May 2013
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One Real and One Fake Conversation I Had with a...
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Him: I've gotten really into African writers.
Me: Oh cool, like a specific country or time period?
Him: No, not really. I like it all.
...
Him: My professor has just an awesome African accent.
Me: Oh, well where is he from?
Him: Nigeria.
...
Him: He tells us just these brutal stories of African life, like will just say off hand that this guy cuts pregnant women's belly's open. Like, what?
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Him: I've gotten really into European writers.
Me: Oh cool, like a specific country or time period?
Him: No, not really. I like it all.
...
Him: My professor has just an awesome European accent.
Me: Where is he from?
Him: Austria
...
Him: He tells us just these brutal stories of European life, like will just say off hand that this guy imprisoned and raped his daughter for decades. Like, what?
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“In the second season, there has been a waterboarding, an assassination attempt...”
– Network TV Is Broken. So How Does Shonda Rhimes Keep Making Hits? - NYTimes.com
Oh my god, guys, I love Scandal so much.
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Gif Metadata →
muspec:
So I’ve been wondering: the tumblarians here more experienced than me seem to have an unending supply of response gifs for posts. What kind of metadata do you use to keep track of them?
I’m answering this on my personal blog (rather than over at LJ) because it relates to sort of a larger personal project. For two years now I have been running a Monday-Friday morning email...
April 2013
14 posts
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“Every writer has changed these stories, and I have changed them, and I’m sure...”
– Author Q&A: Hanan al-Shaykh’s New Shahrazad | Library Journal
I just loved doing this Q&A, having this amazing conversation with a writer and woman I admire a lot. Hanan al-Shaykh’s new retelling of One Thousand and One Nights (with an intro by Mary Gaitskill!) comes out next month.
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“Wenclas has defended Hermitt’s work by saying, “There can be no rewrites.…...”
– Tom Bissell, in “Protesting All Fiction Writers” at The Believer (an essay actually from 2003). I’m sitting in an optometrist’s waiting room and laughing pretty hard at this.
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“He imagines a shadow, math-based parallel world that exists not just beside but...”
– Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, in which Billy Lynn contemplates the world of finance.
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“He’d like to hang with Beyoncé in a nice way, get to know her by doing...”
– Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, in which Billy Lynn contemplates Beyoncé.
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“[Renaming is] also a profound expression of power, a way for a new group of...”
– PANK Blog / The Lightning Room with Molly McArdle
Simon Jacobs asked me a bunch of questions about my story “The Wearied Cords” (which appeared in PANK’s December issue) and I did my best to try and answer them!
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Public Statement
I love both summaries and summarizing. I think this is the root of why I love movie reviews better than book reviews in general. (Though I love both very much.) I do think summary can be a critical act, though—one of the great strengths of film criticism is its ability to intellectually engage with a story while describing it.
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“Borges was famous for his love of British literature and especially its...”
– Adult Fables and Literary | Classic Returns, Library Journal
I am really genuinely excited to have taken over LJ’s “Classic Returns” column, where I’ll get to talk about my favorite old books that are coming back into print. Above is a little snippet on a new collection of...
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“Not knowing Chillingsworth’s true identity or purpose (which is—guess...”
– Reading the Classics: Hester Prynne is a Puritan Super Babe | Bitch Media
This is what happens when you let me recap old books.
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“Jesus was a writing instructor and also an editor at a major publishing house....”
– Stephen Elliott, in today’s Daily Rumpus.
March 2013
9 posts
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On Resisting the Urge to Craft
Sometimes I get what feels like an overwhelming urge to take up embroidery. But I don’t really want to do that, I tell myself. But then again maybe I do really want to do that, I say again.
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Three Reviews
The Mythical Bill: A Neurological Memoir by Jody McAuliffe
Playwright McAuliffe’s (theater, Duke Univ.; My Lovely Suicides) brief, impressionistic memoir meditates on the life of her father, William, who died in a VA hospital when she was 20. A veteran of World War II’s Pacific theater, William developed torticollis after returning home, which caused his neck to twist and his head to...
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February 2013
13 posts
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“I do not think I ever opened a book in my life which had not something to say...”
– Captain Harville and Anne Elliot in Persuasion. I love this line: “I will not allow books to prove anything.” From a woman such as Austen, no less!
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“She hoped to be wise and reasonable in time; but alas! alas! she must confess to...”
– Persuasion, killing it as per usual.
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January 2013
24 posts
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thelifeguardlibrarian asked: persuasion is a) i think the most lovely thing she ever wrote (mostly as anne elliot is the most lovey creature she ever wrote) and b) remarkable because you CAN'T read it, and really feel it, until you're old enough! which is like, the point!
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