In accepting the National Book Awards 2014 Distinguished Contribution award last week, author Ursula K. Le Guin blew the room away with a stunning and inspiring speech. [Via]
The speech is transcribed here, and the YouTube video embedded below. Short and succinct, yet profound.
What’s wrong with publishing these days? In a nutshell, capitalism. Same thing that’s wrong with everything else. What does one of our greatest future-thinking minds think needs to be done to save publishing?
Crappy First Drafts of Great Books: http://t.co/wu7PqlTV
We have now found the one thing you cannot do with an e-book.
Snoop Dogg’s new book is smokable. Each page is a sheet of rolling paper. And there’s a matchbook on the spine. [via Creativity Online]
The 30 Harshest Author-on-Author Insults in History. [Flavorwire, via Shelf Awareness]
Nothing so poetic as an author choosing the perfect words with which to criticize another. My personal favorite? Number 12, Oscar Wilde on Alexander Pope:
“There are two ways of disliking poetry; one way is to dislike it, the other is to read Pope.”
Some I agree with, others I don’t. I think the fun here is in the insults themselves, not the merits of the affronted.
Writers and Kitties. ‘Nuff said.
Thanks to the GalleyCat blog for surfacing this photo blog on Tumblr that combines two of my favorite things – writers and kitties.
Does this say something about writers, and why so many of them like cats, or something about cats, and why writers are drawn to them? Or does it say something about why people who are into literature tend to also be into cats?
Recently, Jewcy published its list of The 50 Most Essential Works of Jewish Fiction of the Last 100 Years.
I have not read all of these, though I have read many on the list. A few thoughts:
1. Major omission: The Chosen by Chaim Potok.
2. What the frag is Updike doing here? Updike doesn’t belong on any list.
3. James Joyce’s Ulysses is both the quintessential Irish novel and the quintessential Jewish novel at the same time. It belongs on this list.
4. Some of the ones I haven’t read have piqued my curiosity. Making some additions to Nook wish list.
