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Notes"A bad review may spoil your breakfast, but you shouldn’t allow it to spoil your lunch."Kingsley Amis
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Notes“In 1993, [my wife] and I vacationed together in Tahiti. I remember reading a book called “The Doomsday Conspiracy,” by Sidney Sheldon. Up until this point, almost all my reading had been dictated by my schooling (primarily classics like Faulkner, Steinbeck, Dostoyevsky, Shakespeare, etc.) and I’d read almost no commercial fiction at all since “The Hardy Boys” as a child. The Sheldon book was unlike anything I’d read as an adult. It held my attention, kept me turning pages, and reminded me how much fun it could be to read. The simplicity of the prose and efficiency of the storyline was less cumbersome than the dense novels of my schooldays, and I began to suspect that maybe I could write a “thriller” of this type one day. This inkling, combined with my musical frustrations at that time, planted the seed that perhaps I could write books for a living.”, Dan Brown
So we have Sidney Sheldon to blame…. -
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From shop windows to prisons, writers-in-residence find new homes
Some seek a new version of the traditional sanctum where they can devote themselves wholly to their work – without paying rent. “I was honoured and thrilled to have a space with a door that closed,” says Manitoba children’s and young adult writer Anita Daher, author of Spider Song and the first-ever writer-in-residence at Winnipeg’s Aqua Books. “It was a room of my own when I didn’t have one, and there’s nothing nicer for a writer than being surrounded by books.”
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Notes"I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: “O Lord make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it."Voltaire
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Notes"Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions."Khwāja Shamsu d-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Shīrāzī (1325/1326 - 1389/1390)
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Notes"How did Bill Gates become the richest man in America? His wealth has nothing to do with the production costs of what Microsoft is selling: i.e. it is not the result of his producing good software at lower prices than his competitors, or of ‘exploiting’ his workers more successfully (Microsoft pays its intellectual workers a relatively high salary). If that had been the case, Microsoft would have gone bankrupt long ago: people would have chosen free systems like Linux which are as good as or better than Microsoft products. Millions of people are still buying Microsoft software because Microsoft has imposed itself as an almost universal standard, practically monopolising the field, as one embodiment of what Marx called the ‘general intellect’, meaning collective knowledge in all its forms, from science to practical knowhow. Gates effectively privatised part of the general intellect and became rich by appropriating the rent that followed from that. The possibility of the privatisation of the general intellect was something Marx never envisaged in his writings about capitalism (largely because he overlooked its social dimension). Yet this is at the core of today’s struggles over intellectual property: as the role of the general intellect – based on collective knowledge and social co-operation – has increased in post-industrial capitalism, so wealth accumulates out of all proportion to the labour expended in its production. The result is not, as Marx seems to have expected, the self-dissolution of capitalism, but the gradual transformation of the profit generated by the exploitation of labour into rent appropriated through the privatisation of knowledge." -
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Today in History - January 11, 1903
Cry, The Beloved Country author Alan Paton born in Pietermaritzburg. In 1953, Paton founded the Liberal Party of South Africa, which fought against the apartheid legislation introduced by the National Party. He died before Little Steven was able to play at Sun City.
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Today in History - January 9, 1908
French existentialist writer Simone de Beauvoir born in Paris. She would become famous for The Second Sex, her proto-feminist tract.
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Notes"The worst effect of the censorship is the psychological impact on writers. When I was working on my first book, I didn’t care whether it would be published, so I wrote whatever I wanted. Now, after I have published a few books, I can clearly feel the impact of censorship when I write. For example, I’ll think of a sentence, and then realize that it will for sure get deleted. Then I won’t even write it down. This self-censoring is the worst."Chinese novelist Murong Xuecun
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Notes"The ordinary citizen of the Cluster shows a lack of self-consciousness which is typically animal. Without shame he displays his victual, salivates, wads it into his orifice, grinds it with his teeth, massages it with his tongue, impels the pulp along his intestinal tract. With only little more modesty he excretes the digested mess, occasionally making jokes as if he were proud of his alimentary facility. Naturally we obey the same biological compulsions, but we are more considerate of our fellows and perform these acts in privacy."Marune: Alastor 933, Jack Vance
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Notes Writing with Numbers‘The problem with the advice you got about writing with numbers is that the wording was ambiguous. Also it had a comma splice in it, which was confusing. Here is the advice in correctly punctuated form, edited for clarity: Spell out numbers from zero to nine, and use numerals for numbers 10 and up, except when the number comes at the beginning of the sentence. If you need to start a sentence with a number, always spell out the number, no matter how high it is.
Although that’s sound advice in most cases (especially in journalism and the Social Sciences), the issue is complicated. For example, the Modern Language Association advises us to spell out all numbers one hundred and below and use numerals for 101 and above. But they make exceptions for very large round numbers, such as a forty million, which should be spelled out. Seems reasonable.
Diana Hacker (author of A Canadian Writer’s Reference) advises that, no matter which system you are using, you should be consistent within a sentence (but I have noticed in newspapers and magazines that journalists will mix numerals with spelled-out numbers in a sentence).
Diana also says we should mix it up when one number follows another, to avoid confusion. The examples she gives are “three 100-metre events” and “25 four-poster beds.”
If you have to start a sentence with a very large number, Diana advises, rewrite the sentence!
Just getting back in practice to resume teaching this week. No doubt you know all this already and were just being “ironic” in your email. If you would like a dissertation on the use of quotation marks for the sake of “irony,” let me know.’- a University of Winnipeg professor
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“K: I live out here in the woods of Northern Ontario (yes, where the bear shits), and where the selection of cards is not what you’d call great. So this is the best I could do in the way of a “thank you” card. Yes, thanx for the other night. Your generosity did not go by unnoticed. You are a pal!
- Tomson Highway”
A funny Father’s Day cum thank you card I received from award-winning author Tomson Highway.
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Notes Aqua Books has become a kind of permanent fringe festival in Winnipeg... -
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NotesAqua Books Songwriter-in-Residence Marcel Desilets’ final wrap to his songwriting project, recorded in “The Big Church” at Gordie’s Coffee House on June 23, 2011.
