Yippee! Books, Words, and Writing has been short-listed in the Best Book/Literary Blog category of the 2007 Best of Blogs Awards.

If you’d like to vote for it, you can vote daily until Friday 13 April. Voting is simple; just go here.

Alternately, you can click on the link I’ve put up in the left sidebar.

I think the winner will be (and should be) Kimbooktu. If I weren’t voting for myself, I’d vote for her. But I’m not that generous.

Posted by Amy as Blog Housekeeping at 1:23 AM EDT

No Comments »

For those of us who like to read (and write) literary non-fiction, Slate has a bonanza of articles; it’s Memoir Week.

Critics will be considering the reach of the genre:

What has been most striking to us at Slate is how many memoirs these days are anything but coming-of-age stories; instead, they tackle issues and subjects larger than the self.

In addition, Slate will publish articles by memoirists about the experiences they went through before and after publication:

Sean Wilsey reflects on his stepmother’s threat of a lawsuit following the publication of his memoir, Oh the Glory of It All. Mary Karr recollects telling her friends she was writing about them in The Liar’s Club and Cherry. Alison Bechdel meditates on how memoirs hurt your family. Plus: Frank McCourt on being the most hated man in Ireland; Rich Cohen on his family’s feud over the Sweet’N Low fortune; and much, much more.

This is great stuff.

Posted by Amy as Non-Fiction at 7:37 AM EDT

No Comments »

I like the Blogthings quizzes, but I’m always a little dubious about what the results have to say. But here’s one that actually does have right and wrong answers.

Your English Skills:

Grammar: 100% Punctuation: 100% Vocabulary: 100% Spelling: 80%

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff at 8:16 AM EDT

3 Comments »

I’ve seen this around for a while, but I’ve finally decided to do it. Here are the directions:

• bold the ones you’ve read
• italicize the ones you want to read
• cross out the ones you won’t touch with a 10 foot pole
• put a cross (+) in front of the ones on your book shelf
• asterisk (*) the ones you’ve never heard of

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. + Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. + To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. + The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. + The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. + The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. + Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. *Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. + A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11.+ Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13.+ Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. + Harry Potter and the Sorceror’s Stone (J.K. Rowling)
17. + Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. + Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J.K. Rowling)
20. + Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. + The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. + The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. + Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. + The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. + Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. + Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. * The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand)
34. + 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. * The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. * The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. * The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. * The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. * The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. + Bible
46. + Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. + Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. + A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. + Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. + The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. + The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. + Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. + The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolstoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. + Fifth Business (Robertson Davis)
66. + One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. * The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. + Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. + Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. + The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. + Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. + The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. + The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. + Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (John Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. + Emma (Jane Austen)
86. + Watership Down (Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. + The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. * Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. * Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. + In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. * The Bourne Identity (Ludlum)
96. * The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. * White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. * A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)

Via Fausti’s Book Quest.

Posted by Amy as Memes at 1:37 AM EDT

No Comments »

Someone has created the Top 10 Sentences from Third-Rate Science Fiction Stories.

Here are a few of the “so bad they’re good” sentences:

• You could tell it was a real UFO because there weren’t any wires holding it up and it smelled like outer space.
• Frank watched the mushroom cloud spread across the horizon with annoyance, knowing that this meant more weeks of disruption to regular cross-Manhattan train service while the debris was cleared.
• Frodo felt his BVDs moisten with fear.

These sentences are either a good way to start your morning (because they make you laugh) or a bad way (because they’re so achingly similar to some writing we’re asked to take seriously).

Maybe we should try creating some of our own to add to the list—although I’m not sure if it’s possible to top these.

Posted by Amy as Humour, Speculative Fiction, Writing at 1:16 AM EDT

2 Comments »

Edward Pettit is reviving the old custom of serialising a novel. He’s published the first installment of The Quaker City, or, The Monks of Monk Hall online this past Saturday, and he’ll be publishing a new chapter each Saturday.

This novel was first published in serial form in 1844; you can read more about it and its creator, George Lippard, in the article Monks, Devils and Quakers.

Pettit tells us that the work itself is something unusual:

Lippard takes all of the conventions of the gothic novel — a decaying castle/mansion chock full of secret, labyrinthine passages, trap doors and underground pits for prisoners, cackling torturers, sorcerers, innocent damsels about to be ravished, evil “monks”— but doesn’t give them the usual medieval setting of a gothic novel. Instead, he drops them right down in the midst of an urban Philadelphia in 1842.

The author himself was astonishingly prolific:

He wrote gothic novels, historical romances and collections of stories of the American Revolution. He wrote for magazines. He wrote his own weekly newspaper. He wrote essays and delivered lectures around the country. Between 1842 and 1852, Lippard averaged 1 million published words per year. He wrote so much that he employed a clerk whose sole job was to make sure Lippard’s cigar stayed lit while he sat at his desk and wrote.

It will be interesting to see what the reaction is to Pettit’s serialisation of this novel. Let’s hope that Pettit doesn’t get the updated version of the reaction Dickens got to the serialisation of The Old Curiosity Shop (impassioned letters begging him not to let Little Nell die).

Posted by Amy as Books Online at 1:03 AM EDT

No Comments »

I always enjoy reading what writers have to say about their craft, and there are often some bits of advice that they share with aspiring writers. I’ve just discovered that Kurt Vonnegut has a list of Eight Rules For Writing Fiction.

Here are a few of them:

• Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
• Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action.
• Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.

I’m not sure I agree with the second suggestion—what about the description of the setting (e.g. James Lee Burke’s Louisiana)?

Posted by Amy as Writing at 8:27 AM EDT

1 Comment »

I had never heard of the term “aptonym” before, but now I learn that it’s the word used to describe the situation when someone’s name reflects their character or job.

Here are a few examples, taken from the Canadian Aptonym Centre:

• Donald Goodness is the rector of the Church of the Ascension in New York City.
• In Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, Canada, (PG) taught in a junior high school with a Home Economics teacher named Mrs. Hemsworth and an Industrial Arts teacher named Mr. Hands.
• there is a police officer in Vancouver named Scott Constable

This website has links to information on more than just aptonyms; it’s a great browse.

Posted by Amy as Words at 1:32 AM EDT

3 Comments »

Here’s a fun browse: The 51 Best Magazines Ever.

Some magazines are recommended unreservedly; others come with some timeframes for when they get the seal of approval. For example, Spy only meets the standards from 1986—1991: “until it was sold to fun-sponge Jean Pigozzi.”

There’s a good variety of magazines:

• National Geographic
• Atlantic Monthly
• The Paris Review
• Popular Mechanics
• Ms.
• Wet (the magazine for gourmet bathing)
• Rolling Stone

I’m not sure I agree with the inclusion of Tiger Beat, but what do I know?

Via Reality Carnival.

Posted by Amy as Newspapers & Magazines at 1:36 AM EDT

2 Comments »

I just stumbled across an interesting website called futureofthebook.com.

According to Gary Frost, the site’s owner, digital books are “overrated”:

For one thing the richness of expression of the visual/verbal mode is not approached, the conceptual exercise of the written mode is not fully required and the permanence and systematic accumulation of the print mode are not achieved. Digital research is still an accessory of the parent reading modes.

Like me, Frost remains a big fan of bound books, and the site is his place to ponder its future:

We consider hybrid topics between reading behaviors, traditional book use in the context of digital delivery systems, library preservation and book art. An underlying concept is that libraries are playing out the future of the traditional book right now. In this perspective, libraries play as large a role as a progressive publishing industry, an avant guard book arts community or enticing technologies of book equivalents.

There’s a blog, discussion sections, a bookstore (including “a set of accurate models of historical bookbindings”), and some good links.

Posted by Amy as Books at 1:05 AM EDT

No Comments »

If you’re interested in historical poetry, check out Early Stuart Libels: An Edition of Poetry From Manuscript Sources.

Here’s what the site has to say about its goals:

“Early Stuart Libels” is a web-based edition of early seventeenth-century political poetry from manuscript sources. It brings into the public domain over 350 poems, many of which have never before been published. Though most of the texts are poems of satire and invective, others take the form of anti-libels, responding to libellers with orthodox panegyric. These poems throw new light on literary and political culture in England in the decades from the accession of King James I to the outbreak of the English Civil War.

The poems are grouped both chronologically and thematically. A few of the themes include the following:

• Early Jacobean England
• Attacks on the Scots
• The Addled Parliament and the Death of Northampton
• The Buckingham Assassination
• The Overbury Murder Scandal

One of the poems collected under the latter heading was “In England there lives a jolly Sire,” and the intro to this makes me want to read the poem and learn more about the event it was marking:

This poem is one of two surviving libellous ballads on the Essex divorce and Overbury murder. The only known copy of this ballad survives in a manuscipt compiled by Nicholas Oldisworth, Overbury’s nephew, which is entirely devoted to the Overbury affair. Oldisworth’s note claims he found his copy among the possessions of Overbury’s father, Sir Nicholas Overbury, in 1640.

There’s lots of reading on this topic and many others.

Via Plep.

Posted by Amy as History, Poetry at 1:01 AM EDT

No Comments »

I’m on a roll these days with all things Irish. This will likely be the last for a while.

Your Leprechaun Name Is:

Sniffles Bottlesipper

Just call me Sniff.

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff at 1:10 AM EDT

No Comments »

Why couldn’t I have found this in time for St. Patrick’s Day? Oh well–here it is now.

Your Irish Name Is…

Eva Fitzgerald

Posted by Amy as Fun Stuff at 1:55 AM EDT

No Comments »

Well, I’m a day late for timeliness, but in the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day, here’s a good web page: Irish Slang.

Some of it is used here in Canada (such as “dear” for “expensive” or “any use?” for “any good?”), but there’s lots more that I’ve never heard of.

Here are a few terms that are completely new to me:

• Delph: crockery, cups, saucers etc.
• gaff: house
• gowl: idiot
• motherless: drunk
• stocious: very drunk

This is a good resource; I’m sure I’ll be checking back.

Posted by Amy as Words at 1:01 AM EDT

2 Comments »

Quillhill over at Necessary Acts of Devotion has a post that I strongly agree with: Sticky Situations.

The whole post is entertaining, but here’s the section that sums it up:

Today we call for an end to all stickers on books, which are nothing more than the literary equivalent to grafitti. Stop the madness. Do it for the children.

I, too, am driven to distraction by stickers on books. If I can’t get them off when I first buy the book, I compulsively pick at them while I’m reading, and, as we all know, there are those that remain annoyingly stuck for a long time. I may get the top layer of paper off, but then there’s another layer of paper that I don’t want to attack too aggressively for fear of ripping the cover.

Then, of course, even if I succeed in getting all the paper off, the glue often remains. Grr.

Posted by Amy as Books at 1:05 AM EDT

3 Comments »

I’m chuffed—Frank Wilson, on his wonderful blog Books, Inq., has said some very nice things about this blog (thanks, Frank!) and has awarded me a Thinking Blogger Award.

Now that I have received this award, it’s up to me to pass it on to five others along with the rules.

Here are the guidelines for this:

The participation rules are simple:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme,
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

It was very hard to keep this down to five only. But after lots of pondering, here are the top five:

• Bookninja
• Conversational Reading
• Hassenpfeffer
• Kate’s Books Blog
• Rake’s Progress

I wish I could think of something clever to say about each one of these, but I think the best I can do is to urge you to go to each of these blogs, start at the top and just keep scrolling down. There’s great variety on each of them, solid content, and distinct voices.

If they hadn’t already been nominated by someone else, I would also have included Book World, Books, Inq., Grumpy Old Bookman, and Petrona.

Posted by Amy as Blogs and Bloggers at 1:10 AM EDT

4 Comments »

If you’re a fan of Tolkien, and if you’ve always been charmed by the languages, here’s the site for you: Write Your Name In Elvish in 10 Minutes.

Unfortunately I can’t reproduce my name here as there doesn’t seem to be a computer site that will do this for you and then give you a widget for your blog. But it’s still fun to know how to do.

Via Rebecca’s Pocket.

Posted by Amy as Speculative Fiction, Writing Systems at 1:13 AM EDT

No Comments »

It’s that time of year again—blog awards are being handed out. I blogged today on my other blog about the winners of the 2007 Bloggies.

Regrettably, the Bloggies don’t feature an award for literary blogs. However, there is an award for blooks (books written that were based on blogs). It’s called the Blooker, and there are categories for Fiction, Non-Fiction, and Comics.

Here is the shortlist for the 2007 Blookers.

Perhaps the best known nominee is the non-fiction My Secret: A PostSecret Book by Frank Warren, the man who started the astoundingly successful PostSecret blog.

There’s also the intriguing fiction entry The Doorbells of Florence, which is described as follows:

This book contains 36 real Italian doorbells (including some never before seen), each one with a strange story about the people and things that may, or may not, live inside.

Interesting. I think I’ll check that one out.

Posted by Amy as Awards at 1:25 AM EDT

No Comments »

Do you think you know how to punctuate properly? If so, play the Punctuation Game.

This game is part of a website for Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.

I was told that I’m a 92% stickler.

Posted by Amy as Punctuation at 1:50 AM EDT

No Comments »

The Endangered Language Fund (ELF) is an organisation dedicated to working with languages that are in danger of disappearing.

The home page points out that there are 6,000 languages currently spoken in the world, and at least half of them will disappear within a century.

As a result, the Endangered Language Fund was established:

ELF was founded ten years ago with the goal of supporting endangered language preservation and documentation projects. Our main mechanism for supporting work on endangered languages has been funding grants to individuals, tribes, and museums. ELF’s 97 grants have promoted work in over 30 countries and have seen a wide range of projects, from the development indigenous radio programs in South Dakota, to recording of the last living oral historian of the Shor language of western Siberia, to the establishment of orthographies and literacy materials to be used by endangered language teaching programs all over the world.

If you’d like to donate to this cause, the site tells you how. There’s also a good list of related links.

Posted by Amy as Language at 1:13 AM EDT

No Comments »

Robert J. Sawyer is one of Canada’s most prolific writers; he’s also won numerous awards and honours (the most recent of which is the award for lifetime achievement from North America’s largest library).

When Sawyer offers advice about writing and publishing, then, it’s a good idea to pay attention: he knows what he’s talking about.

He has a wonderful post on his website that’s intended for everyone who’s just starting to write or perhaps has been writing for some time but who has not yet published. Although Sawyer is a SF writer, the advice applies to writers in all genres.

This post, titled Letter To Beginning Writers, gives frank advice about writing and publishing. It’s full of advice that many beginning writers don’t want to hear but should read anyway.

Here are a few snippets:

• Almost nobody gets rich writing SF, and hardly anyone gets to do it full-time.
• You have to finish your book before you can sell it.
• A writer needs talent, perseverance, and luck — yes, all three of them.

I’d recommend this entire site to anyone who’s starting to write and wanting advice (and inspiration).

Posted by Amy as Writing at 8:23 AM EDT

3 Comments »

Are you interested in writing a poem, but you’re just not sure where to start? You could always try a newspaper blackout poem.

Austin Kleon has a blog dedicated to them: Newspaper Blackout? Poems.

Here are his instructions for creating one:

Grab an old newspaper.
Grab a Sharpie, pen, crayon — anything that marks.
Find an article. (The more random the better.)
Start crossing out words, leaving the words you like.
Pretty soon you’ll have a poem.
If you like the poem, you can take a digital picture of it or scan it into your computer and send it to me via e-mail:
blackoutpoems [at] gmail [dot] com
Each week I will post the best submissions right here on this blog.

He also presents weekly challenges—he’ll post a page from a newspaper and we can create poems from that. The current week’s challenge is from a newspaper 50 years ago.

Via thumb drives and oven clocks.

Posted by Amy as Poetry, Writing at 7:06 AM EST

2 Comments »

Here’s an interesting site: The Napkin Fiction Project.

The premise is simple; over at Esquire, someone got creative with the concept of writing on the back of a napkin:

It’s an old story, we figured. Someone, in a bar somewhere, scribbling on a napkin i