At the Graphic Classroom, The Plain Janes

Today, my review of Cecil Castellucci and Jim Rugg’s The Plain Janes – available for under $10 through MINX (DC Comics) - appeared at The Graphic Classroom where I just raved and raved and raved.
The Plain Janes deals with the fear of contemporary terrorism, what stringent regulation and isolation and unhappiness results from said fear, and the young [...]

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Today, in the Ha-ha, is an Audiobook (Mansfield Park)

I was wiling an hour and discovered a copy of Mansfield Park [audiobook] (as read by Juliet Stevenson) available for just $4 through the Barnes&Noble website. I bought my copy several months ago to keep my long drive south palatable and it kept me pretty well diverted.

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Some Laureatespeak

So the new Laureate [Kay Ryan] is growing on me. I’m hard pressed not to get all cloud-nined and complimentary – but [brace for alliteration!] she said some super stuff in ”America’s Busiest Poet“ ; – alright, here’s the skinny: I’ve a galpal [Novelletum editor Leslie Pritchard] who’s got the most bizarre gab; thus similiarities, to me, endear even strangers:
 
 
 
“But [...]

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Authors & Artistes and the Writer’s Role in a Multi-Media Market

Chaps,
I am mightily pissed off. … I don’t really like people tinkering with my copy for the sake of tinkering. I do not enjoy the suggestion that you have a better ear or eye for how I want my words to read than I do. … There is no length issue. This is someone thinking [...]

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Daily [Heaney]: Slab Calf on a Cold & Cool Countertop

Because I so much enjoy the Poetry Friday blogs I weekly read by Kelly R. Fineman and the 7-Imp Folk, I reckoned I just might as well hop in. For awhile back in Djarum Jack’s Alley I wrote the “Daily [Heaney]“–well aware that it’s pronounced hee-nee–but I failed or forgot to carry it over when I [...]

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Saturday’s Austenolatry in Gainesville

Saturday’s Jane Austen Society in Gainesville’s Tower Branch Public Library was exciting and went well. Given the summertimeliness of it all (and I suspect the relative unpopularity of Jane’s Sanditon) the turnout was cozy, but it was as right as Baby Bear’s porridge for Me-the-Newcomer. Hosted as High Tea by University of Florida’s [graduate?] student [...]

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Luck to you, Ms Ryan; the PL, as Byron knew, is a damning title.

I was pleased to read that Kay Ryan was Thursday appointed Poet Laureate, whose poetry–to me–sometimes gnaws (in that too-sweet way) and, well, sometimes doesn’t. But I’m not the unbiased judge; – I do no justice to poets who probably deserve it, only because I cringe when someone says to me “I am a poet.” Agh.
 In [...]

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“There, I fancy lies my cure” – Sanditon

Not at all Sir, not at all–cried Mr Parker eagerly. Quite the contrary I assure you.–A common idea–but a mistaken one. It may apply to your large, overgrown Places, like Brighton, or Worthing, or East Bourne–but not to a small Village like Sanditon, precluded by its size from experiencing any of the evils of Civilization, [...]

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The Irregulars in the Service of Sherlock Holmes

It ain’t quite elementary, my dear Wiggins. What we all pretty much associate with the deer-hatted sleuth shan’t ever ‘gain be taken for granted, ay guv’nor? Rather, Reaves and Altman’s bizartistry designates all that logic stuff to the dull sepia tones of adulthood. The world of these colorful bunch of kids is ironically just black [...]

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