Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate this holiday. Here’s a related literary story: ‘Twas the night before Christmas’ helped make the modern Santa – and led to a literary whodunit
Remembering Joan Didion
I’ve been unable to stop reading all the articles about Joan Didion that have appeared since the announcement of her death yesterday. As a nonfiction writer, I knew her through her perceptive nonfiction pieces. But these articles have made me realize that I need to read her fiction as well. Joan Didion, ‘Goodbye to All
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Joan Didion dies; writer chronicled culture with cool detachment – Los Angeles Times
Unlike Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and other pioneers of literary journalism, Didion did not become a character in her own stories. A pale wisp of a woman (90 pounds on a 5-foot-2-inch frame), with drab hair and wide-set eyes often hidden behind aviator glasses, she was by her own description “shy to the
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Best Books Lists II
Related Post: Best Books Lists I Whether you’re celebrating the shortest (in the northern hemisphere) or the longest (southern hemisphere) day of the year, here’s the final installment of lists rounding up the best books of 2021. Goodreads Choice Awards: Best Books of 2021 This is the landing page for the Goodreads Choice Awards, chosen
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Literary Links
Plotter, Pantser, Scribbler, Scribe Can we get rid of the “plotter vs. pantser” binary already? In light of last month’s quotations around NaNoWriMo, this piece seems like the logical introduction for the weekly links list. What If We’ve Been Misunderstanding Monsters? A history of how literary monsters have changed over the centuries. “Post-Enlightenment, literary monsters
Quotation from Anne Rice’s Final Interview
“When I’m not at my computer I’m reading almost constantly in my recliner with a gooseneck lamp angled over my shoulder. I’m a diligent underliner and I take notes in the margins almost constantly. This is as true with the books I read for research as it is for the fiction I savor and enjoy
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Best Books Lists I
Just as Christmas lights seem to go up earlier every year, so does the appearance of annual best books lists. This year they started showing up even before Halloween. B&N Best of the Year: Crime Fiction Edition From Barnes & Noble, via Novel Suspects. Best Books 2021 This page is the portal into Publishers Weekly’s
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Literary Links
S.A. Cosby on the Conversation Around Policing in America—And Why It Needs to Change S.A. Cosby describes the event, when he was 16, that taught him “this man who had barely graduated from high school, who still came to football games and hit on the cheerleaders, who expected and received free coffee and donuts at
Christmas Reading
Top 10 Christmas crime stories This list is from last year, but I came across it too late to include it in any of my holiday posts back then. So let’s enjoy it this year. 10 December eBook Deals for Quiet Nights by the Fire December eBook deals from Simon & Schuster. 33 Best Christmas
Literary Links
What I Learned About My Writing By Seeing Only The Punctuation I’ve saved this piece until after NaNoWriMo so as not to distract you from the all-important task of writing. But once you’ve completed that draft of your novel, take a look at this article (which I find fascinating) and see if it can help