I've been listening to Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy, my first Tolstoy, and am enjoying the lack of moral relativism. It's somehow refreshing to have a narrator with a clear opinion of what is evil and what is good, and a character who also knows this and is trying to be good. All the shades of …
Scent in writing
I'm reading Perfume: The story of a murderer, by Patrick Suskind, and am impressed with the amount of detail he's put into describing smells. It is an underused sense, in writing, and maybe that is part of why it seems so amazing, but I'm really being drawn into the strange way this character perceives the …
Submitted…. try not to think about it
I sent The Observer on it's first journey to an agency. They give a 12 week window for response. So, now to try not to think about it for the next months... Rejections are easier and easier to deal with, it's the waiting that is hard. Because the longer they take, the more hopeful you …
dying, now or later…
The Plague has been getting more interesting. One part I enjoyed was, as the characters are now all quarantined inside the town, and death is all around, one character is sitting in his house trying to write a book, and rewriting the same sentence for days and weeks, trying to find just the right words. …
A cool glass of sweet water
Every time I finish a particularly difficult book, be it bad, or odd, or just confusing, I take a break with a Nabokov novel. They are always so clear and crisp and enjoyable, it's like drinking a nice glass of cool water after a tiring time in the sun. This time I'm reading the Luzhin …
Jonas David 