3Vote!
BLOGGING MY LIFE - PAST - PRESENT AND MAYBE THE FUTURE! (Free subscription) | 11/09/2009
Cover of The Big Sleep Image via Wikipedia This week's pub quiz in the local Sunday paper had a round in it entitled 'Sleepy Heads' - either the question or the answer is connected to 'sleep' so that's quite helpful in this round. Question 6 was 'In which 1946 film did Humphrey Bogart play private eye Philip Marlowe?' The answer is of course 'The Big Sleep'. The Big Sleep was a Warner movie from 1946...
5Vote!
LAist (Free subscription) | 11/05/2009
Ted Danson, Jonathan Ames, and Jason Schwartzman from HBO's "Bored to Death" from Thomas Attila Lewis on Vimeo. The season finale of HBO's "Bored to Death" is this Sunday at 9:30pm and it is a must-watch. There are plenty of McShows out there but this is not one of them and nor will it ever be. The brainchild of author and memoirist Jonathan Ames, the show about an author and part-time...
7Vote!
Vulture (Free subscription) | 11/04/2009
Moderator John Hodgman noted that one of these people resembled a "drowned ghostly ship's captain." We'll leave it to you to figure out who. Although HBO has been widely praised (and rightly so) for their ability to cultivate hour-long, original dramas that strike a cultural chord, they haven't had quite the same record in developing half-hour comedies. For every bold success like Curb Your...
4Vote!
Recently Banned Literature (Free subscription) | 11/03/2009
California Classics The Creative Literature of the Golden State by Lawrence Clark Powell The Ward Ritchie Press Los Angeles (1971) [click to enlarge] Works and authors discussed: Anza’s California Expeditions , by Herbert E. Bolton; The Journey of the Flame , by Walter Nordhoff; Death Valley in ’49 , by William L. Manly; The Land of Little Rain , by Mary Austin; The Wonders of the Colorado...
Explore : Aldous Huxley,
Books,
Edward Weston,
Fine Arts,
Frank Norris,
Gertrude Atherton,
Harry Leon Wilson,
Helen Hunt,
Helen Hunt Jackson,
Jack London,
John Steinbeck,
Mark Twain,
Nathanael West,
Photographers,
Photography,
Robert Louis Stevenson,
Robinson Jeffers,
Upton Sinclair
5Vote!
Not PC (Free subscription) | 11/01/2009
There were busybodies all over the place over the weekend. Busybodies making sure that you didn’t smoke in bars, drink alcohol in public places and – most importantly! – that you didn’t talk into your phone while your car was moving. This was important work – or so all the busybodies seemed to think. Didn’t matter if you were eating while driving, or putting on your...
4Vote!
Book Soup Blog (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
Have you visited our new Los Angeles Noir section? Check it out.....if ya got the guts. It's overflowing with gangsters, gun molls, rogue cops, and con men. We've got all your favorite writers: Raymond Chandler, James Ellroy, James M Cain, Ross MacDonald...writing about the sun bleached streets of Los Angeles and the glittering denizens within. Drop in. Pick something up....if ya got the guts.
3Vote!
Crime Always Pays (Free subscription) | 10/30/2009
Uber-agent Darley Anderson was profiled in The Bookseller last week, with this snippet appearing near the end of the piece: What authors need For fiction, he wants his agency to look for character first and plot second among the over 1,300 submissions it gets monthly. “Good writing is the last thing, and we can work with authors on that.” The first thing to say about that is Darley Anderson’s...
7Vote!
Flavorwire (Free subscription) | 10/29/2009
The Morning News pointed us to the work of New Haven-based artist Kevin Van Aelst, who photographs household objects to explain basic life processes. According to his artist’s statement, “The images aim to examine the distance between the ‘big picture’ and the ‘little things’ in life — the banalities of our daily lives, and the [...] Related posts: Pic of the...
5Vote!
Not PC (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
Artist Michael Newberry reckons “the first time I saw Wray’s paintings I was haunted by similar moods I experienced in response to Raymond Chandler’s stories. The Corner of Chester and Green conveys the arid, hot, dusty and lonely atmosphere of the streets of Pasadena and surrounding areas of Los Angeles, especially when one is on foot. I find it surprising that these light brilliant...
4Vote!
Riordan's Desk (Free subscription) | 10/27/2009
I attended my 30 year college reunion at Stanford University this past weekend, and one of the events I participated in was the "Alumni Authors Meet and Greet" at the Stanford Bookstore . I've never had a signing at the bookstore, but after I got set up with a stack of Runoff paperbacks behind a table, I realized that the store had a special connection to my writing career. It was there that...
5Vote!
The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
OK, so I was a bit snarky about Raymond Chandler recently. But it’s time to forgive and forget ... and give our attention instead to the publication of an oversize new paperback book called Daylight Noir: Raymond Chandler’s Imagined City (Charta). Inside its covers are photographs by Catherine Corman, the daughter of filmmaker Roger Corman and the editor of Joseph Cornell’s Dreams...
6Vote!
Bookgasm (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
If there has been one constant in Michael Connelly’s excellent 13-or-so novels of Harry Bosch, it’s the city of Los Angeles. Not since Raymond Chandler has L.A. been so essential to a crime series, even to a few of its titles: ECHO PARK, ANGELS FLIGHT and (slightly more esoteric) THE NARROWS. While Bosch himself has [...]
3Vote!
tea stains (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
• Meet the technical requirements of the publisher. • Spend time on your covering letter and synopsis. Do lots of research on what to write, but in the end it might be something personal that heightens an agent’s interest. • Pause for Thought: Raymond Chandler called it ‘brewing.’ Put your novel away in a drawer and return to it fresh. • Make the novel as good...
5Vote!
The Written World (Free subscription) | 10/22/2009
New York Times bestselling author China Miéville delivers his most accomplished novel yet, an existential thriller set in a city unlike any other–real or imagined. When a murdered woman is found in the city of Beszel, somewhere at the edge of Europe, it looks to be a routine case for Inspector Tyador Borlú of the Extreme Crime Squad. But as he investigates, the evidence points to...
5Vote!
The Rap Sheet (Free subscription) | 10/21/2009
This started when I began watching Bored to Death on HBO. In the series, the hero--a mystery novelist who becomes a private eye after he can’t finish his second book--is influenced by Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel, Farewell, My Lovely.I realized that I hadn’t read that book for a long time, so I dug up a copy--and quickly discovered that it contained lots of material which hinted...
Videos