Update on the Harper Lee Lawsuit
Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, and literary agent Samuel L. Pinkus have reached an agreement in principle to resolve Ms. Lee’s lawsuit against Mr. Pinkus. At the moment, the terms of the settlement are undisclosed, and it’s common for such terms to remain confidential.
I discussed this lawsuit in a previous post, When Our Literary Heroes Become Victims, in which I said that “the complaint is a difficult set of allegations to untangle.” Ms. Lee alleged that Pinkus, the son-in-law of her former agent Eugene Winick, breached his fiduciary duties (by failing to be truthful, self-dealing, and failing to ‘work’ the copyright to maximize royalties) and manipulated Ms. Lee into assigning away the copyright to her classic novel. It was particularly sad to read about her failing health, which Lee alleges Pinkus exploited for his personal gain.
To Kill a Mockingbird is one of…
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Book Review: Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School #1)
I haven’t read any of these, but I had to reblog since the genre is listed as YA AND Stempunk! Wow.
Author: Gail Carriger
Genre: YA/Steampunk
Summary: It’s one thing to learn to curtsy properly. It’s quite another to learn to curtsy and throw a knife at the same time. Welcome to Finishing School.
Fourteen-year-old Sophronia is a great trial to her poor mother. Sophronia is more interested in dismantling clocks and climbing trees than proper manners—and the family can only hope that company never sees her atrocious curtsy. Mrs. Temminick is desperate for her daughter to become a proper lady. So she enrolls Sophronia in Mademoiselle Geraldine’s Finishing Academy for Young Ladies of Quality.
But Sophronia soon realizes the school is not quite what her mother might have hoped. At Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, young ladies learn to finish…everything. Certainly, they learn the fine arts of dance, dress, and etiquette, but they also learn to deal out death, diversion, and espionage—in the politest possible ways, of course. Sophronia and her friends…
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Lady Cordelia #CBR5 Review #69: Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
I tried to give everyone I knew a copy of this book over a decade ago. It’s incredible–The Diamond Age may be better. And then of course, there are die hard Baroque Cycle fans. But Snow Crash is certainly the most accessible of his works.
Snow Crash is one of the best books I have ever read. I feel like buying a copy for every single one of my friends, forcing them to read it while I sit and watch their faces. THAT’S how much I loved this book. Yes, I was the annoying person on the train during the morning commute laughing out loud, and if any of those poor bastards had dared make eye contact with me, I would have probably insisted on reading entire sections out loud.
I didn’t initially think it was going to be for me. I’m not a huge sci-fi fan, particularly futuristic technological stuff, but this story is all about people. Okay sure, a lot of the story was set in the virtual reality Metaverse, but I actually understood what was going on. And why isn’t more sci-fi funny like this? Stephenson obviously loves a good pun and…
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RIP Seamus Heaney
RIP Seamus Heaney, 1939-2013
“Funeral Rites”
I shouldered a kind of manhood
stepping in to lift the coffins
of dead relations.
They had been laid out
in tainted rooms,
their eyelids glistening,
their dough-white hands
shackled in rosary beads.
Their puffed knuckles
had unwrinkled, the nails
were darkened, the wrists
obediently sloped.
The dulse-brown shroud,
the quilted satin cribs:
I knelt courteously
admiting it all
as wax melted down
and veined the candles,
the flames hovering
to the women hovering
behind me.
And always, in a corner,
the coffin lid,
its nail-heads dressed
with little gleaming crosses.
Dear soapstone masks,
kissing their igloo brows
had to suffice
before the nails were sunk
and the black glacier
of each funeral
pushed away.
II
Now as news comes in
of each neighbourly murder
we pine for ceremony,
customary rhythms:
the temperate footsteps
of a cortège, winding past
each blinded home.
I would…
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Oxford American features Charles Portis film adaptation
Today, August 26, 2013, the Oxford American website features the world premiere of a film adapatation of Charles Portis’ “I Don’t Talk Service No More.”
In addition to the film, the website features an interview of the filmmaker Katrina Whalen. Jay Jennings, who edited Escape Velocity: A Charles Portis Miscellany chats with Ms. Whalen about Portis and the process of making films.
Whalen worked in production for directors Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich; Adaptation; Synecdoche, New York) and Julie Taymor (Titus; Frida; Broadway’s The Lion King) after her undergrad education at Yale. She then enrolled in graduate school at New York University.
Jennings is a freelance writer whose journalism, book reviews, and humor have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the Oxford American, and many other newspapers and magazines.
To see the film, which…
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The Seven Deadly Sins of Prologues
To prologue or not to prologue? That is the question. The problem with the prologue is it has kind of gotten a bad rap over the years, especially with agents. They generally hate them. Why? In my opinion, it is because far too many writers don’t use prologues properly and that, in itself, has created its own problem.
Because of the steady misuse of prologues, most readers skip them. Thus, the question of whether or not the prologue is even considered the beginning of your novel can become a gray area if the reader just thumbs pages until she sees Chapter One.
So without further ado…
The 7 Deadly Sins of Prologues
Sin #1 If your prologue is really just a vehicle for massive information dump…
This is one of the reasons I recommend writing detailed backgrounds of all main characters before we begin (especially when we are new writers)…
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The Enlightenment: A Graphic Guide – Lloyd Spencer, Andrzej Krauze
This might be something to look at for my World Lit. II students.
I didn’t know much about this historical period of new intellectual dawn. You could say I was in the dark about it. But this puts the spotlight on many of its major players. In fact, it really illuminated my understanding of these bright sparks and what they did, such as leading light Voltaire. It uses the graphic novel style which has appeared throughout this series of books. Some might say that treats its complex subject material in too light a manner, but the ability to do so effectively can be quite dazzling to see. And despite the short amount of time spent on each contributor, many of them are given their moment in the sun, and the authors’ understanding of the wider issues shines through. They seem really switched on. In some ways, [light-related pun]. Because of this, [wordplay on bulbs as light fittings/bulbs in gardening – too complex maybe??]
Amber Nicole Brooks 