Fine Art of Thievery

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In keeping with our discussion on reading, we bring you the concept of reading as it relates to writing. We have met very few writers who are not readers (and we have met more than a few writers who finally accepted their calling when they found nothing they wanted to read, and decided to write their own stories). Reading is as much a part of writing as pen, keyboard, paper, stamped, self-addressed envelopes…the article linked below explains it far better than we can, so we offer the thesis, picking up right after the author’s students confront an essay test where […]

Tools and Craft

Commercial Interruption

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We interrupt our steady stream of ranting and raving to, well, point you to another rant. This one comes with much inspired commentary. The Romance Heroine Next Door

Square Pegs

When Was The Last Time We Mentioned Standardized Tests?

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We have a confession to make: we failed our first standardized test. Boredom. As with many things, it backfired on us. This, we firmly believe, is because our mother was the school librarian. Things didn’t add up, and we (the victim in this story) were discovered to not be living up to our potential. In our defense, we’ve made a career of this, despite the best efforts of trained professionals. Back then (the olden days), reading was a part of our daily school day routine. We were the kid who sussed out the mother’s notes while walking to school (this

Square Pegs

The Great Chick Lit Roundup

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When Mary Bly told the world that she wrote romance, one thought stuck with us: shame. We cannot think of any other genre of fiction that comes with built-in shame for its readers. The covers, of course, don’t help, but they could be plain brown wrappers, and the comments would still come. Jill Monroe posted this week about how one woman asked Jill, to her face, if her book was crap (it isn’t — we would not allow Jill to write crap; that is our sole territory, and we protect it fiercely). For some reason romance novels aren’t considered “real”

Square Pegs

So Not Breaking News

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As we approach our year-end close, the various Booksquare departments are clearing desks and revisiting goals. The Department of the Obvious has realized she hasn’t presented anything to management this quarter (nor the quarter before — and we’d had a little talk about her productivity). What with raises and bonuses and the possibility of a cubicle with a view, she scrambled until she found something. From her memo: “Publishers spent a lot of money every year trying to figure out what makes people buy books. They have focus groups. Sometimes they send spies into bookstores to observe buyers as they

Square Pegs

For Those Who Can’t Read In The Car (Or On The Train) (Or On The Treadmill)

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Never let it be said that libraries don’t keep up with the times. Or that they don’t care about their customers. The South Huntington Public Library on Long Island, New York is loaning iPod Shuffles to customers (we can only presume that the North Huntington Public Library, wracked with jealousy, will soon follow suit). If we were to attempt to latch onto Awards Season before it crawls to a conclusion (end of the season roughly coincides with the end of March Madness, but that’s more of a guideline than anything), we would nominate this idea for our Innovations in Encouraging

Square Pegs

And, Then, Six Hours Later

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The husband often tells us that someday we will have a wiki*. For a long time, we got away with pretending to confuse a useful tool with a frou-frou drink garnished with fruit and paper umbrellas. Our strategy was sound — we were testing the limits of his patience by making explain the same concept over and over and over. And over. It was about the time he declared that he couldn’t take it any more, he had to make an adjustment to the entry about the Pasadena parrots that we gave up the game. For the record, the entry

Tools and Craft

On Nightmares

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As it were, the fine writer Stephanie Hammer — she of the 3rd place finish below — is writer-in-residence at Pitzer and invited me to come speak to her beginning creative writing course, which was using Fake Liar Cheat as a text (presumably a text on how to forget the middle act of a novel). “Before you talk,” she said, “they’re going to take a short quiz on the work.” . . . She handed me a copy of the quiz — 10 questions, including a few two-parters — and what I realized is that, at best, I knew 7

Quote of the Week

Let The Games Begin

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Publisher’s Weekly tells us that Simon And Schuster will be entering the direct-to-consumer sales game later this year. This should be an interesting experiment, at least in part because it will let us know if consumers know their publishers. Also, it will let us know if publishing houses have a clue from e-commerce (given the average publisher website, we’re currently betting no — but we have been surprised before. Once.). In the silver lining department, we wonder if Simon and Schusters stated goal of making backlist titles more readily available will translate to more exposure for authors. Yes, there’s an

Publishers and Editors

On Realizing The Ugly Truth About Our Life’s Work

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A blog is a species of interactive electronic diary by means of which the unpublishable, untrammeled by editors or the rules of grammar, can communicate their thoughts via the web. Unfortunately for us, there are a lot of big words in the article, so this is the best we can do. It’s because our adoration of random facts and paragraphs has destroyed our ability to suffer sustained reading of complex texts (also, we only like books with pictures). Revenge of the Blog People! (Via Publisher’s Lunch)

Quote of the Week
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