Dancing in the Kitchen
My friend April knows more than a little about books and food and the ways they intersect in real life. So while I’m meeting a deadline, here’s her latest book review. America’s Test Kitchen Improves...
View ArticleI Wonder if Walt Whitman Is Rolling Over in His Grave
I quit watching television back in the days when using a piece of popular music (a Rolling Stones song, say) in a commercial was controversial. Back then a lot of artists believed it was selling out....
View ArticleShort Saturday: Are You Culturally Literate?
In the previous post we were discussing cultural literacy—the concept first propounded by educator E. D. Hirsch in 1987—and I’m still thinking about it. When I was writing that post I stumbled upon...
View ArticleShort Saturday: Advice You Can Use
One of the publishing industry blogs I follow is Steven Lewis’s Taleist. Lewis is a ghostwriter, journalist, podcaster, and expert speaker with two Amazon Top 10 best-selling guides to Sydney, among...
View ArticleOn the Road Again: Vacations and Travelogues
If you enjoy traveling—in particular if you love a good guidebook—you may already be aware that Google purchased Frommer’s last summer. Two months ago they announced there would be no more print...
View ArticleThe Bobby Ewing Solution and Other Twists
That may be an obscure reference for some of you, but I’m referring to a popular television show (Dallas) that ran fourteen seasons—from 1978 to 1991. It was a phenomenon at the time. You know: Ewing...
View ArticleShort Saturday: Real-Time Media Map
A friend of mine brought this fascinating little interactive map to my attention, and I think it’s so interesting I wanted to bring it to yours. Honestly, I’m not smart enough to extrapolate a smart...
View ArticleShort Saturday: Literature in the Vernacular
Quickly: can you name the literature from which these dozen phrases originate? Bah! Humbug! Old sport. Big Brother is watching you. The old ultra-violence. So it goes. Constant vigilance! All that...
View ArticleShort Saturday: Fiction Lessons from Game of Thrones
Although they’re very different from novels, there’s still a lot a novelist can learn from movies and long-form television shows, as author Joanna Penn points out in this week’s featured article. And...
View ArticleStudy This: At the Movies
I read recently that John Harrington, in his book Film And/Is Art, estimated that a third of all movies ever made have been adapted from novels; another writer claims that 51 percent of the top 2,000...
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