I love it when my blog readers send me articles. One I received, recently, was in reference to my remarks about J.K. Rowling’s new mystery, The Cuckoo’s Calling, which she wrote under the pen name, Robert Galbraith. (Aug 6, 2013) The book sold 1500 copies before the identity of th
“…as China is building modern infrastructure, we are looking to build our own Great Wall.” So writes Sheila Bair, former chair of the FDIC and author of the best seller, Bull by the Horns. That our Congress is intent upon walling immigrants out rather than building a transport
“Are we approaching a literary Singularity, when every human being on earth will, in fact, have written the book they have in them?” So begins Mark Kingwell, a Canadian professor of philosophy in his essay, “Beyond The Book” printed in the August issue of Harpers. (pgs. 15-19)
Now that Edward Snowden has given us an inkling of how far our government will go to invade our privacy , we are also learning that the oversight of that surveillance seems little more than a rubber stamp. Records reveal that members of the FISA* court, which grants the government the
While the media continues to entertain us with crime stories or pictures of England’s new prince, the United States is facing a growing nuclear crisis. Congress has delayed designating a storage facility for radioactive waste, and so power plants are keeping the spent rods in coolin
Like Phillip Roth, Alice Munro, short story writer and winner of many literary awards, has decided to retire her pen at the age of 82. She’s not doing it because she’s run out of ideas, even though she’s been scribbling for 40 years. She’s retiring because she wants to leave t
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter book saga, has been unmasked as the author of a new detective mystery, The Cuckoo’s Calling. She wrote it under the pseudonym, Robert Galbraith, hoping to escape inevitable comparisons between her youth series and her adult fiction. Her first
One of my blog readers sent me an article from the New York Times, recently. Oliver Sacks wrote it. He’s a neurologist and bestselling author of notable books like Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. He was ruminating on his upcoming 80th birthday. I’ve written
I went to hear a marketing/public relations expert make a pitch to writers the other night. My friend Susan Stoner, whose new book, Dry Rot, received a glowing review in our local newspaper, came with me. Both of us hoped to pick up a pointer or two on how to promote our works. The wo
When Lee Harper was asked if the reason why she never wrote a novel after To Kill a Mockingbird was because she didn’t want to compete with herself, the author replied, “Not just no, but hell no.” (“To Steal a Mockingbird,” by Mark Seal, Vanity Fair, August, 2013, pg.112) Sh