Tag: authors

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Mystery Thriller Week: Q&A with Morgan Talbot

Mystery Thriller Week, a celebration of the genre and its authors and readers, is underway through February 22. If you’ve done the math, yes, it’s 10 rather than the usual seven days. It’s a super-sized week for a super-sized genre. For more information, stories, and author interviews, pop over to mysterythrillerweek.com.

In conjunction with the event, I’ll be sharing Q&As with mystery and thriller authors throughout the week (and a half).

Today, I’m happy to welcome Morgan Talbot, author of Smugglers & Scone Continue reading “Mystery Thriller Week: Q&A with Morgan Talbot”

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Why I love reading classic literature

Classic literature literature reminds me not to take things too personally. It allows me to reconnect with the idea of literature beyond the context of my time.

One reason (among many) I enjoy reading classic literature: It’s a finite world.

Having gone on to claim their “celestial rewards,” as Charles Dickens put it so elegantly (Pickwick Papers, I think, or maybe Hard Times?), authors are safely out of the picture. Therefore, they can’t get into Twitter wars with critics over how their work has been interpreted. They can’t reveal appalling personal views after I’ve already fallen in love with their work. They can’t continue releasing more and more information about characters or stories that obliges me endlessly to reframe the original. They can’t write sequels, disappointing or otherwise.

Just David Copperfield and me ... and coffee, and s'mores.
Just David Copperfield and me … and coffee, and s’mores.

To be clear, I don’t mean to say there’s anything wrong with the above. In fact, I love attending author talks and hearing what inspired a story I enjoyed. I love being able to say to an author, “Thank you for this experience. Thank you!” I love knowing Nick Hornby and Haruki Murakami and Zadie Smith are still alive and well and hopefully, if I’m lucky, writing more books. Continue reading “Why I love reading classic literature”

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“Groundhog Day” as Expressed by 7 Revered Writers

Groundhog Day makes for a festive mid-winter distraction, when it’s not going horribly wrong. But it’s not exactly the stuff around which writers have penned great books. It does, however, provide the backdrop for one of my favorite films, “Groundhog Day” starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.

Murray plays self-absorbed Phil Connors who is grudgingly sent to Punxsutawney, PA to cover the goings on of a certain groundhog (with whom he shares a name). MacDowell is his loveable and sweet-natured news producer. Grumpy and derisive of everything around him, Phil can’t wait to leave Punxsutawney. But after a blizzard grounds him, he gets trapped in a time loop, reliving the same despised day over and over and over… and over … until he learns the lesson he’s meant to absorb. Which is a little something like what the following authors have touched on in their work. Continue reading ““Groundhog Day” as Expressed by 7 Revered Writers”

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Does reading great books ruin you for reading good books?

When I finish reading a Charles Dickens novel, a sort of malaise comes over me. I fret that no other novelists writing in or translated into English could possibly engage my imaginative faculties such that I will enjoy and benefit from reading their novels as much as I do from reading Dickens’s.

*sighs dramatically whilst draping back of hand against forehead* Continue reading “Does reading great books ruin you for reading good books?”