Today it is full of "funny" (not) tweets in which the word duck is substituted for something; and with repeat tweets about the news of the world closing on Sunday, and related. (I like to get news from a news outfit, not twitter!) Tomorrow I'll avoid it again because of the #ffs.
ReplyDeleteI also wish I had not written that post as it attracted a spew of violent and nasty, personal attacks from a NY blogger whom I thought preivously was quite a reasonable chap. Really horrible and nasty, involving swear words, lots of capital letters and exclamation points, always a bad sign about someone's mental stability. (Initials E C or if you cannot guess from that, B S which does not, but should, stand for bu** sh** ;-) ).
By the way, one thing I did learn from twitter, but would have found out soon enough anyway, is that Amazon now has a "literature in translation" store, not sure if that interests you....I'm quite keen to check it out.
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ReplyDeleteMaxine, I suppose you are referring to Ed's comment here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=10178279&postID=8781394701417332720
I couldn't find a single exclamation point or capital letter in the entire comment, except when used in a proper name or at the beginning of a sentence. Are you referring to something else Ed has written?
Maxine: How utterly classy of you to talk shit about me on somebody else's blog -- especially when Jenny has nothing to do with what's between us. The facts are these. You posted the essay. I put up a critical remark. You couldn't take the heat. And ever since then, you have demonstrated a commitment to intellectual debate that is comparable to a Tea Party acolyte. From what I understand, you have also behaved this way to other people. It's very simple. If you can't take criticism of your elitism, then don't post a piece expressing it. What I wrote was not a nasty, personal attack. It was an emotional and intellectual defense of a medium that means a great deal to me and that you lack the social grace and eclat to comprehend -- in large part because you again prove here that you are socially clueless and classless and are more interested in sneering from afar. And that, to my mind, is the real bullshit position that cleaves to your smug and prejudicial stench. As I said, you will learn the hard way what being alone really means one day.
ReplyDeleteApologies, Jenny, for clogging your comment stream like this.
Just yesterday I was thinking that the only thing I want to read is Alan Hollingshurst's new book (I am in quite a reading doldrum, and the fact that the only book I want to read is unreachable seems like that doldrum's ultimate symbolic and practical manifestation). Overall, though, the Millions list just overwhelmed me.
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