Keen literary minds on the Internet (in other words, not ours) are discussing Charles Taylor’s Salon article on literature and reading, and many take a different view of the piece than we did (see below to play along at home). We love reading all the viewpoints. Taylor’s article was a direct response to Andrew Solomon’s New York Times editorial, the thesis of which was that reading is inherently harder than watching television or playing video games. We still believe that kind of sweeping generalization destroys his basic argument. Solomon says there is a great divide between readers and non-readers — […]

We promise you, nobody takes reading more seriously than we do (although we will admit that in the past few years, we have discovered this newfangled invention called television thanks to a most beautiful concept called TiVo). We read like we breathe. Actually, given our tendency toward allergies, we probably read better. To give an example of how important reading is to us, we refer back to our elbow surgery. Not only did the operation make it difficult to hold a book, but the painkillers…oh, they made us dizzy. Too dizzy to read. We ceased with the painkillers. Yes, you

We’re sending this one out to our author friend Jill. Jill isn’t crazy about the big rewrite, despite our cheerleading on the subject (Rewriting is Fun! We Love to Rewrite!). Perhaps it’s the way we describe our process (or maybe that we can’t rhyme) — basically, it’s sort of like taking out the trash and then realizing we have to snatch one or two items back. Then we’ll probably throw them away again. We have the best time during this process. We have even pulled a John Irving (except for the part where the book wasn’t finished nor sold) and

We actually can’t say what our fascination with self-publishing is. But we do have a fascination. Let’s face it, getting published isn’t easy, and sometiems, you have to take risks. Now, we’ve read a lot of bad self-published books, and, to be blunt, we’ve read a lot of really bad self-published books. But there is ample evidence that there is plenty of good writing not noticed by the big publishers. And with that, we bring you another self-publishing success story. If you want something doing … Mark Blayney’s self-published novel has won a Somerset Maugham prize for young authors. He

Sometimes we sit and ponder articles for a few days before commenting (seriously, that’s why we have the world’s largest collection of links to articles on literary reviews — we’re sure we’re going to pull it all together into something brilliant). This article, from the Los Angeles Times, was a thinker. On first read, we said, “Yeah, that’s true.” Then we thought, “But it’s part of them.” This is not wishy-washy thought; we’re not sure that “A” can be separated from “B”. We tried to think of so-called minority writers (so-called because if you spend more than five minutes on

When we were much younger, a child author by the name of Alexandra (Ally) Sheedy published a book called She Was Nice to Mice. We specifically recall the title, not because the author went on to another public career, but because back then, our little skeptical brain caught a whiff of nepotism. Something about a relative in the publishing biz. Alas, we can’t find anything to support our vague memories, but we’re sure we’re right. If not about that, then something else. And we stand by our wise decision not to publish our first book — a rambling tale filled

In our lifetime, we have seen many changes to copyright law (as Mickey Mouse ages, the laws continue to evolve to protect him). We are of two minds on this. Not the same as being wishy washy, though we’ve been accused of that as well. First, of course, is that an artist has the right to the fruits of his or her labor, and it is the responsibility of government to protect the artist’s copyright. On the other hand, we are concerned with the incessant extensions of copyright. The concept of public domain resonates with us (basically, in exchange for