The Online Presence of Johann Thorsson
The following is a short excerpt from Seanan McGuire's Every Heart a Doorway that should be enough to either convince to buy the book right away because wow! The book tells the story of a group of teenagers that are trying to adapt to life after living in portal worlds (like the Narnia kids or Dorothy …
Do you ever read books simply for the prose? In an attempt to improve my writing I do this a fair bit and am now reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night. It was there I came across the following description that, as it happens, is also the best written thing I've read all …
Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week – Tender is the Night
I'm reading Undertow Publication's excellent anthology Year's Best Weird Fiction Volume Two. It was there I encountered the following sentence, the first in the story Loving Armageddon by Amanda C. Davis: She presses her cheek to the center of his chest, listening to the beat of his hand-grenade heart. Now. Here's why I think this is awesome. There's …
The best writing this week comes, yet again, from Charles Dickens. He is a master, pure and simple. From great character names to the most vivid descriptions and heartbreaking plot, he is one to envy. Here is a great passage I came across this week while reading Hard Times She gave him an affectionate good-night, …
Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week | Dickens Again
I'm about to finish Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus. It is a fantastic book that I put off reading for far too long. While reading it on the bus this afternoon I came across a passage that described the room I want to spend all my days in. Fix yourself a cup of tea, or …
Continue reading I Want To Live Here | Best Writing of the Week
Neil Gaiman told me to read Harlan Ellison, and if Mr. Gaiman says something, I obey. (This is also why I read Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell) I come relatively late to Harlan Ellison but am not sorry for it; I'm glad there's something this good out there still left for me to …
Continue reading The Best Writing of The Week | Harlan Ellison
I'm reading one of those books that I kept hearing about, again and again, but never really wanted to read. Then I bought and read the very excellent Thomas C. Foster's How to Read Literature Like a Professor. He puts the book in question in his "Literature Masterclass", with three other works of staggering genius: …
Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week | Toni Morrison
So, every now and then I come across writing that is so good that I feel an urge to share (see for instance here, here, here and here). This time, however, I have something a little different. The author's name is Poppy Z. Brite and the book is The Living Dead. The Living Dead is an …
I'm just finishing up Elmore Leonard's short story collection, Fire in the Hole. The book has nine stories that are all of the very highest quality and I bought it for two main reasons: I wanted to get a taste for Mr. Leonard, whom I had not read before and... it contains a short story, Fire …
Continue reading The Best Writing of the Week | Elmore Leonard
I'm currently reading a number of books, as is often the case. I'm sure there's a word for it. These include but are not limited to, UnMarketing, Trust Me I'm Lying, A Tale of Two Cities, Fire in the Hole and The Half-Made World. The following is a passage from The Half-Made World, a steampunk …
