Square Pegs

Today, we learned that we’ve been laboring under a misconception. We thought we took writing pretty seriously as an art. We were wrong. Only men can do that, which is good since the hunting thing they used to do so well isn’t paying the bills. Our work is fluffy and inconsequential. Probably we shouldn’t even call it writing. From now on, we’ll think of it as random scribbling that sometimes happens to form coherent thoughts. “The women who write [cozies] stop the action to go shopping, create a recipe, or take care of cats,” he [Otto Penzler, who is apparently […]

Most of us leave high school with sighs of relief. If you can survive the bitter end of your senior year, you can survive the worst the world has to offer. This is likely because most people do not become authors (though we meant a woman today who thought she might like to get around to trying writing at some point — could we help her out?). Those that become authors, especiallly the published kind, find themselves facing a challenge high school didn’t anticipate. Public readings. Readings differ from signings, though they may be combined, in that instead of remaining

You want to know what makes us cranky? Other than that. Supermarket design consultants. Like any addict, we supplemented our regular book purchases with novels slipped in with the fruits and vegetables. It was a win-win situation for us — we got books, the husband got food. Then a funny thing happened that ruined our perfectly good gig. Someone thought, “Hey, let’s move the books to the other side of the checkout lane.” Now instead of slipping down aisle two (or skirting around back by taking the bread aisle), we stare balefully at the book selection as we make our

We have this fantasy: Harper Lee is writing stories and getting them published under various names. She writes the New Yorker stories you love, and when you try to learn more about the author, not a single website can be found. She’s not prolific, but she’s writing and reaching readers. She does what she loves while keeping the world at bay. It’s her birthday today. While we wouldn’t presume to intrude on your private celebration, Today in Literature has helped us to help you. From To Kill A Mockingbird: As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I

We were recently complimented on our avoidance of profanity (thank you, Karen Palmer who needs a website and/or blog to make linking easy), but sometimes we are pushed to our limits. It was once suggested that we have low tolerance for stupidity; this is true. If you want to push our buttons, facile works. It offers a chance for us to exercise our vocabulary in a positive manner. Fairy tales lead to domestic abuse. We freely admit that things like statistics confuse us. The bell curve seems contrived. We don’t like to speak for most of the women we know,

It took us a dizzying while to figure out what was happening in the Independent article linked below. Note: lack of specificity confuses Americans. Diagrams, however, help. At first we were all “yeah!” at the taunting of anti-reading corporate tastemakers (or something like that) then it lead to Richard and Judy (even after a year, we cannot stop our brain from substituting Punch for Richard) and then to a great quote (something ripped straight from our fingers, if we may be so bold). . . The book market certainly needs to expand. What it requires is creative innovation, not mad

Though we shouldn’t have to say this, we will: we hate the covers of 99.9999% of romance novels we encounter. Let us be clear — we like naked men, though tonight, we may have had one or two mental images that were unnecessary. Our fascination with the female breast is exactly zero. Unless you have a hotline to innovations in elastic, in which case we’re interested. And looking up with adoration at some dude? Well, it’s a species that holds burping contests. Still, we have an analytical soul. When someone takes the time to do the math, it catches our

As we begin the process of clearing out last week in anticipation of this week, we are finding lots of fun stuff that we would be remiss in not sharing. For example, a lament on too many visitors to a library. Truly, it is a problem. Hordes of common folk filling spaces meant to be occupied by true scholars and whatnot. It is more evidence of the decline of Western civilization. Next thing you know, there will be fast food in libraries*. Customers of the British Library (see previous for the travails of that institution) are not happy that the

In some households, people do things like talk. For example (and this is where a vivid imagination comes in handy), a wife might say to a husband, “Look honey, George Saunders news.” The husband, a noted Saunders fan, would immediately respond with something like, “Thank you for always looking out for my particular interests.” Then some mushy stuff would happen. Around here, we just post items of interest on our blog and hope the husband follows the link. If he does, he’ll learn helpful information like this: Did you know…George Saunders can construct an extended metaphor on writing fearlessly that

We were fascinated by the Foetry.com concept a year ago; we are not so fascinated now. Which is sort of a shame because things have gotten really exciting over the past several weeks. Who knew there was so much intrigue in iambic pentameter (probably we should look up the spelling of that, but chances are we’ll forget)? We are committing the cardinal sin of assuming others have covered this extensively and/or understand the layers of issues involved. If poetry or foetry is your thing, well, you’re probably in the wrong place because we are here only to delight in the