Author: Connor Tomas O’Brien
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Sand, Meet Hourglass
Chris Ware’s cover illustration for the latest issue of the New Yorker is marvellous. Are writers more motivated by fear of ageing than those involved in other professions? In the New York Times, Sam Tanenhaus asks “How Old Can a ‘Young Writer’ Be?“. Do lawyers and doctors, or musicians or teachers, or butchers or bakers, harbour…
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Links: Lit
“Whatever exists, there is always something vital that has to be added or we wouldn’t feel anything lacking in this world,” says Chad Harbach, one of the n+1 eds, talking about the origins of n+1 magazine. Authonomy is a HarperCollins experiment in crowdsourcing the act of unearthing literature’s ‘Next Big Thing’. Anybody can upload their…
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Why Review The Things You Hate?
This past month, I started a few books I didn’t finish. Reading is hit-and-miss like that: sometimes you’ll accidentally pick books that don’t interest you, or that you find difficult to understand. When I find I’m not enjoying a book, though, I don’t generally think, “Oh, this is shitty.” Instead I think, “Okay, this book…
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Links: Geek
“Things would be a lot different”, muses Dave Pell, “if you had to deliver your status updates on horseback.” “I can either be a guy who writes novels, or I can be a guy who answers email. Realizing I cannot be both, I’ve made the decision, and now I live with it.” Merlin Mann, paraphrasing Neal…
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Review: Shane Jones’ ‘Light Boxes’
I’m going to start out this review by saying that, if I ever post a review here, it’s because I think the book in question is worthy of your dollars. There should be a rule that people only ever review books they enjoy: it would make the literature supplements of the weekend newspapers much easier…