Terry Pratchett on an archive picture. Photograph: Eamonn McCabe/Eamonn McCabe
As the literary world mourns the death of Discworld creator Terry Pratchett, The Guardian has selected some of his most inspiring and memorable quotes. Including:
“Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.”
More Terry Pratchett quotes HERE
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He said WHAT?
Famous Writer Insults
Shari Stauch puts together what writers REALLY think of their brethren.
For example:
See them all HERE
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Literary Instagrams worth a look
I haven’t tried Instagram yet, but at HuffPost Claire Fallon has written a story that has me thinking about it. While tweeting has become important among the literati, Instagram’s more visual platform hasn’t caught on to the same degree.
Twitter encourages writers to use words more conscientiously, engage in conversations with other authors, and hop on to bookish hashtags; Instagram asks us to think aesthetically, Fallon notes. “We book nerds love a good visual as much as anyone, especially if that image includes our favorite things: books.”
Author and artist Miranda July greeted fans with a provocative twist on a book announcement pic: her new novel posed between bare, spreadeagled legs. “The birth of my Instagram account,” she dryly captioned her first photo on the site. After just this one post, July already has over 6,000 followers.
https://instagram.com/mirandajuly/
And, of course:
Cats Only Book Club
catbookclub
Cats+books=yes. Yes forever.
Other bookish Instagram sites HERE
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I got 71. Wow. I spend a lot of time reading.
How about you?
NPR’s Top 100 Science-Fiction & Fantasy Books
More than 5,000 of you nominated. More than 60,000 of you voted. And now the results are in, NPR says. The winners of NPR’s Top 100 Science-Fiction and Fantasy survey are an intriguing mix of classic and contemporary titles. There are no young adult or horror books on this list, but those genres will come another time.
The Top 100 HERE
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What Am I Looking At?!
Canadian artist Rob Gonsalves is a genius when it comes to optical illusions. His surreal paintings seem ordinary enough at first, but move your eyes across the frame and suddenly the scene is something completely different.
In Gonsalves’ paintings, up is down, down is sideways…
More illusions HERE
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11 Essential Reads for Women’s History Month
We are all familiar with Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Doris Lessing, Simone de Beauvoir, and the contributions they made to feminist literature, Off the Shelf says. But great literature concerning feminist themes is not confined to these classics.
Many of our most exciting contemporary literary writers are expanding and complicating our understanding of what it means to be a woman today. Encompassing the thrill, rage, devastation, and range of the female experience, these essential voices should not be ignored. I’d argue that my own The Secrets of Jin-shei fits that, though it wasn’t among the 11 they chose.
One remarkable book that was picked was:
Americanah, by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: This powerful story of race and gender is centered on Ifemelu, a brilliant and self-assured young woman who departs military-ruled Nigeria for an American university where, for the first time, she is forced to grapple with her identity as a black woman. Ifemelu faces difficult choices and challenges, suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, and eventually achieves success as the writer of an eye-opening blog about race in America. Fearless and gripping, Americanah is a richly told story set in today’s globalized world.
See the others HERE
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Author Katharine Norbury includes one of the funniest books ever written, one I hectored my husband into reading, Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K Jerome, in her list of:
The top 10 books about rivers
Cuneiform tablet with Gilgamesh Flood Epic. Babylonian, c17th century BC. Photograph: Universal Images Group/Getty Images
She also includes The Epic of Gilgamesh: The oldest story ever told, or at any rate, ever written down, was inscribed onto 11 clay tablets around 1800 BC and rediscovered in Mesopotamia in 1853 AD. In 1998, the opening lines turned up in a vault in the British Museum. Rivers run through it, as they do through all the great origin myths.
Her other fascinating choices HERE
I never wrote a novel about rivers, but I did produce an anthology filled with stories by some wonderful writers.
[My anthology, River, HERE]
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THIS ‘n THAT
Maine bed & breakfast owner will sell her inn to anyone for just 200 words
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10 words we’ve forgotten how to pronounce
Pronounce THIS
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Quote of the Day
“Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.” ~ Terry Prachett
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Alma Alexander My books Email me
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