kate rothwell

I'm listening to The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and enjoying it, but I enjoyed it more before I looked up the author and discovered all the prizes and whatnot she got. Maybe it's a case of being left out of the party, but I frequently get a sense of "what am I missing here?" when I discover that an author is hailed as somehow super-uber-author. Same thing happened with the Olive Kitteridge book. I don't get what sets that writing apart. The word choices? The book structure? The sense of despair? How readers respond to the whole package of writing/plot/characterization? Yo, in case I haven't made my POV clear, the books don't shift my view of the universe, or make me see life in a transformed way. They're good, but I wouldn't call them Holy Fuck, that's Some Literature for The Ages good. Maybe I should take more classes in this writing gig--by the time I was done with art school, when it came to paintings, I no longer knew what I liked bu...

should I talk about mockingjay? No, posted a short thing over at goodreads. how's about whining about the end of summer? Naw, I do that every year and it's not really whine worthy. How about this? A Chihuahua playing pool AND making little noises.

There was this traffic jam on 495 that was a giant party. We all got out of our cars and walked around and talked to each other. As far as the eye could see cars, not moving. People wandering around. Every now and then an emergency vehicle came zooming down the breakdown lane, giving us something to talk about (and making the people hanging around on the rail very nervous). There was a kid from a couple cars up jumping rope for at least ten minutes without missing. Someone else hauled out a tv and a group gathered around to watch some game. other fun moments include kayaking, biking, trampolining and other active stuff--those all happened AFTER the traffic jam. More good things later.

It's that time of year again, when I start searching for guests for CORW. 1. someone who can talk about setting up a blog and other web presences for authors. I suppose that means. . . hell. I have no idea because every year, in nearly every way, my own internet presence shrinks. And if there's talk about "branding" I break into hives. Except this isn't a talk for me so never mind that. 2. someone who can tell us all about POD/self-publishing vs vanity press/fate of MMPB/. . . in other words, all about the future of publishing. Since the present of publishing is pretty confusing for most of us, that would be nice too. UPDATED : of course CT's own Don Linn would be our first choice. UP-UPDATED: Damn. Brown-nosing didn't work after all. Still looking for this #2 speaker. Booksquare's Kassia Krozser would be perfect but she's in freaking California. Angela James would be great, but she's in Maryland (and we're too cheap even for that. Our s...

The dogs spread themselves flat on the wooden floor so they can get as cool as possible. They take up a lot of room and their panting leaves small drool puddles everywhere they go...is that why these are the dog days of summer? Or is it something to do with the dog star? I'd look it up but I'm all researched out. I spent way too much time researching Germanic titles of nobility. Too much time 1. because I should have been doing something else--not because I resented all the hunting through books and sites. I don't, not at all, but time was a-wasting. I should be hauling furniture around various rooms. And vacuuming. 2. because we're not using any of the information I discovered. Those honorifics do not translate. Our count (son of a count, actually, so Erbgraf rather than Graf) would be called His Illustriousness or Highborn (Hochgeboren). His unpleasant father is called Erlaucht or Illustrious Highness. From what I could figure out, our guy, the count's son, is a h...

Okay, I did the Florida Keys mystery books a year or so ago (Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry, Lawrence Shames etc) and now I've stumbled onto the Hollywood mysteries. So far, my favorite is pretty slick and has a lot of stereotyped characters and no one has any real humanity but it was funny and clever and the story-telling technique was purely fun. Death By Hollywood by Boccho, that guy who does all those TV shows. Then there are all those Harry Bosch books, but we know about them. And now I'm onto Jefferson Parker and some other author whose name escapes me and I'm too lazy to look up. I've discovered a key component to a lot of the guys--they are devoted husbands from just about the time they discovered sex. The one true thing about them is their love for their wives, usually some girl that they met in high school and have loved steady and true ever since. And wouldn't you know it, early in the book or series, the wives either fall over dead or walks out on them. That l...