It’s time for me to find a new book to read, and what better place to start looking than SFSignal’s delightful visualization of NPR’s Top 100 SFF Books? Sure, the list is a little older, but literature is timeless, people, timeless!
Posts Tagged ‘books’
Time for a New Read
Posted in Entertainment, Likes, tagged best of, books, entertainment, Fiction, genre fiction, literature, NPR, sff on October 6, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Smart Man
Posted in Funny, Likes, tagged arts, awesome, books, Einstein, flash fiction online, good society, inspiration, knowledge, public libraries, smart, Thoughts, yay on August 26, 2013| Leave a Comment »
From Flash Fiction Online’s Facebook page. I can’t even say how much I love this…
Like many other committed readers and writers, I spent a significant part of my time from childhood on in public libraries. People often take them for granted now, but imagine a time (or place) where you couldn’t pop down to the corner for a book, or a consultation with a librarian, or a safe quiet place to read and work, where knowledge wasn’t freely available to all. What a wonderful invention.
Learning@Lunch
Posted in Food and..., Science!, tagged books, fascinating, food, learning@lunch, nonfiction, processed food, science on August 22, 2013| Leave a Comment »
I read with lunch. Sometimes speculative fiction, of course, but often other types of writing as well, including nonfiction. Right now I’m reading Pandora’s Lunchbox: How Processed Food Took Over the American Meal by Melanie Warner.
Appropriate lunchtime fare, wouldn’t you say? Allow me to share with you two fascinating excerpts:
You probably don’t think of your lunch as being constructed from powders, but consider the ingredients of a Subway Sweet Onion Teriyaki sandwich. Of the 105 ingredients, 55 are dry, dusty substances that were added to the sandwich for a whole variety of reasons. The chicken contains thirteen…. The teriyaki glaze has twelve…. In the fat-free sweet onion sauce, you get another eight…. And finally, the Italian white bread has twenty two….
— p.11
Yum. And lest you think that a salad at home is necessarily pitfall free:
… using fat-free dressing on a salad can prevent you from absorbing many of the vegetables’ healthy (fat-soluble) phytochemicals.
— p. 18
This has been Learning@Lunch. Enjoy:)
Maximum Elmore
Posted in Writing, tagged artists, arts, books, creativity, death, Elmore Leonard, Fiction, inspiration, Motivation, Writers, writing on August 20, 2013| 1 Comment »
Crime Novelist Elmore Leonard Dies
Elmore Leonard died today, after a recent stroke and related complications. That’s sad in all sorts of ways, most importantly for his family but also for his fans.
That said, I have had it up to here with death.
Yes, it’s inevitable. Yes, you only have one life and then poof, gone. But what if you have an impact on the people around you that will last beyond your lifetime? What if you are thoughtful and kind and concerned about bringing the best to our shared world? And what if you are a writer with the sort of innate feel for dialog, story and character that Elmore Leonard had, dedicate your efforts to the constructive pursuit of creativity, and work hard enough and well on work like Get Shorty and Maximum Bob?
Then you earn a devoted following of fans who will not only remember your efforts but will see the world in a slightly different way, thanks to your work. I am such a fan. Mr. Leonard will be missed.
Welcome to Diagon Alley!
Posted in Entertainment, Likes, tagged arts, awesome, books, books in real life, entertainment, fun, google maps, harry potter, j k rowling, literature, magic, sff, Writers, writing, yay on July 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Google Maps Street View now features an up close and personal tour through the Warner Brothers version of Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley. If that’s not fun for a Sunday morning, I don’t know what is. Thanks go out to the magical imagination of J.K. Rowling, and enjoy!
Reporting Harassment at a Convention: A First-Person How To
Posted in Other, tagged arts, books, conventions, genre fiction, how to, inspiration, publishing, sexual harassment on June 28, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Reblogging this because Elise Matthesen has been brave enough to turn a bad experience into something useful, and it may help someone in the future… although I hope you don’t need it.
My friend Elise Matthesen was creeped upon at a recent convention by someone of some influence in the genre; she decided that she was going to do something about it and reported the person for sexual harassment, both to the convention and to the person’s employer. And now she’s telling you how she did it and what the process is like. Here’s her story.
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We’re geeks. We learn things and share, right? Well, this year at WisCon I learned firsthand how to report sexual harassment. In case you ever need or want to know, here’s what I learned and how it went.
Two editors I knew were throwing a book release party on Friday night at the convention. I was there, standing around with a drink talking about Babylon 5, the work of China Mieville, and Marxist theories of labor (like you do) when an editor from a different…
View original post 1,930 more words
This is Good News: Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant Series Optioned
Posted in Entertainment, Likes, tagged awesome, Ben Aaronovitch, books, British TV, entertainment, fun, genre fiction, sff, Tor.com, tv, Writers on June 27, 2013| Leave a Comment »
Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant Series Optioned for UK TV Adaptation | Tor.com
Author Ben Aaronovitch’s hugely successful series of urban fantasy/police procedural novels featuring a copper who becomes a trainee wizard with the Met is to become a TV series in the UK.
As someone who likes well-written books and entertaining, thoughtful television, this is good news. We’ll have to see how the final product comes together but in the meantime, if the above description sounds intriguing and you haven’t already found Aaronovitch’s series, I suggest you start with the first book, Rivers of London.
This Tor.com-enabled lunch break is now over; I now return to my regularly scheduled work program!
Joe Hill Writes Like… How About You?
Posted in Funny, Writing, tagged artists, arts, books, cory doctorow, creativity, david foster wallace, fun, funny, genre fiction, j k rowling, joe hill, literature, ray bradbury, sff, work, Writers, writing, yay on June 22, 2013| 2 Comments »
I was feeling a little blue and I was looking for something on the internet to cheer me up and Warren Ellis has a post on his tumblr pointing to a website, I Write Like, so I thought, oh, hey, why not? Warren got David Foster Wallace; I was thinking, huh, maybe it’ll tell me I write like John Steinbeck! Hell, maybe David Mitchell!!!
Thanks to the above post by Joe Hill I’ve discovered an entertaining website called “I Write Like.” Unlike him, however, my stylistic tendencies seem to be more varied. Depending on the story, I apparently write like Cory Doctorow, J.K. Rowling, Ray Bradbury, and David Foster Wallace. I think the minds behind the site put this fun tool together to raise writers’ confidence levels; who wouldn’t want to be told they write like any one of the people on that list?
I don’t write like Stephen King, though. Joe Hill’s got that all wrapped up.
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