When you had to write in school, you were probably placed under certain all-encompassing bans. “Never use the first-person” is a perennial favorite among teachers. I once had a respected professor who instructed students not to use semicolons. Now, the semicolon is a perfectly legitimate punctuation mark and has been put to many venerable uses….
Tag: books
A Time For Generosity
The Authors Guild has announced that, as a curative to writers’ falling incomes, it will champion a national Public Lending Right program. The President’s Letter didn’t lay out the details, and PLR programs vary in their particulars (thirty-five countries already possess some version of it). The essential idea, however, is that public libraries will pay…
Do You Want to Go?
The Greatest Showman (now in theaters!) opens with an exuberant musical number titled – this follows logically – “The Greatest Show”. It’s on YouTube, of course, though merely listening pales against viewing it and, even more, viewing it in theaters. Part of the brilliance of this song is that it captures what made the greatest show…
Promises, Promises
Let’s talk about promises. To narrow the field, let’s talk about the promises the producers of culture make to us regarding their shows and movies and books. Now, I don’t mean advertising slogans (BEST OF THE YEAR), which are not promises so much as exercises in hope and hype. I mean the implicit promises of…
CSFF Blog Tour: Personal Predilections
As a rule, it is easy, when one dislikes a book, to see why. Obvious, even. So it was an interesting experience to get about three-quarters through Storm Siren and try to figure out why I was just waiting for the book to change. True, the section I had been reading was less than action-packed,…
In Praise of LibriVox
Some time ago my brother told me about an organization called LibriVox that offers countless audiobooks free of charge. And I did not check it out, because I have never been that crazy about audiobooks. I do aerobics for my exercise. (Yes, we’re still on the same subject; stick with me.) The aerobics are okay,…
Four Good Reasons
I decided to go for a short blog post this week. I have other projects demanding time, not least among them preparing for the next CSFF blog tour. Appropriately, then, I am devoting this post to explaining why I enjoy the tour. (1) Free books. Or, as the more dignified trade term goes, review copies….
Review: North! Or Be Eaten
So the Igiby family is on their way to Kimera, to join the colony of rebels hidden on the vast Ice Prairies. The Nameless One still grasps for them, stretching long fingers across the Dark Sea. His trolls, his armies of Fangs are on the hunt for the Jewels of Anniera. If the Igibys manage…
Review: On the Edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness
Far away, on the edge of the Dark Sea of Darkness, lies the land of Skree. It is filled with quiet, gentle folk, which made it easy pickings for Gnag the Nameless. Now the country is infested by the Fangs of Dang. They’re stupid and lazy, but make up for it with their indefatigable brutality….
Review: Ice
Suppose you went to the moon, and suppose you found somebody already there. Frozen, so no matter how many questions you ask, he’s never going to answer. But the answers have to come from somewhere, and they do. C. S. Lewis once said that it is always shocking to meet life where we thought we…