Recent Books (Recenter Books Edition)

Since the end of November last year, I’ve done three things relevant to my reading: … struggled to get over a bad cold. … cut back on using social network sites (and especially cut back on wading into arguments with idiots). … made an effort to spend more time reading books instead of internet glop. The first was both involuntary and unpleasant, but has definitely helped with the latter two endeavours, which in contrast were a concerted effort (and were, obviously, quite linked to one another). On the other hand, I also traveled, which usually takes a bite out of …

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Linkspray

A spray of links and goodies. I’ve been saving up. The Shining: Since watching Room 237: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHE5YUNkssQ … and then rewatching The Shining, I’ve been a little fascinated with the film, and a lot fascinated with others’ (often slightly-to-very-crazy) fascination with it: Staircases to Nowhere: a documentary on the making of the film, with interviews of the crew: The Overlook Hotel is a tumblr dedicated to ephemera from the film’s production/promotion/etc. STANLEY KUBRICK’S MASTERPIECE, “THE SHINING”: Basically a book-length reading of the film in the form of a blog, which I have yet to read though I’ve read fascinating reviews. Apparently this …

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One Coin, Two Sides: Children’s Literature and Censorship

So, I’ve been working with a Korean writer who is trying to branch out into writing kid’s books in English, and to writing fiction. So far, she’s mainly written nonfiction stuff–educational books–but now that she’s in Saigon, she feels like she has the time and freedom to branch out into fiction. It’s been pretty interesting to go through the basics with her, week after week, because so much of what’s true of kid’s fiction is true of all fiction. Characters, motivations, story problems… they’re all there. Kidlit is sometimes a little more directly allegorical, and sometimes is a little more …

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