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Cannery Row, Part Two: How Steinbeck Wrote Ocean View Avenue into Cannery Row
Go back to Cannery Row, Part One: Disbelief Steinbeck was raised in Salinas, California and spent many years living in Pacific Grove, where he met and partnered with Ed Ricketts. The two even wrote...
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A Defeatist Crosspatch’s Soporific Mumblings
Yesterday morning after a dentist appointment I experienced the distinct pleasure of wandering through nearby Bell’s Book Store. To my relief – and to its credit – I found nothing trendy, electronic or...
View ArticleUninhabited Space
I’m 60 pages into my own novel and I’ve reached the point where I’m disgusted with every page and paragraph and mired in a maddening loop of revision and excision. Writing new content is upsetting and...
View ArticleThe Haps, and how Thomas Wolfe is Crushing my Spirit
I started reading Look Homeward, Angel 60 days ago, but I may as well have been reading the damn thing for 10 years. It’s exhausting, demanding and depressing. The characterization is brutal in its...
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The Best BEA Finds
I made several fantastic and exciting discoveries at the Book Expo (BEA), none the least of which is pictured below. These are the books, out of the many galleys and copies I plucked or that were...
View ArticleBetween Books
After the underwhelming The Forgotten Waltz (see previous), I tried to finish In The Garden of Beasts yesterday. I’m ill, as per usual, it just wouldn’t be Spring without a send-off flu to see me into...
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What’s Going On Around The Book Web
Timely for me, as I just finished reading Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Short Fiction and reminiscing about our great American writer, Kurt Vonnegut, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Recommended...
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Summer Reading
My phone has been ringing off the hook. My inbox is bursting; unread messages are bouncing like super balls. Everyone wants to know: what is Christine reading this summer? The Times (various) released...
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Next Extinct Mammal
Next Extinct Mammal by Ruben Quesada. 59 pages. Greenhouse Review Press. 2011. Ruben Quesada’s début collection of poetry, Next Extinct Mammal, is a rare treat of imagery and frankness. At a time...
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In the ice house, we all freeze
The sexy thing about this cover marketing is that it has a naked woman on it! People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like. -Abraham Lincoln Watch my back in a minute...
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