A VIRTUOSO RIFF ON AN AMERICAN classic: the inimitable Percival Everett retells the story of Huckleberry Finn from Jim’s perspective, transforming it from a familiar picaresque to a more complex adventure and a meditation on code-switching. A MINUS
Just finished an oldie, but very goldie: Vonda N. McIntyre: Superluminal (1984). (Goldie not only because she based part of the action in her home town of Seattle 😉 )
Vonda gives us new ideas galore.
A new view on how FTL spaceflight can be made up (seven dimensions, anybody?), using human pilots having undergone procedures.
Humans becoming a new species: Divers, living in the ocean - and crewing spacecraft.
Lots of diverging interests, politics, struggles, ...
STUMBLING TOWARD ENLIGHTENMENT in Seoul: university friends now in their thirties find heartbreak and lesser forms of anomie in this eloquent, multivocal experimental novel rich with details of life in today’s South Korea. B PLUS
Liz just wants a happy birthday.
Is that too much to ask?
A beautiful antique bed: her birthday present to herself. The nice delivery men set it up in her bedroom, and then all Hell breaks loose. Literally.
When it turns out the bed's former owner isn't basking in the glow of a happy afterlife, Liz must face some nasty adversaries to help him. Why on earth would she risk her life and her sanity to help a ghost? Certainly not because she’s in love with him.
Paul Auster, writer of “Smoke” and many other masterful stories about New York, passed away yesterday. Overseas, it is one of the main headlines of the day.
In the US, not even The New York Times, could be bothered to mention it.
"Accuracy is so important to me,” Goyhood #author Reuven Fenton told The Algemeiner. “People assume that the ultra-Orthodox #Jewish community is the Jewish version of the Taliban and that’s not true at all.”
“Whenever you see anything media-oriented that has to do with Orthodox #Jews, if you’re part of that world in any way, you look at it and roll your eyes because they never get it right. It’s full of flaws, exaggerations, and misinformation,” added the first-time author, who is also the only Orthodox Jewish reporter on staff for the New York Post. “I felt it was my obligation, [and] that the least I could do in writing this #novel was to get everything on the money.”
Friday #SelfPromo!
If you're looking for something new to #read this weekend, might I humbly suggest my debut #novel Far North: Running? The first book in a planned four book series. It features a tortured soul and a young naive girl, the mystery of a frozen land, and mysterious wealthy new neighbors that move into town.
You can find it on itch.io in PDF and EPUB format: https://byrdbrnz.itch.io/far-north-running #writing#books#bookstodon
#WritersCoffeeClub April 8
Do you think of your books as having a particular length? <-- catching up.
The only time I consider the length of my books is after they're written. Then, I check to see what qualifies as a #novel or #novella.
Since jumping into the #webnovel arena, one platform has demanded chapters be no greater than 15k characters—this is because of the fiction-on-phone readership's alleged 'short attention span'. rolls eyes
This week I decided to change it up and checked out a small #indie#visual#novel called "To Whom the Bouquet Falls" by #NaNoRenO2024 . A surprisingly delightful story about #magic, #romance and star crossed lovers. Join me as we take a look at the first part of this #story and see how the adventure begins to unfold!
I read Bob Mortimer's 'Satsuma Complex'. It is a cute book, silly, funny and very readable. It is also a book about loneliness and the need for imagination to create connection. I liked it. It reminded me a little of #DouglasAdams, though kinder
Today in Labor History March 19, 1742: Tupac Amaru was born. Tupac Amaru II had led a large Andean uprising against the Spanish. As a result, he became a mythical figure in the Peruvian struggle for independence and in the indigenous rights movement. The Tupamaros revolutionary movement in Uruguay (1960s-1970s) took their name from him. As did the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary guerrilla group, in Peru, and the Venezuelan Marxist political party Tupamaro. American rapper, Tupac Amaru Shakur, was also named after him. Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, wrote a poem called “Tupac Amaru (1781).” And Clive Cussler’s book, “Inca Gold,” has a villain who claims to be descended from the revolutionary leader.
Today in Labor History March 12, 1912: The IWW won their Bread and Roses textile strike in Lawrence, MA. This was the first strike to use the moving picket line, implemented to avoid arrest for loitering. The workers came from 51 different nationalities and spoke 22 different languages. The mainstream unions, including the American Federation of Labor, all believed it was impossible to organize such a diverse workforce. However, the IWW organized workers by linguistic group and trained organizers who could speak each of the languages. Each language group got a delegate on the strike committee and had complete autonomy. Big Bill Haywood and Elizabeth Gurley Flynn masterminded the strategy of sending hundreds of the strikers' hungry children to sympathetic families in New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, drawing widespread sympathy, especially after police violently stopped a further exodus. 3 workers were killed by police during the strike. Nearly 300 were arrested.
The 1911 verse, by Poet James Oppenheim, has been associated with the strike, particularly after Upton Sinclair made the connection in his 1915 labor anthology, “The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest”
As we come marching, marching, we battle too for men,
For they are women's children, and we mother them again.
Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes;
Hearts starve as well as bodies; give us bread, but give us roses!
Today in Labor History March 11, 1850: French anarchist Clément Duval was born. His theory of individual reclamation, which justified theft, and other crimes, as both educational and legitimate ways to redistribute the wealth, influenced the Illegalists of the 1910s, including Jules Bonnot, of the Bonnot Gang. According to Paul Albert, "The story of Clement Duval was lifted and, shorn of all politics, turned into the bestseller Papillon."