As much as I tend to loathe politics, I’m a secret political-process junkie. I don’t usually like politicians, but I love learning the ins and outs of how government actually works. That said, I was huge fan of A Prayer for the City by Buzz Bissinger; I think it is one of the best books [...]
Book Review
I wrote a post about how inspiring I found Joan Didion while I was in the middle of reading Slouching Towards Bethlehem last month, but have been putting off a review because I’m not sure what else to say. I loved the book when I finished it, started to dislike it while we discussed it [...]
After quitting the British Imperial Police Force in 1927, Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) moved to Paris and tried to write about the oppressed. His experiences as a member of the working poor over the next several years became the basis of his first work of literary journalism, Down and Out in Paris and London. [...]
Fables: March of the Wooden Soldiers is the fourth comic in the Fables series by Bill Willingham. This is the longest comic so far in the series, but it tells a huge story, develops characters, and ends with a great cliffhanger. To get caught up with Fables, you can read my previous reviews: Legends in [...]
Writing for Story by Jon Franklin is a book about writing and creating story. Franklin, a two-time Pulizter Prize Winner, focuses on how to write the “nonfiction short story,” basically a newspaper feature story. Franklin walks the reader through his writing process, his concept of story, and includes two articles with detailed annotations showing how [...]
There are a couple of other book bloggers also reading the Fables series right now, and I’m just a little bit behind them, having only read Fables I: Legends in Exile and Fables II: Animal Farm. After I read the reviews by Book Zombie and Fyrefly, I don’t quite know what to say in mine [...]
Once upon a time, Ernest Hemingway was challenged to write a story in six words. What did he come up with? “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” Awesome, right? This Hemingway legend is the basis for the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Editors at SMITH magazine, [...]
This semester, as I’ve mentioned a few times, I’m taking a class on literary journalism. The first part of the semester has been devoted to understanding the development of literary journalism through two books I really enjoyed–True Stories by Norman Sims and The Gang That Wouldn’t Write Straight by Marc Weingarten. I was going to [...]
The Book of Nonsense by David Michael Slater is the first ARC (Advanced Review Copy) I have received, and as such I really wanted to love it so I could write an overly-gushing review. Unfortunately, I didn’t love this book as much as I have enjoyed other young adult fantasy. Although I thought the story [...]
Last week Neil Gaiman was out and about reading an excerpt of his new book The Graveyard Book in St. Paul. Fellow book blogger Kim L. at Bold. Blue. Adventure. got to see him and wrote a great post about it here. A friend of mine, Ben Wheeler, also attended Gaiman’s speech and was kind [...]
