Fanfare! Couldn't help myself...

30 Canadian Literary Magazines That Pay Writers

On being Quotable

Status
Not open for further replies.
Oh yeah... I meant to get that book.

I’m reading Self-editing for Fiction Writers. I like most of what the writers say. They’re editors. I think they need to shuddup, relax, and let loose every once in a while. But mostly, they’re interesting even if they are wound a little tight, literararily speaking.

Does literarily speaking count as a pun for literally speaking? Not sure.

Also reading a book my friend finished called The Crone. I like it very much too but I suck. I’ve been reading it slow, mostly because the format is a nuisance. But now I’ve converted it to a .mobi file and my kindle is fully charged. I’ll finish it in the next day or so.

I finished Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. I liked it very much.

I’m listening to Leigh Bardugo, Shadow and Bone.
 
I usually have four or five books on the go at any one time. I've been reading lots of non-fiction titles about art, as my WIP is set in the art colony of Saint Ives, Cornwall. Eric Hebborn's Confessions of a Master Forger is disarmingly honest and giving me useful ideas about the arrogance of painters who forge masterpieces. The other art book appraises the life and work of painter Elizabeth Forbes, who was eclipsed by her more famous husband Stanhope Forbes, though I prefer her work.

school-is-out-elizabeth-adela-stanhope-forbes.jpg

School is Out, by Elizabeth Forbes

For entertainment, I'm trying to get my head around explanations of how to do tricks, from instructions in David Ovason's The Book of Magic. One of the detectives in my WIP is socially inept and is learning magic to meet women! I love short stories, and am working my way through a a 1982 collection called Fevertree, written by Ruth Rendell, and blurbed on the cover as 'Eleven miniature masterpieces'—they're not, but they are entertaining soporifics that help me drift to sleep.

Lastly, I'm in awe of Kent Haruf's Benediction. I've read three other titles by him, and he's a master of sparsely worded fiction which carries a tremendous emotional punch.
 
As long as we're talking about inspiring books, the fantasy I'm writing was inspired by Eugenia Cheng's "How to Bake Pi." It's a popular-level book on a branch of mathematics called "category theory" with lots of homely little kitchen illustrations. I've read it twice and can't recommend it enough. (Actually, I kind of hate to admit how immature I am, but I keep daydreaming, as I'm writing, on the question "Will Eugenia be impressed with this?")
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

30 Canadian Literary Magazines That Pay Writers

On being Quotable

Back
Top