Literature
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Address to the Haggis
Happy Burns Night, everyone! I hope you enjoyed some haggis. Here’s Robbie Burns’ ode tae the great chieftain o’ the pudding-race. There’s a translation on Wikipedia. Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the pudding-race! Aboon them a’ yet tak your place, Painch, tripe, or thairm: Weel are ye wordy o’a grace As lang’s my arm. The groaning trencher there ye fill, Your hurdies like a distant hill, Your pin was help to mend a mill In time o’need, While thro’ your pores the dews distil Like amber bead. His knife see rustic Labour dight, An’ cut you up wi’ ready sleight, Trenching your gushing entrails bright, Like…
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Annihilate a Whole Culture
I’m listening to Nineteen Eighty-Four right now. I read the first half in high school, and it’s been haunting me ever since as an unfinished read. My memory is of a book filled with big ideas, but it’s also wonderfully written. The girl with dark hair was coming towards them across the field. With what seemed a single movement she tore off her clothes and flung them disdainfully aside. Her body was white and smooth, but it aroused no desire in him, indeed he barely looked at it. What overwhelmed him in that instant was admiration for the gesture with which she had thrown her clothes aside. With its grace…
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The Little Lies
Death explains to his granddaughter, Susan, why belief is important in Discworld. “All right,” said Susan. “I’m not stupid. You’re saying that humans need … fantasies to make life bearable.” Really? As if it was some kind of pink pill? No. Humans need fantasy to be human. To be the place where the falling angel meets the rising ape. “Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little —” Yes. As practice. You have to start out learning to believe the little lies. “So we can believe the big ones?” Yes. Justice. Mercy. Duty. That sort of thing. “They’re not the same at all!” You think so? Then take the universe and grind it down…
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Sum: Mary
Here’s one of my favourites from Sum. Not sure if this embedded Google Book will show up in feeds, so you might need to click through.
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Book Beginnings
A Few More Pages has a weekly meme called Book Beginnings, in which you share the first line or two from your current read. I’m finishing up a fun one right now, so I thought I’d share. In the afterlife you relive all your experiences, but this time with the events reshuffled into a new order: all the moments that share a quality are grouped together. — Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman I’ve been spoiled, as this book contains forty great opening lines.
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Neil Gaiman and Connie Willis
Neil Gaiman posted this on his weblog a bit ago. It’s him and Connie Willis on a panel together talking about their craft and influences. If you have any interest in writing, it’s an interesting hour.
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Locke and Key Trailer
Locke and Key was being made into a television series, but unfortunately Fox passed on the pilot. Looks like it could have been interesting, although it is hard to tell just from a trailer.
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Dawkins on Religious Indoctrination
Finishing up The God Delusion, and this jumped out at me as being very true. I think we should all wince when we hear a small child being labelled as belonging to some particular religion or another. Small children are too young to decide their views on the origins of the cosmos, of life and of morals. The very sound of the phrase ‘Christian child’ or ‘Muslim child’ should grate like fingernails on a blackboard… Our society, including the non-religious sector, has accepted the preposterous idea that it is normal and right to indoctrinate tiny children in the religion of their parents, and to slap religious labels on them –…
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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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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…