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deborah | biancotti

Tag: reading

  • A brief delay

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    deborahb
    in ,

    I made it. With the emailing of the full draft of my 21st Century Gothic essay on NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, I’m done. That’s it. I’ve met my deadlines for 2009. Which is remarkable because for a while there I thought I wasn’t going to make it. (I think I made it by going…

  • Stories: how they end, what comes next

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    deborahb
    in

    Taking a breather from trying to come up with finish an essay on why I consider No Country for Old Men gothic, to close some browser windows. So, then. If this is the future of storytelling, I don’t think I mind it at all. Also, some reading for 2010. Could come in handy, particularly if…

  • A deathknell!

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    deborahb
    in

    Well, I didn’t have to go very far to find my welcome-back-to-the-blogosphere deathknell. Fictionbitch calls this the end for writers, but I wonder if it’s more about the end for readers. The end of a nice sit down in a bookstore, that is, heralded by Waterstones — a British bookchain, from the sounds of it.…

  • Full armour and a hot fudge sundae

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    deborahb
    in

    Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae. — Kurt Vonnegut Oh, all right, I admit I’ve laughed along with the best of ’em at Dan Brown’s prose (the famous silhouette with…

  • The weight of the chain mail bikini

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    deborahb
    in

    Now & then I’m surprised out of my jadedness. Like when someone taps me on my feminist sensibility & asks me how responsible I’m being. And I wonder: hell, how responsible AM I being?! In SF and fantasy are we creating female characters who are restrained by the gender limitations of our own society? What…

  • Some final notes from a cold brain

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    deborahb
    in ,

    The lurgy is finally lifting, thankfully. For a while there it was impossible to sleep AND breathe simultaneously. Which can add a layer of difficulty to, oh, everything. From the weekend surfing: * Rebecca Solnit, “You know, a lot of my work has been based on the field of disaster sociology, which emerged after the…

  • More from the day’s bedtime reading

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    deborahb
    in

    Brain not much good today — kinda like a small child is living inside my head making ‘gah?!’ sounds at every new thing. But, lurgy has abated somewhat from this morning, which is cheering. Here’s some of what I read today: * Her debts now total a staggering $24 million, consolidated with one lender with…

  • Better read

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    deborahb
    in

    I’m home with the dreaded lurgy, so thought it timely to clean up the browser windows & list some of what I’ve been reading lately. * “These “lost” covers form a parallel universe in which the books we read and love exist in entirely different skins.” — Kill your darlings: an article on rejected cover…

  • Reading up

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    deborahb
    in

    Lately I’m loving the whatwasthatbook group on lj. Not only for its ability to find lost books (largely kids’ books, but also for the conversation style of its questions. See, for example: I read this book while I was in late elementary school – probably fifth or sixth grade (around 1999). I found it in…

  • Covering up

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    deborahb
    in ,

    OK, so I’m getting a little obsessed with cover art (ever since Nick Stathopoulos turned in the fabulous A Book of Endings cover!). Yesterday I spent a couple hours staring at these sites: http://www.thebookdesignreview.com http://shelvedbooks.blogspot.com http://henryseneyee.blogspot.com I also followed various links, finding myself in a world of cover debate. Including a link to a rant…