Two writer/bloggers we’re familiar with on this blog are featured in Publishers Weekly this week: J. Mark Bertrand and Gina Holmes. Click through the first link to read the interviews.
All posts by philwade
Honest Coffee Lovers of the U.S., Unite!
This is what browsing the InterWebs will do for you: introduce you to a vintage advertisement demanding high quality of coffee in America in 1960. “The time has come to take a stand!” insists the League of Honest Coffee Lovers. “More coffee in our coffee or fight!”
The Pan American Coffee Bureau (PACB) was soliciting citizens to insist on pure or purer coffee from the coffee growers of the world, and I gather coffee growers wanted to comply if it weren’t for dropping global prices. Farmers in Africa and Latin America were straining to make ends meet, so they didn’t mind U.S. drinkers having weaker brew while paying the same price, but the PACB wouldn’t have it. They urged Life magazine readers and others to insist on a standard coffee measure for their coffee.
The campaign went nowhere except to be fodder for Mad Magazine writers who published a satire for the fictitious League of Frightened Coffee Growers, who had “java jitters” over the impending coffee drinker crusade.
(Source: Uncommon Grounds: the History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World By Mark Pendergrast)
New University Center for Writing Named for Walker Percy
Loyola University in New Orleans, Louisiana, will open the Walker Percy Center for Writing and Publishing next Wednesday, March 10. The center intends “to foster literary talent and achievement, to highlight the art of writing as essential to a good education, and to serve the makers, teachers, students, and readers of contemporary writing by providing educational and vocational opportunities in writing and publishing.”
Percy taught at Loyola and had a heart for new and struggling writers.
CBN Interview with Anne Rice
Scott Ross interviews author Anne Rice. She says she was sitting in her office, having held onto the big doubt of God for a long time, when it occurred to her that she didn’t have to know the answers. She simply trusted the Lord and loved him. (via Eric Metaxas)
Looking for the Beautiful
Mr. Silva is blogging about seeing beauty in life.
The current state of publishing has me thinking about the future.
It’s hard not to these days. Everywhere you look there’s another announcement of the electronic squashing print. I imagine this big trash-can-head robot stomping books into the mud and I have to set down my quill and cry a little into my ink-stained tea mug.
(Imagine people wanting to move to the space station on Mars just to get away from the disturbing technological society we’ve created on Earth. It isn’t so far fetched to consider–the sci-fi writers are all wondering why I’d even bring it up.)
Longfellow's Weariness
O little feet! that such long years
Must wander on through hopes and fears,
Must ache and bleed beneath your load;
I, nearer to the wayside inn
Where toil shall cease and rest begin,
Am weary, thinking of your road!
O little hands! that, weak or strong,
Have still to serve or rule so long,
Have still so long to give or ask;
I, who so much with book and pen
Have toiled among my fellow-men,
Am weary, thinking of your task.
O little hearts! that throb and beat
With such impatient, feverish heat,
Such limitless and strong desires;
Mine that so long has glowed and burned,
With passions into ashes turned
Now covers and conceals its fires.
O little souls! as pure and white
And crystalline as rays of light
Direct from heaven, their source divine;
Refracted through the mist of years,
How red my setting sun appears,
How lurid looks this soul of mine!
“Weariness” by H.W. Longfellow
Reasons for Not Reading
Abebooks has ten reasons for not getting around to certain books. About #4, I’ve been listening to Les Miserables for months in order to get through it. Some of the digressions from the storyline are maddening.
German Resistance to Hitler
Danny Orbach’s book, Valkyrie: German Resistance to Hitler, focuses on the people who fought The Third Reich from within, people like Georg Elser, who bombed a beer hall just after Herr Hitler left. Reviewer Tom Segev writes:
Danny Orbach believes in the myth of German resistance. He rightly admires the courage of the few who dared to put their lives at risk for the sake of their country. Nonetheless, this young Israeli historian tends to assign them an exaggerated role in the history of the Third Reich. Yes, the Nazis used concentration camps and other means of suppressing resistance and intimidating would-be opponents of the regime, but the truth is that most Germans supported Hitler until the very end of the war.
Orcas: A Little Dark Humor
Perhaps you’ve heard that a trainer at Sea World was drowned yesterday when an orca took her off the platform and held her underwater. Dawn Brancheau was a 16-year veteran trainer. The killer whale, Tilikum, has been involved in human deaths twice before.
Authorities are reassuring the public that this is an isolated incident. There is no evidence the orca or any animals being held captive at Sea World are part of a larger terrorist organization.
A spokesperson for the Orca Labor Union in Orlando has released a statement saying that while killer whales are very intelligent and capable of planning to drown a human, Tilikum did not do that in this case.
“Unfortunately, it is part of human nature to keep wild animals in small spaces and train them to do tricks. I’m against it because I think it humiliates the animals,” said Richard Ellis, a marine conservationist at the American Museum of Natural History.
Officials at Sea World have refused to responded to our repeated inquiry into rumored plans for selling whale blubber and orca sausage in their gift stores.
Reader Advice to Writers: Start with Story
Laura Miller does not plan to write a novel, but she reads plenty of them. “More to the point, I’ve started 10 times the number of books that I’ve finished,” she says, and in this post on Salon.com, she offers pointers on what readers look for. Here’s a good point: “Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can’t recognize “good writing” or don’t value it that much. Believe me, I wish this were otherwise, and I do urge all readers to polish their prose and avoid clichés. However, I’ve seen as many books ruined by too much emphasis on style as by too little.”