10 ways to celebrate banned books week.

A literary map of Manhattan, where “imaginary New Yorkers lived, worked, played, drank, walked and looked at ducks.”

And here’s another literary map (see above), this one a little simpler but no less pretty.

The Chronicle Review thoughtfully answers the question: what are books good for?

Have writers always gone to college?

Think your day job is awful? Try these:

“I worked the night shift for a dating/matchmaking service before it was done by computers. Had to go to the homes and apartments of depressed and lonely people who called at 2 in the morning and wanted to find out how to meet a mate. Had to keep calling in to the main office so they knew I hadn’t been ravaged. Never would tell me if they actually had matches for the women. I didn’t interview any men that would have been dateworthy. Quit as soon as I sold a short story.”

“Singing birthday/anniversary/congratulation tunes to total strangers in a gorilla suit. (The only way it could have been worse was if they’d made me wear the Tarzan loincloth, but I didn’t have the abs for it.)”

More bad day job for writer stories here.

Accurate science fiction.

I have a friend who’s read almost every classic piece of literature there is, on her own.  A few of them we had to read in school, but all those others…yeah, she read them on her own time.  For enjoyment.

I hear a lot of people do this sort of thing; pick up an old, thick book that’s been embedded in the literary canon for centuries and read it in a hammock or by the fire, soaking up the famous words for their own benefit.  It sounds impressive.  Especially to me – because almost every classic novel I’ve read has bored me into a coma.

It occurred to me that this was going to be an issue among my peers as soon as I hit high school.  While all my other writing / book nerd buddies found Jane Austin to be a delightful romp, I had to virtually skim the chapters because it annoyed me too much to read slowly.  And while they were all recieving A’s on their essays about The Awakening, I was busy getting the lowest essay grade of my life, because all I could stand to write about was how much I hated the protagonist and good lord why was she so selfish?!  My teacher told me I missed the point of the story.  Maybe I did.  But whatever.  That book pissed me off.  Big time. Read more »