writers

Monday various

  • The first four Harry Potter books condensed. Lovely. [via]
  • Geeks, Girls, and Media Misogyny: The Saga Continues:

    I can accept that questioning a actor or actress about their geek bona fides when part of their job involves selling their project to the public, including the geeky public, and especially when it’s a geeky project may seem like a good idea, except for one thing: it’s only women whose geek cred is called into question, time and again.

    If nothing else, arguing that sexy women can’t be geeks seems to be forgetting one simple thing: smart, geeky women are sexy.

  • Writers and Kitties. Does exactly what it says on the cat food tin. [via]
  • I think what I like most about this article from the New York Times about booksellers who are also authors is this revelation from author Jonathan Lethem:

    “I have the habit of accumulation,” he said. “When I first met my wife, my kitchen cabinets were full of books.

  • And finally, seriously Marie Claire? Seriously, “nutritionists”? Easily the most ridiculous is the woman who skips lunch and then eats an entire box of macaroons for dessert at night. There’s a lot of calorie counting going on in almost all of these, but very little healthy eating. [via]

Monday various

The write of way

This evening, I went here, to hear author Peter Straub talk about the craft and process of writing fiction. The talk, which was a lot of fun and full of lots of interesting “tricks of the trade” and stylistic “rules” (like, for instance, how your prose should never rhyme), was free to subscribers to One Story — which, thanks to Heather, I happen to be. And to think, I had never even heard of the Center for Fiction before, much less realized how close — a ten-minute walk — it is to my office.

That was about it for the rest of my day, which was spent back at work but with not much else to report.

I was deeply shocked and sad to learn that Elisabeth Sladen, Doctor Who‘s Sarah Jane Smith, had passed away. She wasn’t a formative part of my childhood — if anything, I was more familiar with her recent work on the series and still-on-the-air spin-off — but she did always seem like one of the best companions the show ever had. She died much too young and will be missed.

And that was Tuesday.

Mondaytopia

Yesterday, I heard that author Margaret Atwood might be speaking locally, at Adelphi University, and, after I’d confirmed it at their website this morning, I decided to attend. It was an interesting free lecture, held this evening on campus, about utopias and dystopias — or, more properly, Atwood’s own coined term ustopias, the intersection where the two collide and combine, where the dark underbelly of our imagined utopias are exposed and where the hope of a better future lurks in our worst imagined fears. She discussed both The Handmaid’s Tale and her two more recent novels, Oryx and Crake and After the Flood; and even though I’ve only read the first of those three books — she touched briefly on The Blind Assassin, which I’ve also read — overall it was an interesting and entertaining evening.

The rest of the day was pretty much just your regular Monday.

Monday various