Feature Writer Quotes

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. So now you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life.

Annabel was, like the writer, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case. I remember her features far less distinctly today than I did a few years ago, before I knew Lolita. There are two kinds of visual memory: one when you skillfully recreate an image in the laboratory of your mind, with your eyes open (and then I see Annabel in such general terms as: "honey-colored skin," "thin arms," "brown bobbed hair," "long lashes," "big bright mouth"); and the other when you instantly evoke, with shut eyes, on the dark innerside of your eyelids, the objective, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors (and this is how I see Lolita).

A sense of humor is a measurement of the extent to which you realize that you are trapped in a world almost entirely devoid of reason. Laughter is how you release the anxiety you feel at this knowledge.

Food shouldn’t be that shade of green, lass.” – Faolán MacIntyre

It was Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the television series, 1997-2003, not the lackluster movie that preceded it) that blazed the trail for Twilight and the slew of other paranormal romance novels that followed, while also shaping the broader urban fantasy field from the late 1990s onward. Many of you reading this book will be too young to remember when Buffy debuted, so you'll have to trust us when we say that nothing quite like it had existed before. It was thrillingly new to see a young, gutsy, kick-ass female hero, for starters, and one who was no Amazonian Wonder Woman but recognizably ordinary, fussing about her nails, her shoes, and whether she'd make it to her high school prom. Buffy's story contained a heady mix of many genres (fantasy, horror, science-fiction, romance, detective fiction, high school drama), all of it leavened with tongue-in-cheek humor yet underpinned by the serious care with which the Buffy universe had been crafted. Back then, Whedon's dizzying genre hopping was a radical departure from the norm-whereas today, post-Buffy, no one blinks an eye as writers of urban fantasy leap across genre boundaries with abandon, penning tender romances featuring werewolves and demons, hard-boiled detective novels with fairies, and vampires-in-modern-life sagas that can crop up darn near anywhere: on the horror shelves, the SF shelves, the mystery shelves, the romance shelves.

Like other kinds of intelligence, the storyteller's is partly natural, partly trained. It is composed of several qualities, most of which, in normal people, are signs of either immaturity or incivility: wit (a tendency to make irreverent connections); obstinacy and a tendency toward churlishness (a refusal to believe what all sensible people know is true); childishness (an apparent lack of mental focus and serious life purpose, a fondness for daydreaming and telling pointless lies, a lack of proper respect, mischievousness, an unseemly propensity for crying over nothing); a marked tendency toward oral or anal fixation or both (the oral manifested by excessive eating, drinking, smoking, and chattering; the anal by nervous cleanliness and neatness coupled with a weird fascination with dirty jokes); remarkable powers of eidetic recall, or visual memory (a usual feature of early adolescence and mental retardation); a strange admixture of shameless playfulness and embarrassing earnestness, the latter often heightened by irrationally intense feelings for or against religion; patience like a cat's; a criminal streak of cunning; psychological instability; recklessness, impulsiveness, and improvidence; and finally, an inexplicable and incurable addiction to stories, written or oral, bad or good.

Submitted for your approval--the curious case of Colleen O’Brien and the gorgeous time traveling Scot who landed in her living room.” – Rod Serling

I am not and will never again be a young writer, a young homeowner, a young teacher. I was never a young wife. The only thing I could do now for which my youth would be a truly notable feature would be to die. If I died now, I’d die young. Everything else, I’m doing middle-aged.

His interest in you is merely rebellion. You are different. Forbidden. Something he knows is wrong." Her dark eyes traveled over my features. "He sees beauty now, is lured by it, even though he knows what lies beneath is evil. So intriguing, this flirting with danger." She flicked a glance at the jar. "Pandora was the same way, you know? A deceptive package. The Greek writers called her Kalon Kakon, a beautiful evil. It won't be long before you destroy those around you, just like she did." My fists clenched hard. "And if that happens, Josephine, if I turn into a monster, I'll be coming for you first, and there isn't a damn thing you can do to stop me.

The novelist Dumas would one day borrow features from both of his uncles, not to mention his grandfather, the acknowledged scoundrel, in fashioning the central villains of The Count of Monte Cristo. Reading court documents detailing the sordid unraveling of Charles's sham fortune, which would have devastating effects on his daughter and her unsuspecting husband, I couldn't help thinking that one of the interesting things about Dumas's villains is that, while greedy and unprincipled themselves, they produce children who can be innocent and decent. This was something that the writer understood very well from his own family.

distinguishing feature of extraordinary thinkers: Taking simple ideas seriously

The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to forget her. At the end we are steeped through and through with the genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Bronte. Remarkable faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them.

I write books that I want to read. I write books that feature curvy heroines because I'm a curvy woman myself and it gets tiresome to read books about skinny women all the time. There's nothing wrong with skinny women, I just don't relate to their lives, and it would be really hard for me, as a writer, to fully inhabit that character otherwise.

Even in school, children get subtle messages about whose stories matter. Literature classes routinely feature literature written by women and men of color as exceptional (one among many white male writers) or available for study in some schools as elective classes only. A recent global review found that gender bias is also "rife in textbooks." The result of pedagogical choices like these shape self-esteem, empathy, and understanding. They also shape resentment, confusion, and anger.

His deep voice drifted to her through the crowd of women. “…my lady when she returns. Och, there ye are, Blossom,” Faolán grinned, standing up and taking her hand so she could ease back into the restaurant booth. “These lasses were just asking if I was a stripper. I told them I doona think so,” he said, his face clouded with uncertainty. “I’m not, am I?” The inquisitive lasses in question flushed scarlet and scattered to the four corners of the room at the murderous look on Colleen’s face. “No, you’re not, but I guess I can see how they’d think that,” she muttered darkly. “What you are is a freaking estrogen magnet.

Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

As he spoke, he looked into their faces and saw, as though in his own features, that fundamentally they all bore the indelible impress of a similar background: army tradition; long spells of garrison service in a world isolated from the rest of society; a sense of alienation, of being despised by that society and ridiculed by liberal writers; the official ban on discussing politics and political literature, resulting in a blunting or stultifying of the intellect; a permanent shortage of money; and yet, despite it all, the knowledge that they represented, in purified and concentrated form, the vitality and courage of the whole nation.

[Photography] allows me to accede to an infra-knowledge; it supplies me with a collection of partial objects and can flatter a certain fetishism of mine: for this 'me' which like knowledge, which nourishes a kind of amorous preference for it. In the same way, I like certain biographical features which, in a writer's life, delight me as much as certain photographs; I have called these features 'biographemes'; Photography has the same relation to History that the biographeme has to biography.

Och, lass. Yer going to have to not do that.” Faolán exhaled. “Creeping up on a man is a dangerous thing, and I confess I’m jumpier than most. Yer feet are soft as a cat’s.” “I wasn’t creeping anywhere, I was going to make coffee and this is my house, I’ll creep anywhere I like,” Colleen muttered with a petulant scowl. “But I wasn’t creeping.

What can a little town teach you? It can teach you how a little place already contains the whole features of the entire world!

Beauty is not defined by your physical features. It is defined by the heart inside your chest and the love that flows through it.

While writing the first draft is an exercise in shutting down all of the things we think we know so that the story features come tumbling out, the revision is the end of the joy ride. We pull on the gloves and sort of poke around inside the body. Is that a tumor? Will that limb need amputation? I nearly second-guessed myself into heart failure while learning to self-edit.

Let’s put to rest one cliché. You can sell refrigerators to Eskimos. The people of Savoonga are Yupiks, the westernmost of the Eskimo tribes, closer to Siberians than American Eskimos in their appearance, and their customs, and their distinctive, liquidly sibilant native language. And, yes, they all have refrigerators. In the winter, food gets freezer burn if left out in the elements. Eskimos need refrigerators to keep their food warm.

One of the most distinct features of this whole human history is god flattery! People never get tired of buttering every kind of gods in the hope of getting earthly benefit or obtaining heavenly plunder! Man is no doubt a tireless flunkey!

Refusing to lean back against him, Colleen sat ramrod straight until they reached the road. “I guess I should say thank you for saving my life,” she muttered then turned and slapped Faolán hard across the face. “And that’s for you having to save it in the first place. And I’m not your woman, you big, arrogant, lying, betraying…faery loving…” She searched for the perfect insult and couldn’t find one, “…Scot.” She gave a very unladylike snort. “Happy now? That fiery enough for you?

YA stories feature a young adult protagonist or protagonists and usually focus on that character’s journey toward maturity (the tradition of the Bildungsroman.). Learning about love / relationships is an important part of that stage in our lives, so it’s not surprising so many writers are building strong romantic elements into their YA stories. I don’t remember quite such an emphasis on romance in the books my children read as young adults, so I do think the approach has changed. Within my genre of fantasy, there’s been an upsurge of paranormal romance, partly generated by the Twilight books, but also reflecting the popularity of this sub-genre with adult readers. There are far more female fantasy writers (and female fantasy readers) than there were, say, twenty years ago, and perhaps female writers are more confident about including a good love story in a fantasy novel. (2012 Interview by Helen Lowe: The Supernatural Underground: An Interview with Juliet Marillier Discussing "Shadowfell".)

You turn the lights on and off here and if you can’t sleep and want something to read there are books in the living room…” her voice broke off. “Wait. Can you read?” His chin took a slight tilt upward. “Aye,” Faolán replied, his voice cool, “in English, Gaelic, Latin, or French. My Welsh is a bit rusty, and I doona remember any of the Greek I was taught except for words not fit for a lady’s ears. I can also count all the way up to…” He looked down and wiggled his large bare toes, “…twenty.” – Faolán MacIntyre

I'm a features writer, and an Indian at that, so I get all the shit jobs. Not the dangerous shit jobs or the monotonous shit jobs. No. I get to write the articles designed to please the eye, ear, and heart. And there is no journalism more soul-endangering to write than journalism that aims to please.

I felt hollow, anxious, lost. It felt like my identity and self-worth were no longer linked to anything rooted, only in the fleeting and the temporary, things that would be gone again in a moment. Like a social-media post. Or my freelance work as a writer—features pitched, laboured over, published, only to become next month’s recycling.

If he were alive today, Plato—to take him as an example, because along with a dozen others he is regarded as the greatest thinker who ever lived—would certainly be ecstatic about a news industry capable of creating, exchanging, refining a new idea every day; where information keeps pouring in from the ends of the earth with a speediness he never knew in his own lifetime, while a staff of demiurges is on hand to check it all out instantaneously for its content of reason and reality. He would have supposed a newspaper office to be that topos uranios, that heavenly realm of ideas, which he has described so impressively that to this day all the better class of people are still idealists when talking to their children or employees. And of course if Plato were to walk suddenly into a news editor’s office today and prove himself to be indeed that great author who died over two thousand years ago he would be a tremendous sensation and would instantly be showered with the most lucrative offers. If he were then capable of writing a volume of philosophical travel pieces in three weeks, and a few thousand of his well-known short stories, perhaps even turn one or the other of his older works into film, he could undoubtedly do very well for himself for a considerable period of time. The moment his return had ceased to be news, however, and Mr. Plato tried to put into practice one of his well-known ideas, which had never quite come into their own, the editor in chief would ask him to submit only a nice little column on the subject now and then for the Life and Leisure section (but in the easiest and most lively style possible, not heavy: remember the readers), and the features editor would add that he was sorry, but he could use such a contribution only once a month or so, because there were so many other good writers to be considered. And both of these gentlemen would end up feeling that they had done quite a lot for a man who might indeed be the Nestor of European publicists but still was a bit outdated, and certainly not in a class for current newsworthiness with a man like, for instance, Paul Arnheim.

In the novel Janus Equation, writer G. Spruill explored one of the harrowing problems with time travel. In this tale a brilliant mathematician whose goal is to discover the secret of time travel meets a strange, beautiful woman, and they become lovers, although he knows nothing about her past. He becomes intrigued about finding out her true identity. Eventually he discovers that she once had plastic surgery to change her features. And that she had a sex change operation. Finally, he discovers that “she” is actually a time traveler from the future, and that “she” is actually himself, but from the future. This means that he made love to himself. And one is left wondering, what would have happened if they had had a child? And if this child went back into the past, to grow up to become the mathematician at the beginning of the story, then is it possible to be your own mother and father and son and daughter?

This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

A good writer is likely to know and use, or find out and use, the words for common architectural features, like "lintel," "newel post," "corbelling," "abutment," and the concrete or stone "hems" alongisde the steps leading up into churches or public buildings; the names of carpenters' or pumbers' tools, artists' materials, or whatever furniture, implements, or processes his characters work with; and the names of common household items, including those we do not usually hear named, often as we use them. Above all, the writer should stretch his vocabulary of ordinary words and idioms--words and idioms he sees all the time and knows how to use but never uses. I mean here not language that smells of the lamp but relatively common verbs, nouns, and adjectives. The serious-mined way to vocabulary is to read through a dictionary, making lists of all the common words one happens never to use. And of course the really serious-minded way is to study languages--learn Greek, Latin, and one or two modern languages. Among writers of the first rank one can name very few who were not or are not fluent in at least two. Tolstoy, who spoke Russian, French, and English easily, and other languages and dialects with more difficulty, studied Greek in his forties.

Science journalism’s express goal was to hang over the writer’s mind a veil so opaque that the reader would mistake the writer’s thoughts about the world for the world itself—the world as seen from an impossible God’s-eye view, a paradigm of objectivity and at the same time a lie. For me, hiding the writer’s thoughts strips writing of its greatest gift: its ability to grant us access to other minds. Writing has the potential to be magical because it lets us see the one thing we can never see; it opens our eyes to that feature of the world that is most profoundly invisible. Writing is the rock we can kick to refute our loneliness, to cure the claustrophobia that comes from being trapped inside a one-sided mind.

His reading habit was so varied that in his early teens, he was reading both Maxim Gorky’s Mother and the detective thrillers (Jasoosi Duniya) of Ibn-e-Safi. The detective thrillers—be it Indian or American pulp fiction—were a big favourite for their fast action, tight plots and economies of expression. He remembers the novels of Ibn-e-Safi for their fascinating characters with memorable names. ‘Ibn-e-Safi was a master at naming his characters. All of us who read him remember those names . . . There was a Chinese villain, his name was Sing Hi. There was a Portuguese villain called Garson . . . an Englishman who had come to India and was into yoga . . . was called Gerald Shastri.’ This technique of giving catchy names to characters would stay with him. The wide range of reading not only gave him the sensitivity with which progressive writers approached their subjects but also a very good sense of plot and speaking styles. Here, it would be apt to quote a paragraph from Ibn-e-Safi’s detective novel, House of Fear—featuring his eccentric detective, Imran. The conversation takes place just outside a nightclub: ‘So, young man. So now you have also starred frequenting these places?’ ‘Yes. I often come by to pay Flush,’ Imran said respectfully. ‘Flush! Oh, so now you play Flush . . .’ ‘Yes, yes. I feel like it when I am a bit drunk . . .’ ‘Oh! So you have also started drinking?’ ‘What can I say? I swear I’ve never drunk alone. Frequently I find hookers who do not agree to anything without a drink . . .’ This scene would find a real-life parallel as well as a fictional one in Javed’s life later. Javed

under Polly’s eyes, her gaunt cheeks, and her shaking hands as she poured the tea. *   *   * Cat watches as her cab winds its way through the streets of Soho, thinking she would never stoop to that. It’s the lowest of the low. We’re supposed to be features writers, not news hacks. But behind her mutterings, behind her disdain, as unwilling as she is to admit it, lies a ribbon of insecurity. The Daily Gazette is the best paper she could ever imagine working for, but Cat, just past her mid-twenties, has yet to prove herself with a big story. She’s proving adept at the smaller fluff pieces—How to wear a scarf in thirty different ways! How to put the romance back into your marriage! (As if she would know anything about that.) How to revamp your wardrobe in five easy steps! But the big interviews, the ones that Poppy

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd fine life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies. So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.

Why were hippies such a threat, from the President on down to local levels, objects for surveillance and disruptions? Many of the musicians had the potential to become political. There were racial overtones to the black-white sounds, harmony between Janis Joplin, Otis Redding and Jimi Hendrix. Black music was the impetus that drove the Rolling Stones into composing and performing. The war in Vietnam we escalated. What if they stopped protesting the war in Southeast Asia and turned to expose domestic policies at home with the same energy? One of the Byrds stopped singing at Monterey Pop to question the official Warren Report conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a “lone assassin.” Bob Dylan’s Bringing it All Back Home album features a picture of Lyndon Johnson on the cover of Time. By 1966, LBJ had ordered writers and critics of his commission report on the JFK murder under surveillance. That research was hurting him. Rock concerts and Oswald. What next?

Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us. Of course you couldn’t know this, of course you still can’t understand what I mean when I say all this. You are intuitively right, that’s what counts. Three things are missing. “Number one: Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You’d find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more ‘literary’ you are. That’s my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often.

So often have I studied the views of Florence, that I was familiar with the city before I ever set foot within its walls; I found that I could thread my way through the streets without a guide. Turning to the left I passed before a bookseller's shop, where I bought a couple of descriptive surveys of the city (guide). Twice only was I forced to inquire my way of passers by, who answered me with politeness which was wholly French and with a most singular accent; and at last I found myself before the facade of Santa Croce. Within, upon the right of the doorway, rises the tomb of Michelangelo; lo! There stands Canova's effigy of Alfieri; I needed no cicerone to recognise the features of the great Italian writer. Further still, I discovered the tomb of Machiavelli; while facing Michelangelo lies Galileo. What a race of men! And to these already named, Tuscany might further add Dante, Boccaccio and Petrarch. What a fantastic gathering! The tide of emotion which overwhelmed me flowed so deep that it scarce was to be distinguished from religious awe. The mystic dimness which filled the church, its plain, timbered roof, its unfinished facade – all these things spoke volumes to my soul. Ah! Could I but forget...! A Friar moved silently towards me; and I, in the place of that sense of revulsion all but bordering on physical horror which usually possesses me in such circumstances, discovered in my heart a feeling which was almost friendship. Was not he likewise a Friar, Fra Bartolomeo di San Marco, that great painter who invented the art of chiaroscuro, and showed it to Raphael, and was the forefather of Correggio? I spoke to my tonsured acquaintance, and found in him an exquisite degree of politeness. Indeed, he was delighted to meet a Frenchman. I begged him to unlock for me the chapel in the north-east corner of the church, where are preserved the frescoes of Volterrano. He introduced me to the place, then left me to my own devices. There, seated upon the step of a folds tool, with my head thrown back to rest upon the desk, so that I might let my gaze dwell on the ceiling, I underwent, through the medium of Volterrano's Sybills, the profoundest experience of ecstasy that, as far as I am aware, I ever encountered through the painter's art. My soul, affected by the very notion of being in Florence, and by proximity of those great men whose tombs I had just beheld, was already in a state of trance. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I could perceive its very essence close at hand; I could, as it were, feel the stuff of it beneath my fingertips. I had attained to that supreme degree of sensibility where the divine intimations of art merge with the impassioned sensuality of emotion. As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitations of the heart (that same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of nerves); the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground. I sat down on one of the benches which line the piazza di Santa Croce; in my wallet, I discovered the following lines by Ugo Foscolo, which I re-read now with a great surge of pleasure; I could find no fault with such poetry; I desperately needed to hear the voice of a friend who shared my own emotion (…)

MARK TWAIN Some months after invading Iraq, President George W. Bush said he had taken the war to liberate the Philippines as his model. Both wars were inspired from heaven. Bush disclosed that God had ordered him to act as he did. And a century beforehand, President William McKinley also heard the voice from the Great Beyond: “God told me that we could not leave the Filipinos to themselves. They were unfit for self-government. There was nothing left for us to do but to take them all, and to educate them, and uplift and civilize and Christianize them.” Thus the Philippines were liberated from the Filipino threat, and along the way the United States also saved Cuba, Puerto Rico, Honduras, Colombia, Panama, Dominican Republic, Hawaii, Guam, Samoa . . . At the time, writer Ambrose Bierce revealed: “War is God’s way of teaching us geography.” And his colleague Mark Twain, leader of the Anti-Imperialist League, designed a new flag for the nation, featuring little skulls in place of stars. General Frederick Funston suggested Twain ought to be hanged for treason. Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn defended their father.

Paris,” a Seventh Army soldier wrote his wife. “It was wonderful, but I slept on the floor because the bed was just too much like sleeping in butter.” A woman working for the OSS described fleets of vélos, odd contraptions like “canvas-covered bathtubs and drawn or propelled by motorcycles or bicycles,” carting around GIs “who little count the cost in their exuberance at being alive.” The writer Simone de Beauvoir concluded that “the easygoing manner of the young Americans incarnated liberty itself.” Troops packed movie theaters along the Champs-Élysées, and two music halls featured vaudeville shows. Post Number One of the American Legion served hamburgers and bourbon, and bars opened with names intended to entice the homesick, like The Sunny Side of the Street and New York. Army special services organized activities ranging from piano recitals to jitterbug lessons, while distributing thousands of hobby kits for sketching, clay modeling, and leather craft. The Bayeux Tapestry, long tucked away for safekeeping, reemerged in an exhibit at the Louvre, with the segment depicting the Norman defeat of the Anglo-Saxons in 1066 tactfully

The 1950s and 1960s: philosophy, psychology, myth There was considerable critical interest in Woolf ’s life and work in this period, fuelled by the publication of selected extracts from her diaries, in A Writer’s Diary (1953), and in part by J. K. Johnstone’s The Bloomsbury Group (1954). The main critical impetus was to establish a sense of a unifying aesthetic mode in Woolf ’s writing, and in her works as a whole, whether through philosophy, psychoanalysis, formal aesthetics, or mythopoeisis. James Hafley identified a cosmic philosophy in his detailed analysis of her fiction, The Glass Roof: Virginia Woolf as Novelist (1954), and offered a complex account of her symbolism. Woolf featured in the influential The English Novel: A Short Critical History (1954) by Walter Allen who, with antique chauvinism, describes the Woolfian ‘moment’ in terms of ‘short, sharp female gasps of ecstasy, an impression intensified by Mrs Woolf ’s use of the semi-colon where the comma is ordinarily enough’. Psychological and Freudian interpretations were also emerging at this time, such as Joseph Blotner’s 1956 study of mythic patterns in To the Lighthouse, an essay that draws on Freud, Jung and the myth of Persephone.4 And there were studies of Bergsonian writing that made much of Woolf, such as Shiv Kumar’s Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel (1962). The most important work of this period was by the French critic Jean Guiguet. His Virginia Woolf and Her Works (1962); translated by Jean Stewart, 1965) was the first full-length study ofWoolf ’s oeuvre, and it stood for a long time as the standard work of critical reference in Woolf studies. Guiguet draws on the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre to put forward a philosophical reading of Woolf; and he also introduces a psychobiographical dimension in the non-self.’ This existentialist approach did not foreground Woolf ’s feminism, either. his heavy use of extracts from A Writer’s Diary. He lays great emphasis on subjectivism in Woolf ’s writing, and draws attention to her interest in the subjective experience of ‘the moment.’ Despite his philosophical apparatus, Guiguet refuses to categorise Woolf in terms of any one school, and insists that Woolf has indeed ‘no pretensions to abstract thought: her domain is life, not ideology’. Her avoidance of conventional character makes Woolf for him a ‘purely psychological’ writer.5 Guiguet set a trend against materialist and historicist readings ofWoolf by his insistence on the primacy of the subjective and the psychological: ‘To exist, for Virginia Woolf, meant experiencing that dizziness on the ridge between two abysses of the unknown, the self and

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, written by Christie in 1926, is perhaps the most quintessential golden-age murder mystery ever written in absolutely every way—except one. But it is this one spectacular difference that sets it apart from other books of the era and that catapulted Agatha Christie into the upper echelons of the genre. In fact, as the ending was so unorthodox and apparently broke the rules of the Detection Club’s oath—tongue-in-cheek though they were—there was a movement to expel Christie from the club entirely! Only a vote by fellow female crime writer Dorothy L. Sayers saved her. If this doesn’t make you intrigued to read the book, you don’t need to just take my word for it—in 2013, nearly ninety years after its publication, the British Crime Writers’ Association voted it the best crime novel ever, calling it “the finest example of the genre ever penned.” It features typical golden-era elements within the text, like a floor plan of all the rooms of the house and heavily buried clues, and I’m of the opinion that the only way to do this particular book justice is to read it. Don’t watch an adaptation, don’t listen to an audiobook, and don’t use an e-reading device and deny yourself the pleasure of the rustling pages peppered with nuance. Buy a copy of the book and read it. It’s the only way you can read between the lines of this clever tale.

The author explores the contours of a restless mind racked with fear and doubt and questions the origins of his personal disenchantment and cynical bitterness. Do other people share similar feelings of disquiet and despair, and how does a person escape a vortex of suffering? Perchance he can marshal human beings’ innate gifts of memory, language, and consciousness to transform his vile existence. Perhaps by studiously examining the self and seeking to unite all disparate parts of a fragmented psyche, he will become a thoughtful, considerate, and affectionate man who lives joyfully without pangs of pain, shame, and misgivings. The goal of this vision quest is to attain personal harmony with the world and enjoy an admirable state of attentive mindfulness after investigating and expressing all that is sayable pertaining the meaning of existence and the unique features of being human. The author aspires to discard frivolous attachments, pierce mental delusions, and attain a peaceful state of serenity by accepting reality and appreciating the incomparable beauty of this magnificent world and the little pleasures that each unfolding day affords. Perhaps writing of his struggles to transcend his own pain and develop the wisdom and serenity of the mind that comes from living an examined life might even provide a template for other people explore their own life story.

The books began to arrive, boxes of them. At first I could not open a single one, but was taken by them as objects. The covers were all so attractive. The jacket copy made each one sound great, blurbs from established literary icons told me why I should like it. The fat books were praised for being fat, the skinny books were praised for being skinny, old writers were great because they were old, young writers were talents because of their youth, every one was startling, ground-breaking, warm, chilling, original, honest and human. I would have found refreshing: "Jo Blow’ s new novel takes on the mundane and leaves it right where it is. The prose is clear and pedestrian. The moves are tried and true. Yet the book is not so alarmingly dishonest. The characters are as wooden as the ones we meet in real life. This is a torturous journey through the banal. The novel is ordinary but not insipid, pointless but not meaningless, savorless but not stale. Jo Blow is a middle aged writer with a family and no discernible special features. He lives in a house and is about as smart as his last novel." So, I opened the first book and I loved it. Actually, I enjoyed reading. The book sucked. But I did enjoy reading it and so I read another and another. I read three in one night and the better part of the next day. All three were sterile, well-constructed, predictable fare. I decided that perhaps I was jaded. I was familiar with novels the way a surgeon is familiar with blood. I would have to contact my innocent, inner self, the part of me that could be amazed by the dull and commonplace.

We cannot provide a definition of those products from which the age takes it name, the feuilletons. They seem to have formed an uncommonly popular section of the daily newspapers, were produced by the millions, and were a major source of mental pabulum for the reader in want of culture. They reported on, or rather "chatted" about, a thousand-and-one items of knowledge. The cleverer writers poked fun at their own work. Many such pieces are so incomprehensible that they can only be viewed as self-persiflage on the part of the authors. In some periods interviews with well-known personalities on current problems were particularly popular. Noted chemists or piano virtuosos would be queried about politics, for example, or popular actors, dancers, gymnasts, aviators, or even poets would be drawn out on the benefits and drawbacks of being a bachelor, or on the presumptive causes of financial crises, and so on. All that mattered in these pieces was to link a well-known name with a subject of current topical interest. It is very hard indeed for us to put ourselves in the place of those people so that we can truly understand them. But the great majority, who seem to have been strikingly fond of reading, must have accepted all these grotesque things with credulous earnestness. If a famous painting changed owners, if a precious manuscript was sold at auction, if an old palace burned down, the readers of many thousands of feature articles at once learned the facts. What is more, on that same day or by the next day at the latest they received an additional dose of anecdotal, historical, psychological, erotic, and other stuff on the catchword of the moment. A torrent of zealous scribbling poured out over every ephemeral incident, and in quality, assortment, and phraseology all this material bore the mark of mass goods rapidly and irresponsibly turned out. Incidentally, there appear to have been certain games which were regular concomitants of the feature article. The readers themselves took the active role in these games, which put to use some of their glut of information fodder. Thousands upon thousands spent their leisure hours sitting over squares and crosses made of letters of the alphabet, filling in the gaps according to certain rules. But let us be wary of seeing only the absurd or insane aspect of this, and let us abstain from ridiculing it. For these people with their childish puzzle games and their cultural feature articles were by no means innocuous children or playful Phaeacians. Rather, they dwelt anxiously among political, economic, and moral ferments and earthquakes, waged a number of frightful wars and civil wars, and their little cultural games were not just charming, meaningless childishness. These games sprang from their deep need to close their eyes and flee from unsolved problems and anxious forebodings of doom into an imaginary world as innocuous as possible. They assiduously learned to drive automobiles, to play difficult card games and lose themselves in crossword puzzles--for they faced death, fear, pain, and hunger almost without defenses, could no longer accept the consolations of the churches, and could obtain no useful advice from Reason. These people who read so many articles and listened to so many lectures did not take the time and trouble to strengthen themselves against fear, to combat the dread of death within themselves; they moved spasmodically on through life and had no belief in a tomorrow.

All right. I am Brian Lettsin and here is my story. I was working for I & I Books. It began innocently, with a few novels featuring bemused writers: their affairs, drinking problems, failure to produce their works, and so on. Nothing too harmful. Then I received this novel, A Postmodern Postmortem. Set in an afterlife for bad characters, the book was riddled with the kind of intertextual knowingness that was to set me on the path to destruction. There followed an orgiastic spree of metafucking—writers stepping into their novels to slap and screw their characters, writers appearing in other writers’ novels to do the same, then writers slapping and screwing the other writers in their novels, and characters taking over the narration of the novels and so on. One book, I Am the Novel, pushed me over the edge. Over ten thousand unidentified voices, zigzagging along the page, or huddled into spirals or boxes, even printed overlapping one another, squabbled for authorship, offering nothing in the manner of plot or character, or a conceivable point to the whole thing—one voice even cried out in orgasm ‘Oh! This is so pointless ... so ... oh oh oh! ... meeeeeaaaningleeeeeesss!’ epitomising the masturbatory emptiness at the heart of this publisher’s project. I suppose there was some theoretical logic behind these novels—I recall some drear pamphlet penned by the editor riddled with Derrida/Barthes references, as if cribbing from those two was a sufficient apologia for their gummy deluge—but this was too late for me. I Am the Novel, running at over 1000 pages, no author name on the cover, sent me into a spasm of self-doubt. I woke up having no idea who I was, if I was a character in a novel, if I had written a novel ... I cracked up. I spent my days staring into mirrors in the hope I might recall a mere snippet of the previous ‘life’ I was supposed to have led ... a life that is ... I am Brian ... hang on, who I am again?

Roan studied the photo in his hand. Shiloh Gallagher had to be twenty-nine years old according to what Maud had told him. Damned if she didn’t look twenty-five or so, her features unlined. She wasn’t model pretty, but she had an arresting face, with huge intelligent-looking green eyes. His gaze dropped to her mouth and he felt himself stir. Her mouth would make any man go crazy. Her upper lip was full, but thinner than her lower one. The shape of her mouth made him feel heat in his lower body. “Is she married?” “No,” Maud said. She’s single. Never did marry. I don’t know why. Shiloh’s a beautiful girl.” She was hardly a girl, but Roan said nothing because he was fully reacting to her as a woman. He wondered if she was curvy or rail thin. He was disgruntled over his avid curiosity. “I have no problem with it. You know I get up early and come in late. She’s going to have to fend for herself. I’m not cooking for her.” “Right,” Maud agreed. “She’s pretty shaken up, Roan. You might find that stressful until, hopefully, Shiloh will start to relax.” Shrugging, he slid the photo onto the desk. “Maud, I just hope I don’t stress her out with my award-winning personality,” he said, and he cracked a small, sour grin. Maud cackled. “I think you’ll like her, Roan. She’s a very kind person. An introvert like you. Just remember, she’s trying to write. Because of the stalking, she’s suffering from writer’s block and she’s got a book due to her editor in six months. So, she’s under a lot of other stress.” “I’ll handle it, Maud. No problem.” “Good,” Maud said, relieved. She sat up in the chair. “I’ll call Shiloh back, let her know she can come, and I’ll find out what time she’s arriving tomorrow. I’d like you to pick her up at the Jackson Hole Airport. So take that photo with you.” He stood, settling the cowboy hat on his head. “Don’t need the photo.” Because her face was already stamped across his heart. Whatever that meant. “I’ll find her after she deplanes, don’t worry. Just get back to me on the time.

For some reason newspapers are not the laboratories and experimental stations of the mind that they could be, to the public's great benefit, but usually only its warehouses and stock exchanges. If he were alive today, Plato—to take him as an example, because along with a dozen others he is regarded as the greatest thinker who ever lived—would certainly be ecstatic about a news industry capable of creating, exchanging, refining a new idea every day; where information keeps pouring in from the ends of the earth with a speediness he never knew in his own lifetime, while a staff of demiurges is on hand to check it all out instantaneously for its content of reason and reality. He would have supposed a newspaper office to be that topos uranios, that heavenly realm of ideas, which he has described so impressively that to this day all the better class of people are still idealists when talking to their children or employees. And of course if Plato were to walk suddenly into a news editor’s office today and prove himself to be indeed that great author who died over two thousand years ago he would be a tremendous sensation and would instantly be showered with the most lucrative offers. If he were then capable of writing a volume of philosophical travel pieces in three weeks, and a few thousand of his well-known short stories, perhaps even turn one or the other of his older works into film, he could undoubtedly do very well for himself for a considerable period of time. The moment his return had ceased to be news, however, and Mr. Plato tried to put into practice one of his well-known ideas, which had never quite come into their own, the editor in chief would ask him to submit only a nice little column on the subject now and then for the Life and Leisure section (but in the easiest and most lively style possible, not heavy: remember the readers), and the features editor would add that he was sorry, but he could use such a contribution only once a month or so, because there were so many other good writers to be considered. And both of these gentlemen would end up feeling that they had done quite a lot for a man who might indeed be the Nestor of European publicists but still was a bit outdated, and certainly not in a class for current newsworthiness with a man like, for instance, Paul Arnheim.

Blessed Man” is a tribute to Updike’s tenacious maternal grandmother, Katherine Hoyer, who died in 1955. Inspired by an heirloom, a silver thimble engraved with her initials, a keepsake Katherine gave to John and Mary as a wedding present (their best present, he told his mother), the story is an explicit attempt to bring her back to life (“O Lord, bless these poor paragraphs, that would do in their vile ignorance Your work of resurrection”), and a meditation on the extent to which it’s possible to recapture experience and preserve it through writing. The death of his grandparents diminished his family by two fifths and deprived him of a treasured part of his past, the sheltered years of his youth and childhood. Could he make his grandmother live again on the page? It’s certainly one of his finest prose portraits, tender, clear-eyed, wonderfully vivid. At one point the narrator remembers how, as a high-spirited teenager, he would scoop up his tiny grandmother, “lift her like a child, crooking one arm under her knees and cupping the other behind her back. Exultant in my height, my strength, I would lift that frail brittle body weighing perhaps a hundred pounds and twirl with it in my arms while the rest of the family watched with startled smiles of alarm.” When he adds, “I was giving my past a dance,” we hear the voice of John Updike exulting in his strength. Katherine takes center stage only after an account of the dramatic day of her husband’s death. John Hoyer died a few months after John and Mary were married, on the day both the newlyweds and Mary’s parents were due to arrive in Plowville. From this unfortunate coincidence, the Updike family managed to spin a pair of short stories. Six months before he wrote “Blessed Man,” Updike’s mother had her first story accepted by The New Yorker. For years her son had been doing his filial best to help get her work published—with no success. In college he sent out the manuscript of her novel about Ponce de León to the major Boston publishers, and when he landed at The New Yorker he made sure her stories were read by editors instead of languishing in the slush pile. These efforts finally bore fruit when an editor at the magazine named Rachel MacKenzie championed “Translation,” a portentous family saga featuring Linda’s version of her father’s demise. Maxwell assured Updike that his colleagues all thought his mother “immensely gifted”; if that sounds like tactful exaggeration, Maxwell’s idea that he could detect “the same quality of mind running through” mother and son is curious to say the least. Published in The New Yorker on March 11, 1961, “Translation” was signed Linda Grace Hoyer and narrated by a character named Linda—but it wasn’t likely to be mistaken for a memoir. The story is overstuffed with biblical allusion, psychodrama, and magical thinking, most of it Linda’s. She believes that her ninety-year-old father plans to be translated directly to heaven, ascending like Elijah in a whirlwind, with chariots of fire, and to pass his mantle to a new generation, again like Elijah. It’s not clear whether this grand design is his obsession, as she claims, or hers. As it happens, the whirlwind is only a tussle with his wife that lands the old folks on the floor beside the bed. Linda finds them there and says, “Of all things. . . . What are you two doing?” Her father answers, his voice “matter-of-fact and conversational”: “We are sitting on the floor.” Having spoken these words, he dies. Linda’s son Eric (a writer, of course) arrives on the scene almost immediately. When she tells him, “Grampy died,” he replies, “I know, Mother, I know. It happened as we turned off the turnpike. I felt

What a joy this book is! I love recipe books, but it’s short-lived; I enjoy the pictures for several minutes, read a few pages, and then my eyes glaze over. They are basically books to be used in the kitchen for one recipe at a time. This book, however, is in a different class altogether and designed to be read in its entirety. It’s in its own sui generis category; it has recipes at the end of most of the twenty-one chapters, but it’s a book to be read from cover to cover, yet it could easily be read chapter by chapter, in any order, as they are all self-contained. Every bite-sized chapter is a flowing narrative from a well-stocked brain encompassing Balinese culture, geography and history, while not losing its main focus: food. As you would expect from a scholar with a PhD in history from Columbia University, the subject matter has been meticulously researched, not from books and articles and other people’s work, but from actually being on the ground and in the markets and in the kitchens of Balinese families, where the Balinese themselves learn their culinary skills, hands on, passed down orally, manually and practically from generation to generation. Vivienne Kruger has lived in Bali long enough to get it right. That’s no mean feat, as the subject has not been fully studied before. Yes, there are so-called Balinese recipe books, most, if I’m not mistaken, written by foreigners, and heavily adapted. The dishes have not, until now, been systematically placed in their proper cultural context, which is extremely important for the Balinese, nor has there been any examination of the numerous varieties of each type of recipe, nor have they been given their true Balinese names. This groundbreaking book is a pleasure to read, not just for its fascinating content, which I learnt a lot from, but for the exuberance, enthusiasm and originality of the language. There’s not a dull sentence in the book. You just can’t wait to read the next phrase. There are eye-opening and jaw-dropping passages for the general reader as Kruger describes delicacies from the village of Tengkudak in Tabanan district — grasshoppers, dragonflies, eels and live baby bees — and explains how they are caught and cooked. She does not shy away from controversial subjects, such as eating dog and turtle. Parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but other parts make you want to go out and join the participants, such as the Nusa Lembongan fishermen, who sail their outriggers at 5.30 a.m. The author quotes Miguel Covarrubias, the great Mexican observer of the 1930s, who wrote “The Island of Bali.” It has inspired all writers since, including myself and my co-author, Ni Wayan Murni, in our book “Secrets of Bali, Fresh Light on the Morning of the World.” There is, however, no bibliography, which I found strange at first. I can only imagine it’s a reflection of how original the subject matter is; there simply are no other sources. Throughout the book Kruger mentions Balinese and Indonesian words and sometimes discusses their derivations. It’s a Herculean task. I was intrigued to read that “satay” comes from the Tamil word for flesh ( sathai ) and that South Indians brought satay to Southeast Asia before Indonesia developed its own tradition. The book is full of interesting tidbits like this. The book contains 47 recipes in all, 11 of which came from Murni’s own restaurant, Murni’s Warung, in Ubud. Mr Dolphin of Warung Dolphin in Lovina also contributed a number of recipes. Kruger adds an introduction to each recipe, with a detailed and usually very personal commentary. I think my favorite, though, is from a village priest (pemangku), I Made Arnila of the Ganesha (Siwa) Temple in Lovina. water. I am sure most will enjoy this book enormously; I certainly did.” Review published in The Jakarta Globe, April 17, 2014. Jonathan Copeland is an author and photographer based in Bali. thejakartaglobe/features/spiritual-journey-culinary-world-bali

Cooper, a host of works by American nature writers, and I’ve never in reading a single one of those pages felt one tenth of the emotion that fills me before these shores. And yet I’ll keep on reading, and writing. Two or three times an hour, a sharp crack breaks up my thoughts. The lake is shattering along a fault line. Like surf, birdsong, or the roar of waterfalls, the crumpling of an ice mass won’t keep us awake. A motor running, or someone snoring, or water dripping off a roof, on the other hand, is unbearable. I can’t help thinking of the dead. The thousands of Russians swallowed up by the lake.5 Do the souls of the drowned struggle to the surface? Can they get past the ice? Do they find the hole that opens up to the sky? Now there’s a touchy subject to raise with Christian fundamentalists. It took me five hours to reach Elohin. Volodya welcomed me with a hug and a “Hello, neighbor.” Now there are seven or eight of us around the wooden table dunking cookies in our tea: some fishermen passing through, myself, and our hosts. We talk about our lives and I’m exhausted already. Intoxicated by the potluck company, the fishermen argue, constantly correcting one another with grand gestures of disgust and jumping down one another’s throats. Cabins are prisons. Friendship doesn’t survive anything, not even togetherness. Outside the window, the wind keeps up its nonsense. Clouds of snow rush by with the regularity of phantom trains. I think about the titmouse. I miss it already. It’s crazy how quickly one becomes attached to creatures. I’m seized with pity for these struggling things. The titmice stay in the forest in the icy cold; they’re not snobs like swallows, which spend the winter in Egypt. After twenty minutes, we fall silent, and Volodya looks outside. He spends hours sitting in front of the window pane, his face half in shadow, half bathed in the light off the lake. The light gives him the craggy features of some heroic foot soldier. Time wields over skin the power water has over the earth. It digs deep as it passes. Evening, supper. A heated conversation with one of the fishermen, in which I learn that Jews run the world (but in France it’s the Arabs); Stalin, now there was a real leader; the Russians are invincible (that pipsqueak Hitler bit off more than he could chew); communism is a top-notch system; the Haitian earthquake was triggered by the shockwave from an American bomb; September 11 was a Yankee plot; gulag historians are unpatriotic; and the French are homosexuals. I think I’m going to space out my visits. FEBRUARY 26 Volodya and Irina live like tightrope walkers. They have no contact with the inhabitants on the other side of Baikal. No one crosses the lake. The opposite shore is another world, the one where the sun rises. Fishermen and inspectors living north or south of this station sometimes visit my hosts, who rarely venture into the mountains of their

Assign a file or paper tray to collect single-side printed paper for reuse. Boycott paper sourced from virgin forests and reams sold in plastic. Cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions; view them online instead. Digitize important receipts and documents for safekeeping. Digital files are valid proofs for tax purposes. Download CutePDF Writer to save online files without having to print them. Email invitations or greeting cards instead of printing them (see “Holidays and Gifts” chapter). Forage the recycling can when paper scraps are needed, such as for bookmarks or pictures (for school collages, for example). Give extra paper to the local preschool. Hack the page margins of documents to maximize printing. Imagine a paperless world. Join the growing paperless community. Kill the fax machine; encourage electronic faxing through a service such as HelloFax. Limit yourself to print only on paper that has already been printed on one side. Make online billing and banking a common practice. Nag the kids’ teachers to send home only important papers. Opt out of paper newsletters. Print on both sides when using a new sheet of paper (duplex printing). Question the need for printing; print only when absolutely necessary. In most cases, it is not. Repurpose junk mail envelopes—make sure to cross out any barcode. Sign electronically using the Adobe Acrobat signing feature or SignNow.com. Turn down business cards; enter relevant info directly into a smartphone. Use shredded paper as a packing material, single-printed paper fastened with a metal clip for a quick notepad (grocery lists, errands lists), and double-printed paper to wrap presents or pick up your dog’s feces. Visit the local library to read business magazines and books. Write on paper using a pencil, which you can then erase to reuse paper, or better yet, use your computer, cell phone, or erasable board instead of paper. XYZ: eXamine Your Zipper; i.e., your leaks: attack any incoming source of paper.

But the romantic dissatisfaction with the limits of earthly life and, in particular, it’s a positive valuation of more suffering always remained a feature of his own world view

Love MINECRAFT? **Over 18,000 words of kid-friendly fun!** This high-quality fan fiction fantasy diary book is for kids, teens, and nerdy grown-ups who love to read epic stories about their favorite game! Meet the Skull Kids. They're three Minecraft players who hop from world to world, hunting zombies and searching for the elusive Herobrine--the ghost in the machine. Teleporting down into a new world, the group is surprised to find that the game has changed once again, rendering almost ALL of their technology and mods useless. And when two of the Skull Kids are starving and distracted by exploring a desert village on Day 1 of their new adventure, the whole group is in danger when the sun goes down. Will the Skull Kids survive? Thank you to all of you who are buying and reading my books and helping me grow as a writer. I put many hours into writing and preparing this for you. I love Minecraft, and writing about it is almost as much fun as playing it. It’s because of you, reader, that I’m able to keep writing these books for you and others to enjoy. This book is dedicated to you. Enjoy!! After you read this book, please take a minute to leave a simple review. I really appreciate the feedback from my readers, and love to read your reactions to my stories, good or bad. If you ever want to see your name/handle featured in one of my stories, leave a review and tell me about it in there! And if you ever want to ask me any questions, or tell me your idea for a cool Minecraft story, you can email me at steve@skeletonsteve.com. Are you on my Amazing Reader List? Find out at the end of the book! June 29th, 2016 Now I’m going to try something a little different. Tell me what you guys think! This ‘Players Series’ is going to be a continuing series of books following my new characters, the players Renzor51, Molly, and quantum_steve. Make sure to let me know if you like it or not! Would you still like to see more books about mobs? More books about Cth’ka the Creeper King? I’m planning on continuing that one. ;) Don’t forget to review, and please say hi and tell me your ideas! Thanks, Ryan Gallagher, for the ideas to continue the wolf pack book! Enjoy the story. P.S. - Have you joined the Skeleton Steve Club and my Mailing List?? You found one of my diaries!! This particular book is the continuing story of some Minecraft players—a trio of friends who leap from world to world, searching for the elusive Herobrine. They’re zombie hunters and planeswalkers. They call themselves “The Skull Kids”. Every time these Skull Kids hop into a new world, they start with nothing more than the clothes they’re wearing, and they end up dominating the realm where they decide to live. What you are about to read is the first collection of diary entries from Renzor51, the player and member of the Skull Kids who documents their adventures, from the day they landed on Diamodia and carved out their own little empire, and beyond. Be warned—this is an epic book! You’re going to care about these characters. You’ll be scared for them, feel good for them, and feel bad for them! It’s my hope that you’ll be sucked up into the story, and the adventure and danger will be so intense, you’ll forget we started this journey with a video game! With that, future readers, I present to you the tale of the Skull Kids, Book 1. The Skull Kids Ka-tet Renzor51 Renzor51 is the warrior-scribe of the group, and always documents the party’s adventures and excursions into game worlds. He’s a sneaky fighter, and often takes the role of a sniper, but can go head to head with the Skull Kids’ enemies when needed. A natural artist, Renzor51 tends to design and build many of the group’s fortresses and structures, and keeps things organized. He also focuses a lot on weapon-smithing and enchanting, always seeking out ways to improve his gear. Molly

Frank Hummert was a Chicago copywriter in the ’20s. In 1930 he met Anne Ashenhurst, a former newspaperwoman who became his assistant and, five years later, his wife. The Hummerts had a formula that was surefire: appeal to the lowest common denominator, make it clear, grab the heartstrings, and reap the rewards. With writer Robert Hardy Andrews they created The Stolen Husband, one of radio’s earliest soaps. Hummert went on to do the most notable serials of the daytime. His name was added to the agency Blackett & Sample, though he was never a partner and owned no part of it. He left Blackett-Sample-Hummert and moved to New York. His new company, Air Features, Inc., turned out (among many others) Just Plain Bill, The Romance of Helen Trent, Ma Perkins, Our Gal Sunday, Lorenzo Jones, and Stella Dallas. It was estimated that Hummert at his peak bought 12.5 percent of the entire network radio schedule, that he billed $12 million a year, that his fiction factory produced almost seven million words a season.

I heard that you are a vampire,” Angelica said, gazing up at him with candid gypsy eyes. He threw back his head and laughed, oblivious to the scandalized stares cast their way. “I am a man.” The girl nodded. “I assumed so.” “And why is that?” Ah, now shall come the contrived flirtation. Ian settled his features into an expression of detached boredom that was guaranteed to send ladies scurrying. “I saw that you cast a reflection.” She was either too drunk to notice his disdain or very brave. Her lush lips curved into a smile, and he found himself asking, “And if my image were not captured in the glass, what would you do?” She grinned up at him. “I would of course ask you what such a thing is like, to be a vampire.” Ian fought to conceal his shock and keep his voice level. “Why would you want to know such a thing? Would you want to be one?” Angelica smiled as if they were discussing the latest Paris fashions. “I did not think about that. I only thought it would make a good story. I am a writer, you see.” A

Perhaps the most striking feature of the west European Upper Palaeolithic, one on which many writers comment, is a sharp increase in the rate of change. Compared with the preceding Middle Palaeolithic, a great deal happened in a comparatively short time.

In the kitchen Anna was quietly plotting to get rid of him. A brief talk, then she would contact the publisher and ask for someone more suitable. When she bore her best china cautiously back into the room she found him on his feet, examining things. 'Here we are,' she said, speaking drily, trying to call him back to his place. 'Who's this guy?' Dick asked, staring at a happy, rounded man having his photograph taken on a boat with a huge fish at his feet. 'That is my Uncle Max,' Anna said impatiently. 'Here is your coffee.' 'Great. I need a cup. Strong and black.' Dick was feeling his reckless self coming out: so what is she thinks I'm a scruff? Push some buttons and see what the old cow's made of. Anna regretted that he must place his stained body upon her newly-cleaned velvet. She was grateful for having no sense of smell. 'Tell me what you have written, Mr Michaels?' He noticed the challenge. 'All sorts of rubbish,' he said unhelpfully, wishing to add the word 'rubbish', but showing admirable restraint. 'I write anything that's required.' As he spoke he noticed an unrealised pride in his humble craft. 'I turn things into readable English so people will be interested. You see, not everyone who has had an interesting life knows how to make it sound good; that's my job.' He could see her expression soften. Something simian amid the fine features? 'I make a great effort not to change the original intention, of course...' 'You call that a ghost, I think?' 'Yeah. The ghost brings people's lives to life.

I have said that the philosophy of nature is concerned with the most general features of empirical and material reality. Other expositions written from an Aristotelian-Thomistic point of view often characterize the field instead as concerned with changeable reality (though some earlier writers do characterize it the way I have, e.g. Bittle 1941, p. 13).

If you are a follower of PBS Newshour and enjoy its special features about people and places that make the multiracial, multicultural United States such a vibrant, diverse, and complex nation, you will want to read Michael Saltz’s The Winding Road: My Journey Through Life and the McNeil/Lehrer Newshour. Not only will you learn an insider’s history of the evolving PBS Newhour programming, but you will learn about the role of producers, writers, photographers, and tech people, most of whom are never mentioned or credited on the nightly program. This is a fascinating personal history written by an incredibly versatile former senior producer on the show. The book chronicles his work as well as his love of music, the arts, and the people who inhabit this country.

Lorenzino featured in several stage plays, enchanting one by Alfred de Musset and another by Alexandre Dumas, author of The Three Muskateers. His blow for republicanism found favour with nineteenth-century writers and audiences.

For Lewis, human thought depends upon a “cosmic Logos,” which is not itself seen or understood, or even capable of being seen or understood, but is nevertheless the condition necessary for human sight and understanding. This idea can be interpreted in a Platonic way. However, early Christian writers steeped in the Platonic tradition—such as Augustine of Hippo (354–430)—were able to show that this was easily adapted to a Christian way of thinking, which understood God as the one who illuminates reality and enables humanity to discern its features.

The word the Anglo-Saxon poets of Dark Age England used for fate highlights this ironic, circling, swerving logic; they called it wyrd—a word related to a lot of other w-r words still existing in our language that connote twisting and turning (worm, wrap, writhe, wreath, wring, and so on—even word, which, as writers know, is made of bendy-twisty marks on paper or stone). Wyrd, or weird, is the bending force in our lives that, among other things, causes dark prophecies to be fulfilled not only despite but actually because of our best efforts at preventing them. It also warps our mind and induces a kind of compulsion around more appealing-sounding prophecies, as it did to Shakespeare’s Macbeth after hearing the Weird Sisters’ prophecy that he would become king. When we realize that the Minkowski block universe, in its resolute self-consistency, imposes a wyrd-like law upon us (a “law in the cosmos,” you might call it), then all those antique myths about prophecy and the ironic insistency of fate start to appear less like the superstitions of benighted folk in the Back When and start to seem remarkably, well, prescient. And not only prescient, but based on real-life experience with prescience. Divination was an important part of Greek culture, for instance; it was even the basis of their medicine. Sick patients went to temples and caves to have healing dreams in the presence of priests who could interpret their dreams’ signs. They were not strangers to this stuff, as we now are. As intrinsically precognitive beings who think of ourselves as freely willed, the logic of wyrd is our ruler. We can’t go anywhere that would prevent ourselves from existing, prevent ourselves from getting to the experiences and realizations ahead of us that will turn out to have retroinfluenced our lives now, and this imposes a kind of blindness on us. That blindness may keep us from going insane, reducing the level of prophecy to a manageable level. It is why our dreamlife only shows us the future as through a glass, darkly. It is also why the world seems so tricksterish to those who are really paying attention. That we are interfered with by an intelligence that is somehow within us but also Other is the human intuition that Freud theorized in such a radical new way. His focus was on how this Other inside could make us ill; the flip side is that it really does serve as our guide, especially when we let ourselves be led by our unreason. Research shows that “psi” is an unconscious, un-willed function or group of functions.2 The laboratory experiments by Daryl Bem, Dean Radin, and many others strongly support something like presentiment (future-feeling) operating outside of conscious awareness, and it could be a pervasive feature or even a basic underlying principle of our psychology.

207, 2nd Floor, 3rd Main Rd, Chamrajpet, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560018 Call – +91 7022122121 Kannada Books Purchase: Veeraloka Books: Find the Universe of Writing At the core of Karnataka's dynamic scholarly practice are its rich social legacy. Veeraloka Books offers an entryway to this universe of writing through its wide assortment of Kannada books. Whether you are an ardent peruser or somebody hoping to investigate the domain of Kannada writing, Veeraloka Books gives an amazing chance to dig into the different abstract scene of Karnataka. Veeraloka Books invests wholeheartedly in organizing a determination of Kannada books that envelops different types, including fiction, genuine, verse, show, from there, the sky is the limit. From exemplary works that have endured for an extremely long period to contemporary compositions that encapsulate present day Karnataka, the book shop offers a far reaching scope of scholarly works for perusers of all preferences and inclinations. For those keen on digging into the rich social legacy of Karnataka, Veeraloka Books' assortment incorporates works that praise the state's customs, fables, history, and ethos. Perusers can investigate stories that offer experiences into Karnataka's past, present, and future, giving a nuanced comprehension of the state's social embroidery. Veeraloka Books isn't simply a stage for Kannada Books Purchase; a social center cultivates a profound appreciation for the scholarly fortunes of Karnataka. The book shop effectively advances Kannada writing and energizes discourse around crafted by Kannada writers, both laid out and arising. Through book dispatches, writer occasions, and scholarly conversations, Veeraloka Books makes an energetic local area of artistic fans who share an energy for Kannada writing. Notwithstanding its actual store, Veeraloka Books likewise gives a web-based stage, empowering perusers from across the world to access and buy Kannada books effortlessly. The book shop's site offers an easy to understand interface, permitting guests to peruse its assortment, read book depictions, and make buys from the solace of their homes. This openness guarantees that Kannada writing contacts a worldwide crowd, rising above topographical limits and language obstructions. Besides, Veeraloka Books endeavors to help neighborhood writers and distributers, assuming a urgent part in advancing the development of Kannada writing. By giving a stage to arising scholars to feature their works and arrive at a more extensive readership, the book shop adds to the improvement and development of the Kannada abstract scene. Whether you are a Kannada writing lover, an understudy investigating Karnataka's social legacy, or a peruser enthusiastic about finding new scholarly voices, Veeraloka Books offers a vivid encounter that commends the universe of Kannada writing. With its obligation to safeguarding and advancing the rich scholarly customs of Karnataka, Veeraloka Books remains as a guide for those enthusiastic about embracing the composed word in Kannada. All in all, Veeraloka Books fills in as an extension among perusers and the enthralling domain of Kannada writing, welcoming people to leave on an excursion of investigation, revelation, and appreciation for the different stories that structure the embodiment of Karnataka's scholarly legacy.

Kannada writing is one of the most seasoned and most extravagant scholarly customs in India, tracing all the way back to north of 1,000 years. Known for its significant narrating and graceful profundity, Kannada authors includes a great many sorts, from exemplary stories to contemporary books, verse, and social discourses. Veera Loka Books praises this heritage by offering an organized assortment of works by eminent Kannada writers, furnishing perusers with admittance to immortal stories and current points of view. Tradition of Kannada Writing Kannada authors has delivered a portion of India's best writers and writers, contributing fundamentally to Indian scholarly legacy. Throughout the long term, Kannada creators have investigated subjects of reasoning, otherworldliness, social change, and individual personality. Works from artists like Pampa, Ranna, and Basavanna mirror the early graceful customs and philosophical idea in Kannada, while present day creators like Kuvempu, U. R. Ananthamurthy, and S. L. Bhyrappa bring complex accounts that dig into society, culture, and the human mind. Veera Loka Books: A Center for Kannada Writing Veera Loka Books is committed to advancing Kannada writing by furnishing perusers with admittance to exemplary and contemporary works by acclaimed Kannada writers. From books and brief tales to verse assortments and youngsters' books, Veera Loka Books offers something for each peruser, encouraging a more profound association with the language and culture of Karnataka. Highlighted Kannada Writers Accessible at Veera Loka Books Kuvempu - Known as Karnataka's most memorable Jnanpith awardee, Kuvempu is commended for his verse and books that reflect profound otherworldliness and human qualities. His works, like Malegalalli Madumagalu and Sri Ramayana Darshanam, are immortal works of art that keep on moving perusers across ages. U. R. Ananthamurthy - A focal figure in present day Kannada writing, Ananthamurthy is famous for his striking stories that question social and social standards. His original Samskara, a significant investigate of standing and conventionality, is a fundamental perused for anybody investigating Kannada writing. S. L. Bhyrappa - Known for his point by point, philosophical narrating, Bhyrappa's books frequently tackle topics of custom, history, and existential inquiries. Works like Parva and Saartha grandstand his scholarly profundity and sharp perceptions of society. Poornachandra Tejaswi - As the child of Kuvempu, Tejaswi cut his own specialty in Kannada writing with works that feature provincial life, nature, and human connections. His books like Karvalo offer a one of a kind viewpoint on life in Karnataka. Vaidehi - A main female voice in Kannada writing, Vaidehi's accounts are praised for their responsiveness, particularly in portraying ladies' encounters. Her works point out the subtleties of daily existence and social issues, making them interesting and powerful. Why Pick Veera Loka Books? Veera Loka Books is in excess of a book shop - it's a stage to encounter the best of Kannada writing. By offering works from observed Kannada writers, Veera Loka Books assists perusers with interfacing with their social roots, find novel thoughts, and appreciate enthralling stories. Whether you're a long lasting peruser or new to Kannada writing, Veera Loka Books gives the ideal choice to begin or develop your excursion into this lively scholarly custom. Investigate the huge universe of Kannada writing with Veera Loka Books and drench yourself in stories that mirror the essence of Karnataka.

For both writers and directors, television offered creative opportunities that rivaled, or even surpassed, what they’d done on the big screen. “We can make TV shows now the way we made feature films in 1999,” says Run Lola Run’s Tom Tykwer. “The freedom we have, the experimental power that is given to us, the crazy open-mindedness of the audience towards new ways of storytelling—it’s all massively shifted from cinema to television.

      •   Feature an excerpt from your novel, and explain why you love that passage or scene.

Zemanta This is an application for your blog, and one of its features is to find free images to accompany your newest post.

The house had another special feature, one that was required for an industrialist in that era. On the second floor, hidden in the second bedroom, known as the family bedroom, was a closet that served as a panic room. This closet had a call box that could be used to alert the police, the fire department, or the hospital. This was no extravagance: Wealthy men received threats of all kinds. In 1889, for example, W.A. received a letter threatening his life if he did not pay the writer $400,000. He didn’t pay, but he was prepared for trouble if it arrived.

Witnesses to his whoppers realized that Reagan was not lying but had persuaded himself of the validity of his tales. “He finds it next to impossible to say anything that is not in some crucial way untrue,” wrote the journalist Jack Beatty. “It’s not a credibility gap, for there is no evidence of cynical or even conscious duplicity. The President is so far out of touch that it amounts to a reality gap.” Still, listeners were often dumbfounded. His daughter Patti said, “He has the ability to make statements that are so far outside the parameters of logic that they leave you speechless.” John Sloan, author of The Reagan Effect, has written: “In Reagan’s mind, unpleasant facts could be avoided; contradictions could be denied; anecdotes could overcome facts; movie illusions could substitute for history; unpleasant realities could be blamed on a hostile press.” His fictions mattered little, though, for after a generation of assassination and scoundrelry the media decided—consciously or unconsciously—to feature his presidency as a success story and to brush aside inconvenient particulars. “Ronald Reagan,” observed the political scientist James David Barber, “is the first modern President whose contempt for the facts is treated as a charming idiosyncrasy.” In London, a writer in the Observer commented: “His errors glide past unchallenged. At one point … he alleged that almost half the population gets a free meal from the government each day. No one told him he was crazy. The general message of the American press is that, yes, while it is perfectly true that the emperor has no clothes, nudity is actually very acceptable this year.

Many fiction writers have used novels to promote social change. Why couldn’t I? No matter that I had no experience whatsoever writing fiction. I could learn. I decided on mysteries because I love the genre and could envisage a story featuring climate change researchers hounded by climate change doubters.

Once you consider the premise that Episodes I through III are not live-action movies with extensive special effects, but rather animated features with a few living actors rotoscoped in, many of the more common critical objections to the movies simply wither away.

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Writing a novel is a bit like being Daniel Boone. An author stands atop a ridge in a mountain range and can generally see a number of peaks in the distance. What lies between those peaks—the dales and glens, rivers, forests, and other features that distinguish one mountain landscape from another... is where the artistry and intrigue of the writing process lives. As the writer sets out into the story, leaving behind those high points—the beginning, a twist here and there, the climax, and, if perhaps a bit indistinct for the distance to cover, the end—entering the vale below, all manner of things can happen the writer never intended or expected at the onset.

I'm Freelance Journalist that covers political stories from around the world. I've been featured in CTV News and BBC.

Get out of your comfort zone and go for it. I do this when I apply for lead acting parts in feature movies.

a new teaching appointment required that I become familiar with mysticism in Christianity and other religions. That’s when I realized that these were mystical experiences. Especially important was William James’s classic book The Varieties of Religious Experience, published more than a century ago, still in print, and named by a panel of experts in 1999 as the second most important nonfiction book published in English in the twentieth century. The book combines the elements that made up James himself: a psychologist fascinated by the varieties of human consciousness, and a philosopher pondering what all of this might mean.1 Part of his book is about mystical experiences. Based on James’s study of accounts of such experiences, he concluded that their two primary features are “illumination” and “union.” Illumination has a twofold meaning. The experiences often involve light, luminosity, radiance. Moreover, they involve “enlightenment,” a new way of seeing. “Union” (or “communion”) refers to the experience of connectedness and the disappearance or softening of the distinction between self and world. In addition, James names four other common features: Ineffability. The experiences are difficult, even impossible, to express in words. Yet those who have such experiences often try, usually preceded by, “It’s really hard to describe, but it was like . . .” Transiency. They are usually brief; they come and then go. Passivity. One cannot make them happen through active effort. They come upon one—one receives them. Noetic quality. They include a vivid sense of knowing (and not just intense feelings of joy, wonder, amazement)—a nonverbal, nonlinguistic way of knowing marked by a strong sense of seeing more clearly and certainly than one ever has. What is known is “the way things are” when all of our language falls away and we see “what is” without the domestication created by our words and categories. This way of knowing might be called direct cognition, a way of knowing not mediated through language. Reading James and other writers on mysticism was amazing. In colloquial language, I was blown away. I found my experiences described with great precision. Suddenly, I had a way of naming and understanding them. Moreover, they were linked to the experiences of many people. They are a mode of human consciousness. They happen. And

Instead of more consumerism – the buying of experiences, the accumulation of things, of eating the ‘other’ – perhaps writers should name their own environment. What is the shape of your watershed? How is your electricity produced? Where is your water treated? Where is your food produced and by whom and how does it travel to your local market? What are the names of the rocks under your feet and around you? What formed those geological features? Who were the first humans here? What flora and fauna live upon it and what are their habits and interfaces? What stars whirl above you and what names have they been given, what lore? How can one trace the relations, find the slippages between histories, the linkages, to find the complexities in naming and of the named? Travel as one’s carbon footprint; travel as a footstep, travel as a naming in a landscape in all its complexity. Homing as a way to place oneself in a constellation of process and being.

In some sense, list-making is to mind-mapping as black and white photography is to color photography. Both are good, both are useful. One gives you precision and clarity; the other gives you a broader spectrum of potential beauty, as well as access to otherwise-unseen features.

alt.sex.stories The newsgroup quickly became one of the most popular text-based newsgroups (i.e. not intended for posting binary files) on Usenet. Amateur writers of all sorts began posting fictional “erotic stories” and finding a worldwide audience for their work. However, because of the very nature of unmoderated newsgroups, alt.sex.stories soon found itself a repository for a great number of poorly-written, sometimes barely coherent “stroke” stories consisting of a few sentences or paragraphs. The average quality of the stories posted to the newsgroup seemed somewhat lower and more crude than the stories seen in pornographic magazines and books, and this state of affairs continues to the current day.[citation needed] Yes, the “stroke” stories certainly undermined the credibility of the newsgroup that had produced stories such as “Balling Lil’ Sis,” “Showtime - Part 6 Featuring Jennifer Love Hewitt and a Vanna White Lookalike,” and “Alex and Brian,” which features the immortal sentence “‘Shhhhhhh, if you do as i say you wont get this!’ he said as he pulled out a 12 inch dildo with the name ‘MegaMan’ on it.

Ellie Haworth is living the dream. She often tells herself so when she wakes up, hungover from too much white wine, feeling the ache of melancholy, in her perfect flat that nobody eve messes up in her absence. (She secretly wants a cat, but is afraid of becoming a cliche.) She holds down a job as a feature writer on a a national newspaper, has obedient hair, a body that is basically plump and slender in the right places, and is pretty enough to attract attention that she still pretends offends her. She has a sharp tongue-too sharp, according to her mother-a ready wit, several credit cards, and a small car she can manage without male help. When she meets people she knew at school, she can detect envy when she describes her life: she has not yet reached an age where the lack of a husband or children could b regarded as failure. When she meets meant, she can see them ticking off her attributes - great job, nice rack, sense of fun - as if she's a prize to be won. If, recently, she has become aware that the dream is a little fuzzy, that the edge she was once famed for at the office has deserted her since John came, that the relationship she had once found invigorating has begun to consume her in ways that are not exactly enviable, she chose not to look to hard. After all, it's easy when you're surrounded by people like you, journalists, and writers who drink hard, party hard have sloppy, disastrous affairs and unhappy partners home who, tired of their neglect, will eventually have affairs. She is one of them, one of their cohorts, living the life of the glossy magazine pages, a life she has pursued since she first knew she wanted to write. She is successful, single, selfish. Ellie Haworth is as happy as she can be. As anyone can be, considering. And nobody gets everything, so Ellie tells herself, when occasionally she wakes up trying to remember whose dream she's meant to be living.

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We do not use writing exclusively to attain perspective upon our self-referential human existence. We dedicate our essayistic existence to witnessing the variegated acts of life. Our craniums serve as a personal planetarium, a full-dome personal theater where we can replay video and audio educational films documenting our scented and tactile observations. We feature recollections of evocative experiences, vivid daydreams, and frightful nightmares. A vast array of scientific visualizations and artistic depictions supplement our personal slideshow, knowledge we employ to frame our evolving self under the celestial sky and navigate our earthy existence.

Life is too short to be busy. Spirit animal: Sponge Cal Fussman Cal Fussman (TW: @calfussman, calfussman.com) is a New York Times best-selling author and a writer-at-large for Esquire magazine, where he is best known for being a primary writer of the What I’ve Learned feature. The Austin Chronicle has described Cal’s interviewing skills as “peerless.” He has transformed oral history into an art form, conducting probing interviews with icons who have shaped the last 50 years of world history: Mikhail

Business Plan Writers If you need a business plan in less than a week, our consulting service can help! Our business plan consultants will create a business strategy that will impress your investors. We looked at all the best business plan writing services and compared their features and pricing. Here is our in depth comparison and recommendations. A business plan writing service is a team of business experts that take your ideas & numbers, combine it with some of their own research and produce a professional, well-formatted business plan. We looked at the 3 top business plan writing services and compared their features and pricing. From start-up guidance to operations consulting, your company can become more successful with the support of one of our business consultants. First, let our team learn more about your business and listen to your needs. Then, we’ll identify key areas of opportunity, and help you to implement the right business plan and strategy for the growth of your company. It was a good startup. It had a good idea and, much more important, a market window, differentiation and experience to make it happen. One of my first engagements in business planning was as business plan consultant to a startup with three experienced founders. I met with them several times, listened always, and did their business plan. I built the financial model, wrote the text, and produced the document as a business plan document. But I wasn’t part of the team.

Business Plan Samples This sample business plan is intended to provide you with a template that can be used as a reference for when you’re hard at work on your plan. It's always easier to write something if you can read an example first, so here's an executive summary example that you can use as a model for your own business plan's executive summary. The Executive Summary is where you explain the general idea behind your company; it’s where you give the reader (most likely an investor, or someone else you need on board) a clear indication of why you’ve sent this Business Plan to them. In the Business Plan section, you will want to get the reader’s attention by letting them know what you do. It’s vitality important to set up a strong foundation and a thorough business plan in the beginning. Nonprofit business plans have several different features and quirks that you’ll need to include to receive funding and having a strong passion to help your community is only a fragment of what it takes to run a not-for-profit organization.

Sixty years prior to the death of “Che” Guevara and high in the same Bolivian highlands, Butch Cassidy and Harry A. Longabaugh, “the Sundance kid,” were holed up and then gunned down by the Bolivian army. It is thought that being mortally wounded, one of them shot the other before shooting himself. Attempts to find any remains that match the DNA of living relatives, has so far failed. However, Butch Cassidy's sister, Lula Parker Betenson, maintained that her brother returned to the United States and lived in seclusion for years. In 1975, Red Fenwick, the feature writer and columnist at The Denver Post, stated that he was acquainted with Cassidy's physician, who continued to treat him for some years after he supposedly was killed in Bolivia.

This way of comprehending the healthy development of the mind reminds us of the Genesis narrative which declares that we mysteriously hewn creatures are both dust and breath (Genesis 2:7); we are inseparably embodied and relational. Furthermore, this feature of integration is reflected in the psalmist’s plea that God would give him an undivided heart (Psalm 86:11), and God’s deep desire to do so while transforming hardened, disintegrated hearts into flexible, connected ones (Ezekiel 11:19). The notion that my mind comprises different parts that function well only when brought together in harmony and only with assistance from someone outside of myself is but one metaphor the writers of Scripture offer, a poetic expression of our embodied neural circuitry operating in an integrated fashion. In the same manner that God intends that our minds grow in maturity and connection, just as we do with each other, it is one of shame’s primary features to disrupt and dis-integrate that very process, functionally leading to either rigid or chaotic states of mind and behavior, lived out intra- and interpersonally.

Everybody wants to forget about the writer,” Philip Perigord said, helping himself to more eggnog. “At the Oscars each year, some ninny intones ‘In the beginning was the Word’ before he hands out the screenwriting awards. And you hear the usual crap about how they owe it all to chaps like me who put words in their mouths. They say it, but nobody believes it. Jack Warner called us schmucks with Underwoods. Well, we’ve come a long way. Now we’re

In Boston, a writer to the Herald Tribune remarked that “the noblest feature of modem civilization, respect for human life, has been abandoned for the time being in Germany.” This Bostonian noted that while the “internal affairs of Germany are her own business... there are some practices which are so revolting to mankind, such a setback, for civilization, such a debasement of the human spirit that absence anywhere of protest against them is almost equivalent to approval of them

Key features Always write in small chunks (also-called blocks ). Unlike many paragraphs, only one topic per chunk. Nothing extra. Chunks can contain several sentences. Label very chunk with an informative, relevant, short, bold-face title. Standards for organizing and sequencing large documents. Diagrams and illustrations can be chunks. Use them. Possible to cluster most of the 40 sentence types into seven categories: procedure, process, structure, concept, fact, classification, principle. Another 160 chunk-types available for Report Documents and Scientific and Technical Reports. About 400,000 technical and business writers world-wide have been taught to write structured writing since 1969.

Here we are in the domain of the human spirit: what do you want to say and how do you want to say it? One hundred eighty years ago, Balzac wrote eighty classic novels in twenty years, using just a quill pen. Who among our word-processing writers today can even approach such a record? In the 1930s, Jean Renoir made a commercially successful feature film (On Purge Bébé) in three weeks—from concept to finished product. And early in his career, Kurosawa— directing and editing himself—would have the first cut of his films done two days after shooting.

Nature is heartless, people can be cruel, and death and suffering are inevitable and arbitrary. We learn to tame our terror by laughing at the absurdity of it all. By laughing at that recognition, you are rising above it and blunting its power to disturb.

There is something else going on here, explored by Ernest Clark in his groundbreaking dissertation.13 Clark, through an exhaustive survey of stoicheia in the Greek world, highlighted the medical literature (with writers like Galen prominent but by no means unique). It was a commonplace among ancient doctors that human beings were composed of the four stoicheia, earth, air, water, and fire. This was explored in different ways by different philosophies. But the point here is that illness was diagnosed in terms of an imbalance in the stoicheia, rather like the “humors” in medieval European medicine. When the diagnosis has been made, and it turns out that the patient’s stoicheia are out of balance, out of harmony, what is needed is some kind of medical regime, a course of treatment. Such a “regime” would be a nomos, a “law.” And this nomos would regularly function as a paidagōgos, to lead the patient back to health, like the child being taken to school by the household slave. This observation is a central feature of Clark’s thesis.

Martin was turned on by knowledge. In the 21st century, such people have been termed "sapiosexuals": those who consider intelligence the most sexually attractive feature. That was exactly what I was to Martin; this was what Martin Eden was.

Many of my Anglophone Indian friends, even if they grew up on a steady diet of masala movies, have imbibed the attitude of Shakespeare Wallah. They involuntarily cringe when I talk about how I find the cheap flash of Hindi film Shakespearean. ‘Gilji,’ they say, ‘random item numbers, idiotic dances by lovers around trees, unoriginal stories: surely all this is a world away from the lofty accomplishment of Shakespeare! You of all people should know that!’ These friends are nonplussed when I tell them that Shakespeare’s plays—at least as performed 400 years ago to mixed audiences of literate and illiterate, noble and poor—also routinely featured naach-gaana (song-and-dance numbers), often celebrated sanams (lovers) in the presence of trees (just ask Rosalind and Orsino in As You Like It), and plundered their kahaaniyan (stories) from everywhere. Watching Lagaan was, for me, a moment of awakening to masala possibilities in Shakespeare and his drama that I had until then largely overlooked. Conversely, it was an awakening to how there is something Shakespearean about the masala movie even if it is not an adaptation of Shakespeare.

Happiness is wildly indiscreet vibrators that make your whole clapped-out building quake and Jill Scott sex jams and Judd Apatow comedies set in L.A, preferably featuring Leslie Mann. Yes! Happiness is Leslie Mann because she's joyful and she always laughs like she's got an abundance of delightful secrets.

150 Screenwriting Challenges by Eric Heisserer, the writing exercises within it could change the way you write. In my opinion, writing exercises are the fastest route to becoming a better writer as well as being an immediate idea generator.