There is something – well, in fact a lot – to be said for the writing experience one gains as a journalist. It’s Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours,on steroids, because you not only learn to write about subjects, but people as well. This background is evident in listening to Janelle Brown’s immersive novel, Pretty Things. I’m […]
A quick introduction: I’ve co-opted the name “quick story” of a once popular literary website, now sadly gone from cyberspace. I’ve never been a big fan of either “flash fiction,” although I once called my works under a thousand words “microfiction.” Flash suggests that the work won’t long remain in your thoughts, which is not […]
Why says you can’t learn and develop as a human being from reading fiction? Surely not Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who became a devotee of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels in the early days of his National Basketball Association career. He was awed by Holmes’ powers of observation and used his methods to improve his […]
There is a profound affinity between the writer and the carpenter. Each creates something with their hands and fingers. The something for a writer is a novel. On the same scale, the something for a carpenter is a house. Each something requires patience, planning, a choice of materials, a selection of methods, style, appearance. It […]
I received this email from Amazon a few days ago: Note that I have been accused of something, but it is not specified. Note also that I have been warned not to do this something again that I did and which offends Amazon. Because I wanted to understand this astounding threat, I read the Customer […]
Sometimes you’re hot. Sometimes you’re not. Sorry to say, this time you’re not, Ms. Lippman. You ran this one right off the rails. Hey, it happens to all artists once in a while. I saw – read – it happen with Lee Child, Kate Atkinson and even, yes even John Sandford. Perhaps we can blame […]
This Saturday’s book review is of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. Let me begin by saying Stephen Greenblatt is an absolutely marvelous storyteller. He captured my interest immediately and held it in an iron intellectual grip throughout his book, The Swerve: How the Word Became Modern. I truly don’t want to […]