Dave Eggers Zeitoun books
walkwhilereading: Dave Eggers: From ‘staggering genius’ to America’s conscience Interview with Rachel Cooke in this weekends Observer.

walkwhilereading:

Dave Eggers: From ‘staggering genius’ to America’s conscience

Interview with Rachel Cooke in this weekends Observer.


publishing books ebooks economics
Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book (via austinkleon)

Math of Publishing Meets the E-Book (via austinkleon)


books poster Works Progress Administration advice
What a great idea! A WPA poster from the 1930s, via booklover, bugseatbooks, and lotusohm.

What a great idea! A WPA poster from the 1930s, via booklover, bugseatbooks, and lotusohm.


cars bicycles walking business
Since businesses are obliged by zoning restrictions to locate far away from residential areas, most Americans drive to every store they visit. This means that store visits are often discrete trips that must be undertaken consciously and planned out ahead of time. As a consequence, shoppers will want to visit stores that carry the most diverse inventory—Wal-Mart, Costco, et al.—and avoid shops that specialize in one particular kind of good—the local paint store or flower shop, for instance.
Why Conservatives Should Care About Transit, a really wonderful list of the myriad reasons why car-dependency weakens families, entrepreneurship, and the bonds within a community. Walkable neighborhoods aren’t just for hippies and enviro-nerds! (via marco)

books bookshelves treasures discovery
I can’t imagine what it will be like for future generations not to experience getting to know someone by scanning their bookshelves, learning, by their lovingly worn condition, which novels they read over and over and over, and, by their perfectly unbroken spines, which their best intentions never quite got them to. Finding out that sometimes they needed a good mystery or thriller, or that they went through a serious Faulkner phase by spotting all those matching Vintage paperback editions lined up in a row.
thebronzemedal, in reaction to Kevin Hartnett’s article on bookshelves

books new media ebooks
A chief virtue of digital books is said to be their economical size—they take up no space at all!—but even a megabyte seems bulky compared to what can be conveyed in the few cubic feet of a bookshelf. What other vessel is able to hold with such precision, intricacy, and economy, all the facets of your life?
Kevin Hartnett, writing in In Our Parent’s Bookshelves for The Millions (via thebronzemedal)

writing new media fiction the future

Long Live Fiction: A Guide to Fiction Online

The internet isn’t killing fiction! While it may be shrinking attention spans, it’s also giving new writers a change to grow and learn from one another. David Backer takes a look at several such communities for The Millions.

One of the sites he mentions is Fictionaut, which is invitation-only. I really like it. I received an invitation a little while ago and already have a story up: Driving Directions.


C.S. Lewis bicycles cars walking
The deadly power of rushing about wherever I pleased had not been given me. I measured distances by the standard of man, man walking on his two feet, not by the internal combustion engine. I had not been allowed to deflower the very idea of distance; in return I possessed “infinite riches” in what would have been to motorists “a little room.” The truest and most horrible claim made for modern transport is that it “annihilates distance.” It does. It annihilates one of the most glorious gifts we have been given… A modern boy travels a hundred miles with less sense of liberation and pilgrimage and adventure than his grandfather got from traveling ten.
C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy. This is one of the reasons I love biking and walking places, even for short distances: without a car, travel is a conscious choice, and requires a degree of planning and forethought that car-based transportation lacks. (via beenthinking, via mills)

books reading lists Tim O'Brien Oxford American

February reading list

January was slow going, and February’s not looking too good, either. It’s been a busy time at work, and I’ve been trying (not so successfully, sadly) to get more writing done. That being said, here’s where I stand:

Fiction

  • Annabel Scheme — finished!
  • Tainaron — finished!
  • NEW The Things They Carried — in progress
  • The Yiddish Policeman’s Union
  • What is the What
  • Best Stories from the Indian Classics
  • And You Shall Know Our Velocity!
  • Love in the Ruins

Nonfiction

  • The Portable MFA in Creative Writing — finished!
  • Sickness Unto Death — in progress
  • Writing Down the Bones — in progress
  • The Artful Edit

Extra: I received the first issue of my Oxford American subscription, and love it!

So that’s three books in progress at the same time, which isn’t really all that unusual for me. Also I had to add The Things They Carried for a class I’m taking, making that the third time I’ve had to read the book as an assigned text. O’Brien is fine with me, but could a professor assign In the Lake of the Woods instead? That would be great.


writing advice lists

Ten rules, an edited list

The Guardian has published a list of various writers’ own personal rules of writing. Via bobulate, who’s taken the time to further distill the Guardian’s list into a very brief and helpful form.


science fiction literature genre

Genres of Fiction, and Why They Aren’t Discrete Entities

Rachel Swirsky, guestblogging for Jeff VanderMeer, explains a common problem for SF fans and writers: any SF that is also good literature gets reassigned away from the category of SF — leaving only the “bad stuff” as true SF. (On the other hand, this goes both ways: many SF fans won’t touch literary fiction. It’s too “boring.”)

The comments are very instructive as well. (A rarity!) VanderMeer, Swirsky, and author Nick Mamatas all have good things to say.


new media journalism hope
We’re returning to an era when we get news from more than one source again, human beings, rather than one monopoly newspaper sending out as few people as possible so it can make as much money as possible. It’s a new golden age.
Paul Bass, “one of the most watched exemplars of scrappy, low-budget, high-impact local journalism — based on reporting, not attitude and opinion — through his New Haven Independent and Valley Independent Sentinel in the Naugatuck Valley.” Both sites are very well designed. Quoted in a NYT article about the new era of local journalism.

Kay Ryan community college bicycles awesome
I simply want to celebrate the fact that right near your home, year in and year out, a community college is quietly — and with very little financial encouragement — saving lives and minds. I can’t think of a more efficient, hopeful or egalitarian machine, with the possible exception of the bicycle.
Kay Ryan (via austinkleon)

Natalie Goldberg writing advice
We have to look at our own inertia, insecurities, self-hate, fear that, in truth, we have nothing valuable to say. When your writing blooms out of the back of this garbage compost, it is very stable. You are not running from anything. You can have a sense of artistic security. If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones

Obama Battlestar Galactica science fiction funny

Obama Depressed, Distant Since 'Battlestar Galactica' Series Finale

The Onion, of course. This is absolutely perfect. (via epippen)