June 4, 2014 & Why We Should Never Forget
An Essay
Tag: How to write better
The Naked and the Dead (1948) by Norman Mailer
The Naked and the Dead is concerned with the invasion and taking of the Japanese-controlled island of Anopopei. Most of the 721-page book follows a platoon as they prepare to land on the island until the successful American victory, with some inserts from ”The Time Machine” to give back story to the platoon of foot soldiers the nameless, omniscient narrator follows through the campaign in third person POV.
Share the knowledge:
The Talent Code (2009) by Daniel Coyle
Inherent talent is a small part of success and that the habits of making mistakes and learning to improve on such mistakes are the true keys to success.
Share the knowledge:
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) by Herbert George Wells
“I also remember as distinctly that I had a persuasion that I was dead, and that I thought what a jest it was that they should come too late by such a little to catch me in my body.”
Share the knowledge:
**125th Post** A Princess of Mars (1917) by Edgar Rice Burroughs
“A people without written language, without art, without homes, without love… Owning everything in common, even to your women and children, has resulted in your owning nothing in common.”
Share the knowledge:
The Greensboro Review: Fall 2013, Issue 94 (Price $8.00 usd) & the NC-Greensboro Syndrome
The University of North Carolina – Greensboro’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing publishes a poetry and fiction review called The Greensboro Review. I happened to read the Fall 2013, Number 94 issue, having received a copy only because I paid a small fee to have my own fiction submitted to the review.
Share the knowledge:
The Masks of God, Vol. IV: Creative Mythology (1968) by Joseph Campbell & the Quest for the Holy Grail
“The artist lives thus in two worlds — as do we all; but he, in so far as he knows what he is doing, in a special state of consciousness of this micromacrocosmic crucifixion that is life on earth and is perhaps, also, the fire of the sun, stars, and galaxies beyond.”
Share the knowledge:
Beowulf (?) by ? [&] Grendel (1971) by John Gardner
”The name Beowulf itself, ‘bee-wolf,’ apparently meaning bear, suggests affinities with a widely known folktale figure of prodigious strength, the Bear’s Son, the distribution of whose appearances, in North America as well as Eurasia, points to a background in that primordial cult of reverence for the bear discussed in Primitive Mythology, and which is still observed among the Ainus of Japan.”
Share the knowledge:
**120th Post** How to Write a Book Proposal, 4th ed. (2011) by Michael Larsen
The book should be called ‘How to Build Your Author Platform’ and then the last 1/3 is actually more details on how to write a proposal for a nonfiction book with much of that being four lengthy proposal samples, which are helpful but reflect more the success of the platform rather than any actual design in the proposal itself–but we can get into that in a minute.
Share the knowledge:
Tree of Smoke (2007) by Denis Johnson
For a National Book Award winner and a finalist for the 2008’s Pulitzer Prize, I expected much much more from Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke.
Share the knowledge:
Lonesome Traveler (1960) by Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac was a famous writer known for his fictional, but mostly autobiographical, novel On the Road, depicting the Beat Generation and Sal Paradise bumming across the United States.
Share the knowledge:
Desert Solitaire (1968) by Edward Paul Abbey
Edward Abbey, “the patron saint of the radical environmental movement,” is one nature writer that includes many classifications found in nature writing into one seamless book.
Share the knowledge:
Fahrenheit 451 (1953) by Ray Bradbury
Captain Beatty, in Fahrenheit 451, imagines how fire is much like censorship, both eradicated knowledge: “‘It’s perpetual motion…. What is fire? It’s a mystery… Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences.’”
Share the knowledge:
**Author Spotlight** Sherwood Berton Anderson [ 115th Post ] by CG FEWSTON
Like all writers from the moment they put pen to paper, Anderson desired to be a great writer; however, much of his life was spent as a middle-class businessman in Ohio and Virginia, later becoming the owner of Marion Publishing Company and the owner and editor of two newspapers.
Share the knowledge:
Our Kind of Traitor (2010) by John le Carré (David Cornwell)
In one of his latest novels, Our Kind of Traitor, Le Carré provides a tale of espionage that makes one cheer and hope for the villain to win, or at least survive. Perry and his girlfriend, Gail, befriend Dima, a Russian money-launderer, in Antigua while on vacation.
