Wait until next year

Putting off what could be done tomorrow, today

Tag: reading

Sunday Reading

Never on Sunday poster

By no popular demand whatsoever, a return of one of those posts with links to things I’ve been reading, or planning to read, with little or no context whatsoever. Hopefully you’ll find something here worth reading. Read the rest of this entry »

Failed fragments

fragmented photo of men with flag1

Mainstream literary fiction is falling to pieces.

2

This may not be a bad thing. Read the rest of this entry »

Bad versions of great writing

man in room, woman entering room

As one of those (annoying) people who seems to prefer reading about writing to actual writing (1) I found myself reading this rather exhaustive essay about the writer and editor Gordon Lish. The author collates examples of Lish’s recommendations, thoughts and teachings on how to write, organising them into a coherent methodology for writing Lish-style.
Read the rest of this entry »

You aren’t what you eat

A family gathered around a series of vending machines

Amongst all the goodness in the first issue of the New Inquiry magazine, one article in particular stood out – The Resentment Machine, by Freddy De Boer. It is available in full in that link back there, so you should probably read that rather than this, but anyway, it challenged me in all number of ways (I should probably offer some sort of summary here, but even after multiple readings I won’t do it justice and you’d be better off just reading the real thing, or failing that reading what follows in the next paragraph…), but one quote near the end particularly got to me. Read the rest of this entry »

Ever wish a book would never end? (Richard Ford’s Bascombe Trilogy)

The Lay of the Land book cover - Richard FordFinally, after much procrastination, I have finished Richard Ford’s Bascombe Trilogy. That is, The Sportswriter, Independence Day and The Lay of the Land. It hasn’t taken me so long because the books were hard work, far from it. It has taken me so long because I haven’t wanted to leave the life of the narrator, Frank Bascombe. Read the rest of this entry »

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started