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How to Make Spells
I don’t think I’d read a word of Atwood before finding her In Love With Raymond Chandler for the last post, but I’ve been browsing through, and thoroughly enjoying, some of her poetry tonight. Spelling My daughter plays on the floor with plastic letters, red, blue & hard yellow, learning how to spell, spelling, how to make spells. I wonder how many women denied themselves daughters, closed themselves in rooms, drew the curtains so they could mainline words. A child is not a poem, a poem is not a child. there is no either/or. However. I return to the story of the woman caught in the war & in labour,…
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Literary Smack Talk
Mark Twain on Jane Austen: I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ I want to dig her up and hit her over the skull with her own shin-bone. [via Flavorwire – The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults In History] Oh, those drama queens. To counter-balance the negative, Margaret Atwood on Raymond Chandler: An affair with Raymond Chandler, what a joy! Not because…
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Lost At Sea
Lost At Sea by Bryan Lee O’Malley Format: Original Graphic Novel Originally Published: 2003 Publisher: Oni Press Before Scott Pilgrim, Bryan Lee O’Malley wrote a stand-alone graphic novel about a girl who believes her soul’s been taken by a cat. It’s a coming-of-age story for Raleigh, a recent Vancouver high-school graduate on a road trip in California with three school peers she barely knows. As far as coming-of-age stories are concerned, I tend to love the Spielberg-esque child to teen variation and despise the overly-angsty teen/twenty-something to adult variation. This definitely leans towards the latter, and there’s no denying that it has its fair share of angst, but it is…
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Wolverine
Wolverine By Claremont & Miller by Chris Claremont Illustrated By: Frank Miller, Paul Smith Format: Trade Paperback Comic Collects: Wolverine #1-4, Uncanny X-Men #172-173 Originally Published: 1982/1983 Publisher: Marvel As a short, angry, hairy Canadian, I’ve always felt a special kinship with Wolverine. If there was ever a superhero I could relate to, it’s him. And if it wasn’t him, it might have to be Puck, and that would just be sad. I’m the best there is in what I do. But what I do best isn’t very nice. Wolverine had been part of the X-Men for six or seven years at this point, but this was the first solo…
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The High Window
The High Window by Raymond Chandler Published: 1942 I read The Lady in the Lake and Farewell, My Lovely in university and always meant to read more of Chandler’s work. The High Window was actually assigned reading in that same class, but I wasn’t able to get to it. I really enjoyed the other two books, but that enjoyment mostly came out of the atmosphere and wit and imagery in the writing. The plots felt to me like something you hung on to and let drag you through the prose. They were a little too convoluted to really focus on or care too much about, so you just let it…
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How To Write a Book
I occassionally like to pretend that I’m going to write a book someday, but unless I’ve been writing in my sleep without knowing it, this isn’t likely to happen. I do, however, still enjoy reading about writing. I have a shelf full of writing guides and memoirs as proof of that. Wired’s Steve Silberman recently asked 23 authors what they wish they’d known before attempting to write a book, and he listed their answers in a blog post. The core advice seems to be: Download Scrivener – the beloved Mac writing/organization tool, now with a Windows beta. Write something, fool – write every day, no matter how you feel, no…
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What Song Are You Listening To?
Someone named Ty Cullen on YouTube asked random New Yorkers on the street what they were listening to: Inspired by that, someone in London did the same: These reminded me of those Fifty People, One Question videos: And that’s how you lose an hour to YouTube…
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I Am Legend
I Am Legend (audio) by Richard Matheson Published: 1954 Firstly, I didn’t think the movie as was quite as bad as everyone made it out to be, but I can see where they’re coming from if they had read the book first. While it feels similar in atmosphere, it does differ in ways that reek somewhat of Hollywood tampering, and it ends up completely disregarding a fairly key point to the story. Robert Neville is a lone and immune survivor of a disease that turns people to vampires. His life is a tedious cycle of keeping the vampires at bay during the night and hunting them during the day. At…
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Shapes of Stories
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Blind and Hopeless
Bill Masen stumbles upon a blind couple in an apartment building hallway, in The Day of the Triffids: As I stepped outside, another door farther down the passage opened. I stopped, and stood still where I was. A young man came out, leading a fair-haired girl by the hand. As she stepped over the threshold he released his grasp. “Wait just a minute, darling,” he said. He took three or four steps on the silencing carpet. His outstretched hands found the window which ended the passage. His fingers went straight to the catch and opened it. I had a glimpse of a low-railed, ornamental balcony outside. “What are you doing,…