Author name: Booksquare

We don’t know where to begin. No really, we’re quite finger-tied at the moment. Who let Barbara Cartland appear in public with blue eyeshadow? Did the woman not have people to help her? That’s cruel and unusual punishment. Being dead is surely not enough insulation for this punishment. Cartland, the famously prolific (and dead) author, apparently left behind a wealth of unpublished works. But never fear, someone has seen to that this state of affairs will not remain. Every word that ever spewed from the woman’s brain will be available for public consumption. And this, we believe is wrong. Very […]

And, yes, we’re linking to this article simply so we can use this stupid headline. We’re contemplating doing a Google search to see how many other clever souls have done the same thing…no, we’re over the idea. Amazing how fleeting these plans for doing research can be. Terry Southern, in addition to all of his other accomplishments, invented the current spate of reality programming (in which wealthy people make fun of desperate people). Not familiar with Southern (despite our lame headline?). Don’t worry you’re not alone. His heyday happened when many of us were mere glimmers or sporting diapers instead

What with one thing and the other, we weren’t able to properly digest the fact that William Safire is leaving the New York Times. Unlike most, our first thought was what about “On Language”? It won’t surprise most of our readers to know we often disagree with Safire politically — and sometimes we disagreed with him linguistically. That two people (or more) could diverge so dramatically is the beauty of the English language (it is also the bane of the English language). However, while his op-ed column is retiring, there is hope in other sections: Safire, 74, said yesterday he

How often is it that one website, on one day, manages to get us all worked up in three different ways? We like to think this is a relatively rare occurence — we’re really fine with self-delusion. It protects us from the stresses of modern life. So today, at Wired, we have a) an article catching us up with Jeff Tweedy (seems to be doing much better); b) a discussion of copyright issues, specifically those about giving work away for free while attaining commercial success of sorts; and, c) a piece about the mysterious “numbers stations” on shortwave radio. For

Arguably, the great romantic story of our youth was that of Luke and Laura. Do not pretend you don’t know what we mean. Though things began inauspiciously, we found ourselves rooting for these star-crossed…well, their triumph was ours. But Luke and Laura as an old married couple? Dull. It was the conflict, the battles, the rising above ordinary humanity. Hmm, something tells us we may be projecting false memories on this posting. For writers, conflict is our Holy Grail. Writing a book where everyone gets along is sort of like watching paint dry. Then someone had the courage to challenge

We inadvertently took this weekend off. All manner of things had piled up over the past few months, and we tackled some long overdue projects. Yes, finally, we got a haircut. Also, we made a huge mess in the kitchen right after the husband scrubbed the whole room to a suspicious gleam. Life was good. Now it’s Monday, and we’re recalling why this particular day is greeted with such dread: the human mind, while amazingly resilient, adopts to “I’ll never have to work again” in just one day. Undoing the damage takes approximately five. We’re entering Week Three of the

Today was a bit exciting for us — it marked the third day we hit the gym this week (lack of exercise makes us dull and chubby). More to come on this. We also cleaned out our inbox. Usually we do this on Friday, but, well, see previous about the NaNo Villain in our life. We accomplished all sorts of tasks, big and small, and still managed to exceed our page total. Once again, the weekend looms, and we don’t have high hopes for repeating what happened last Saturday. There is rain on the horizon and even spiders must hide

First, we agree there isn’t enough silence in this world. We especially direct that thought toward chronic cell phone users. You know who you are and you know what we mean. And we agree that too much of good thing can, depending on the good thing, be a) wonderful, or b) overwhelming in a scary way. While the article linked below focuses on music, the same can be said for books. Who doesn’t feel a bit anxious when confronted with piles of books still unread even as the UPS driver is delivering another box from Amazon? Perhaps it’s our natural