One of my secret (or maybe not-so-secret) nerdy passions is grammar. I’m no expert on grammar rules, but I like to think I generally get things right. Over the last few weeks, there have been a bunch of mainstream news articles that have brought up some grammar issues that caught my attention. In Birmingham, England, [...]
News and Notes
My friend Phil pointed out an article in bitch magazine called “Bite Me (or Don’t)” which is a feministy literary criticism of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight series. Do not read the article if you hate spoilers, the article covers events that happened throughout the entire series. I’m not much worried about spoilers, so I didn’t mind, [...]
Last year (wow it seems weird to write that), I read and reviewed Not Quite What I Was Planning, a book of six-word memoirs edited by SMITH Magazine. The concept of the book comes from an urban legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in six words. Based on that [...]
PC World recently published a list of 100 of their favorite blogs. I went through it yesterday and a lot of them seemed fun. I know everyone’s Google Readers and Feeds are overflowing, but here are a few more I think you should consider (that don’t take any time to keep up with): passive aggressive [...]
Michael Lewis’ book Liar’s Poker is a piece that gets mentioned pretty often in discussions about literary and participatory journalism. Written in 1989, the book is about Lewis’ experiences right out of college as a bond salesman on Wall Street during the 1980s. The book was supposed to be a cautionary tale about excess greed [...]
I’ve mentioned at least once that one of my news assignments this semester was a story about independent bookstores getting ready for the holiday season. I just submitted the story for consideration at a local arts magazine, so we’ll see how that goes. One of the things that didn’t make it into the draft I [...]
Still having some writer’s block, so here are a few more interesting links I came across over the last couple days. Nintendo and HarperCollins announced a deal where they will make 100 classic book titles available to read on the Nintendo DS game console. Sadly, these DS books will initially only be available in the [...]
I’m feeling in a bit of a blog funk lately — I blame the end of the semester and a hangover from NaBloPoMo — and can’t seem to think of anything original to write. However, yesterday I found a great post at Critical Mass that contained John Updike‘s six rules for reviewing books that I’d [...]
Timothy Egan wrote a great guest column in the New York Times yesterday where he bemoans the trend of publishing memoirs from people taking advantage of their 15 minutes of fame (like Joe the Plumber’s new memoir, good grief). A quote: Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to [...]
If you’re thinking about writing your own memoir, or need some new memoirs to read, Entertainment Weekly has what must be an almost exhaustive list of memoirs written since 1995 (the year the memoir genre seemed to hit it big). I haven’t struggled thorough the Pillsbury Bake-Off (The Ungarnished Truth by Ellie Mathews) or spent [...]
