SF Signal (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Interviews/Profiles New The Business of Writing video series with Tad Williams ( The Writer's Journey , Why Did You Become a Writer? ). (via Cheryl K. Morgan ) The Dragon Page interviews J.C. Hutchins (podcast). Larry Nolen interviews David Anthony Durham . The Link interviews Cory Doctorow . Dead Robots Society interviews J.C. Hutchins (podcast). Mihai Adascalitei interviews Sebastian A. Corn . The...
DYSPEPSIA GENERATION (Free subscription) | 11/19/2009
Read it. “People would tell me, ‘How could a writer like you – that we like – like a fascist, an imperialist dog?’ ” Gaiman, who started his career as a graphic novelist steeped in fantasy and science-fiction, commented: “They usually had not read any Kipling, and had [...]
The Telegraph (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Neil Gaiman was attacked by fans for professing that Rudyard Kipling - the first Briton ever to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature - was a literary hero of his.
Beattie's Book Blog (Free subscription) | 11/18/2009
Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book wins the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009 Neil Gaiman, commonly known as the ‘rock star’ of the literary world, is revealed as the winner of the Booktrust Teenage Prize 2009. His book The Graveyard Book saw off competition from five other authors including Patrick Ness who was nominated for a second year. Ness won the prize last year with The Knife of...
Cultural Offering.com (Free subscription) | 11/16/2009
Sol Sternberg has a great education article at City Journal about E.D. HIrsch's Cultural Literacy movement - the concept that early in schooling, children need to understand certain Core Knowledge subjects (that the education establishment positively hates): "For example, the Core Knowledge curriculum specifies that in English language arts, all second-graders read poems by Robert Louis Stevenson,Emily...
The Corner (Free subscription) | 11/13/2009
Some of the best Christmas gifts you can give to those little darlings are NR ’s acclaimed children’s books. We’ve got four great offers. The first is Volumes 1 and 2 of The National Review Treasury of Classic Children’s Literature . Two big, handsome, illustrated hard-covers featuring wholesome, fantastic, Bill Buckley-selected tales written by literary giants from Mark Twain,...
Book Soup Blog (Free subscription) | 11/07/2009
Harper Collins has published a collection of children's book picks from over 100 actors, writers, artists, politicians, and activists. These are the books that made a difference to them, the books that changed their lives. I asked the employees at Book Soup for their favorite children's books, and these are the books we picked....some will be familiar, some have been forgotten and some are just crazy!...
god is a giant crab (Free subscription) | 10/26/2009
Keats was an abused orphan, but he did all right. Except for that tuberculosis. "The Eve of Saint Agnes" would make an okay soft-core non-consensual literotica/porn. "Windfall" is how apples get to the ground. Love that never achieves will always be warm. Something, something, the Irish are oppressed. No potatoes, bitches sure are hungry. Everyone Tennyson knows dies, but that's...
rob mclennan's blog (Free subscription) | 10/18/2009
Karen Connelly is the author of nine books of best-selling nonfiction, fiction, and poetry, the most recent being Burmese Lessons, a love story , a memoir about her experiences in Burma and on the Thai-Burma border . She has won the Pat Lowther Award for her poetry, the Governor General’s Award for her non-fiction, and Britain’s Orange Broadband Prize for New Fiction for her first novel...
Ambling Along the Aqueduct (Free subscription) | 10/12/2009
I see that over at the Sci-fi Wire , Paul Di Filippo is asking Why does the jury that awards the Nobel Prize for Literature hate us? By "us," I mean, of course, hardcore writers and partisans of fantastika, people unafraid and unashamed to boldly identify themselves primarily with the genres of science fiction, fantasy and horror, rather than with mainstream, mimetic literature. I think I...
The Guardian (Free subscription) | 10/08/2009
TS Eliot is given the title of 'nation's favourite poet' by an online poll hosted by the BBC to mark National Poetry Day The rousing strains of Rudyard Kipling's "If" might have catapulted him to a landslide victory in the vote for the nation's favourite poem back in 1995, but the reading tastes of the UK appear to have taken a more modernist turn over the following 14 years with TS Eliot...
The Plashing Vole (Free subscription) | 10/01/2009
It's the American Library Association's banned books week , as Intelliwench reminds me - more an American thing, as the European countries tend not to ban books much any more (though Ireland in particular had a strong track record in closing its citizens' eyes). It's easier to ban books in the US because it's a very democratic country - there are elected citizens on school boards, in the dog-catcher's...
All of life's questions. (Free subscription) | 09/29/2009
The Graveyard Book's name may seem a bit awkward at first but then you realise the connection (and of course later you read the author's ode to Rudyard Kipling) with The Jungle Book . Take all the delights of that one and make the setting an old crumbly graveyard; replace animals with ghosts and you got Neil Gaiman's wonderful, charming new book. Full of lovely characters, an easy, fast-paced story...
14theditch (Free subscription) | 09/29/2009
Here's the list of ghost stories left in the comments section of my post the other day about your favorite ghost story . I'm not familiar with all of them. Some that I am, I'm skeptical as to whether I'd consider them ghost stories, but I'm not about to disabuse anyone of their notion as to what makes a ghost story. Big favorites were "Oh, Whistle and I'll come to you, My Lad" by M.R. James,...
Cozy Chicks (Free subscription) | 09/24/2009
I came across a folder of rejection letters from 2005, the year I went in search of an agent. I’d almost forgotten about this painful compilation of letters, but I pulled it out and began to sift through the form letters, the brief comments, and the manuscript requests. I signed with Jessica Faust of Book Ends that year and I am just as grateful to her for taking a chance on me today, as I was...
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