Posts Tagged → authors

Summer Reading List


My viewing of “Terminator: Salvation” yesterday afternoon was the official psychological beginning of the summer season for me here in Dallas. Despite having read some flaccid reviews I actually loved it, though I wish I hadn’t seen the previews because they gave away a critical piece of information which would have made the movie much better.

We’ve fired up the Weber grill, dug around in closets and found our swimming trunks, purchased buckets of sun screen and insect repellent, and are making plans for a 4th of July trip to Michigan to see my little sister.

Here’s a list of things I’m reading this summer as I finish another few short stories and start on a novel of my own:

Write With Style

Several links today from articles on writing and publishing that I’ve stumbled upon over the past few weeks:

  • Damon Runyon, who wrote “Guys & Dolls”, would sit in New York City restaurants and absorb the speech rhythms of the local gangsters and hoods. This great article examines his dual-layered narrative, and his key insight that “American slang is double: first, that street speech tends to be more, not less, complicated grammatically than “standard” speech; but, second, that slang speakers, when they’re cornered to write, write not just fancy but stiff.”
  • An article on Ian McEwan’s life, process and style from the New Yorker:

    McEwan said that he never rushes from notebook to novel. “You’ve got to feel that it’s not just some conceit,” he said. “It’s got to be inside you. I’m very cautious about starting anything without letting time go, and feeling it’s got to come out. I’m quite good at not writing. Some people are tied to five hundred words a day, six days a week. I’m a hesitater.”

  • The Book Cover Archive – where authors can review thumbnails and closeups of published book covers and research details on the artists, designers and publishers who created them.
  • A series of brief interviews with authors about the Sisyphean occupation of writing.