shiny things in messy little piles

Month: February 2012

Brief Note: Who’s in Your Twitter?

Com­ing under the head­ing of Don’t Put Your­self in the Posi­tion to be Jealous.

I have a twit­ter stream full of authors whose work I adore, or whose way of work­ing I admire. Every time one of them gets a good review, pub­lish­es a book, or places a sto­ry, I cheer. I love that the world is going to see more of their work.

But the ones whose stuff I think is mediocre and who I think have cho­sen to be mediocre. Um, no. I don’t have the time to spend with their psyches.

#FridayReads — 3.feb

This week was all about the short sto­ries. Many avail­able free on the ‘net

From the World SF blog. The City of Silence by Ma Boy­ong. A lit­tle too easy update of 1984 for the web ruled city. I sus­pect that there is bet­ter mate­r­i­al by the same writer.

The House of Aunts. Zen ChoTo at GigaN­oto­Saurus. I don’t usu­al­ly read hor­ror. I loved this one. A teenag­er hemmed in by a pas­sel of nosy, inter­fer­ing, undy­ing­ly loy­al aun­ties. A girl’s first crush and a lot of humor.

I read a cou­ple of sto­ries writ­ten by some­one I sort of know that dis­ap­point­ed me great­ly. There is zero chance that he’d find this lit­tle post and yet… I can’t bring myself to point you all to an instruc­tive exam­ple of flat writ­ing. Con­flict avoid­ed by writ­ing about the con­flict rather than the sto­ries — whew.

I’m read­ing a lot about the act (crime?) of writ­ing. Most­ly web stuff — most­ly lost in space.

On the longer form front.

An Ever­last­ing Meal — Tamar Adler. A cook­book worth read­ing for both the ideas and the prose. I’ve just start­ed. Pleased with it.

Tons of stuff land­ing on the Kin­dle and in the post office box. A Dorothy Park­er bio, Fran Lebowitz (smart ass girls — could it be a theme?) Osama — Lavie Tid­har (alter­nate present polit­i­cal), Palimpset — CV (how cities grow — folk­loric.)  Sam­ples of a hand­ful of things.

It was a week for hunt­ing and gath­er­ing and plun­der­ing oth­er peo­ples’ read­ing lists. Next week — cook­ing and eat­ing my haul.

Hap­py Fri­day my dears.