There are two types of readers and two types of readers only. One type has several different books going. They might have one on their nightstand and one in their backpack, another stashed at work for lunchtime reading and who knows where else. I don’t understand these people. They have a wild book love life. […]
Reading Like a Writer
When Classics Leave You Cold
I saw Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby last weekend and… not my favorite movie. Partly I think the problem is that I love the book so extremely much. I’ve posted previously about how much the book moved me when I re-read it as an adult, and I don’t know if it’s quite possible for a movie to […]
Do You Read Books Straight Through?
“Lesendes Mädchen” – Gustav Adolph Hennig It has come to my attention that not everyone reads books chronologically. You know, starting on page one and finishing at The End. Reader Sabrina wrote me to say that she starts at the beginning, then skims and checks out the end to see if she wants to read […]
The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo and Using Contradictions to Develop Character
As I was (finally) starting to read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, which I had been warned gets off to a notoriously slow start, I was pondering whether I would have agreed to represent it if I had read it as a manuscript. And, you know, if I were actually still an agent. Which […]
Writing Time vs. Reading Time?
Sandro Botticelli, “Madonna del Magnifcat” Do you ever have that creeping feeling that if you added up all the hours people in the world spend writing books and all the hours people spend reading books that writing time might win? Are there more people out there writing right now than reading? What do you think? […]
Do Typos Annoy You?
Photo by Jeff Deck Let’s get this part out of the way: I’m a terrible copyeditor. I can’t spot typos for the life of me, my comma usage is suspect, and I wouldn’t know a dangling modifier from a split infinitive. As a result, I really don’t get very exercised when I spot typos online […]