Tomorrow, August 28th, is the 1-year anniversary of Words from the Sowul! I can’t believe I’ve made it this far! And now I’m using that milestone as an excuse to make a change. As the anniversary approached, I started to think about what this blog has meant to me, and what I’ve learned from it over […]
writing
Another Mini Gem by Ms. Vanderkam
Regular readers will all know by now that I’m a big fan of Laura Vanderkam (168 Hours; All the Money in the World). This is my third blog post about her in less than a year, which is more than I can say for any of my favorite fiction writers. I can’t help it; she’s current, […]
Author Addiction
I realized recently that it’s been a long time since I’ve had an addiction to a particular author. Over the years, I’ve frequently read a book I enjoyed so much that I immediately went out and located several other books by the same author. Agatha Christie is a prime example; I kept reading her mysteries […]
Fifty Shades of Not Happening
Whenever a book craze sweeps the nation, I feel compelled to check it out. Sometimes I am disappointed, as in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Other times, I am reasonably satisfied, as in the Twilight series or The Hunger Games trilogy. And of course, there was that one time that reading an intensely popular novel changed […]
The Rise of Young Adult Fiction
The other day, while reading the NY Times online, I stumbled across this brief, interesting article by Patricia McCormick, a young adult fiction author: http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/ The article begins: If “Harry Potter” made it safe for grown-ups to read kids’ books, “The Hunger Games” has made it cool. Why are so many adults reading young adult […]
Always Something There
On Saturday night I had nothing major to do, but I didn’t want to sit down and read anything serious or heavy. After spending about an hour flicking through movies on demand and concluding that there are enough good movies out there to fill Jennifer Aniston’s big toenail, I decided to read something silly and […]