Square Pegs

If you were to have the misfortune of coming for dinner (or if you’re the poor souls who bought the house behind us…so close to our patio), you would notice a pattern in our evening discussions with the husband. Sure, we talk baseball (he has quite a bit to say on the subject of Ken Macha, and no other subject can be introduced until he’s worn down the rant), but then we often veer into one of our favorite subjects: how the music industry sucks. In fact, that is the name of our ongoing discussion. We have spent years (this

Maud Newton points us to a lighthearted (but accurate) Fran Leibowitz story — how to tell if your child is a writer. We thought for a second we’d share one or two of our favorites. Then we realized we’d be reproducing the entire story. It’s easy enough to follow the link for a good giggle. Unless you’re afraid to see the truth about yourself in print… How to tell if your child is a writer

There we were in the triangle pose, celebrating the work of art that is us (which was unfortunate as we were positioned in such a way that the mirror reflected said work of art right back), when it all became clear: the author of today’s story on Los Angeles authors is either from another state (like Manhattan) or country (like Texas). Or maybe even another planet, though we’re not sure which currently has life evolved enough to write newspaper columns. First, for those of you who aren’t familiar with our home, Los Angeles is a big place. Bigger than you

You may find yourself wondering why we get so excited by ebook readers. It’s very simple: we see so much potential in them. College students could cut book budgets to the bone (yes, that’s our fantasy world slipping out again). We see potential in business situation, for commuters, for vacationers, and…for authors. Many authors are turning to epublishers, for a variety of reasons; many readers don’t like sitting at the computer or scrolling through pages on their PDAs. So, yeah, we’re excited as heck about the potential here. Now if we could only convince Sony (see previous stories on the

We think we’re going to spearhead a little campaign. Still trying to come up with a catchy title (acronyms aren’t our thing), but it will be something like The Fund for Good Author Interviews. Well, probably not fund because who would get the money? We suppose it could be, hmm, an educational fund for journalists. But don’t they get student loans and such? Okay, regardless, we are campaigning for improved author interviews. It is our right as citizens of the world. Yes, we too are starting to suspect something was slipped into our Diet Coke. We linked to Sarah Weinman’s

We think we’ve figured something out — our dissatisfaction with most author interviews comes from the sameness they exhibit (as evidenced by the fact that we maxed out on Marian Keyes stories so quickly; it was as if each interviewer regurgitated the same talking points). It’s not that the authors don’t have things to say; it’s more that the interviewers barely scratch the surface. And (this is possibly the big part of our revelation) most interviews are for readers, not writers. Sarah Weinman of Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, in her interview with Michael Connelly, brings this home because Sarah

We don’t like treadmills. They are unstable and unsafe. For proof, you need look no further than our experience on one while reading Georgette Heyer’s Black Sheep. Without going into too much embarrassing detail, let us say there was uncontrollable laughter and an uncontrollable tread. We are sufficiently padded, so bruises barely showed. Heyer, a prolific author who died in 1974, wrote primarily about the Regency period — a fascinating period of cultural history. The bawdy Georgians were morphing into the hypocritical, repressed Victorians as the Industrial Age dawned. Little things like democracy (which you may have heard about in