Just a few words about book type things I’ve found this week. I’m running late and I’m sure you’re expecting a really good oval up because of it but you’ll be wrong. If you haven’t read The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins then on no account pick it up as you’ll have great trouble putting it down, I finished it this morning when I should have been writing; and I also had a visitor.
If you’re in the book industry then attending conferences is a must. Here’s one in London in April. As it’s in the UK it’ll be big, there’ll be workshops, authors, publishers, agents and lots and lots of people. An event I’d love to attend.
Agent Orange talks about publishing being a dying industry. I think they’re right, publishers seem to have forgotten that they need authors in order to have books to publish and it’s so easy nowadays to self-publish and then sell your books that publishers really need to have a good hard look at themselves and see what needs changing.
Paragraph looks great. I’m a big fan of short stories, they’re not always easy to read but they’re short and can fill in time quite nicely. Many people have made a useful amount of money from short stories over the years and produced some top quality fiction. I’m looking specifically at pulp fiction magazines such as Analog and ASIM.
I don’t know what to think of this. MacDonald’s will be giving away free books with Happy Meals. On the one hand it’s great for getting kids to read, on the other hand it means parents will be giving their children junk food.
Do you remember those days of learning by heart? I recall trying to learn my times tables by rote and not succeeding, but I don’t recall having to learn poetry. I think this effort is good as memorising helps the memory, it creates new neurons and makes things easier when you get older.
somehow my rss feed to your blog went walkies, but I’ve just resubscribed and am catching up on two weeks’worth of blogs from you.
I don’t know whether we were actually made to memorised poetry, but I certainly remember bits of The Highwayman (went riding riding; the moon was a ribbon of moonlight, etc etc) and bits of MacBeth too (somethign about a sleeve unravelled with care?) That was many years ago and given the state of my mind and the capacity thereof, I’m surprised I remember even that much!
Then there’s CJ Dennis poetry, much of which is VERY easy to memorise… Here’s a ridiculous riddle for you, how many Os are in Wooloomooloo? Two for the W, two for the M, four for the Ls and that’s plenty for them.
Maybe your RSS feed needed the exercise.
I was more thinking of the books I read where people had to memorise poetry and times tables ad nauseum. You seem to remember far more than I do, I can’t even tell you if we had to memorise anything other than times tables and our spelling words. I was appalled when I misspelled ‘chocolate’ in our spelling bee.