08 February 2008

The Book Capital of the West, and other things I've been reading.

Hooray! This Girl Called Automatic Win is going to be writing regular What I've Been Reading posts, starting with this month's. Now if only Nick Hornby, the inspiration for these, would come out with a more complete collection than THE POLYPHONIC SPREE, which I wrote about in 2005. He's already put out two collections of his essays on what he reads (and why), but they're just so short. At least I have Riese to sustain me now.

Heidikins is taking a book acquisition vacation to Phoenix this weekend for a giant book sale. I am so jealous, and not just because the weather there will be reliably warm instead of Good Luck Guessin' like we're getting here in New York.

A blogger says, writing a book is easy! Should we attack him? Nah; the blogger in question (Will Leitch of Deadspin, which I don't read regularly but have read before) simply makes the point that the discipline of blogging, especially high-volume blogging, is similar to the discipline needed to write a book. And he's just finished his third book, so he would know. I see what he's getting at, although I wonder how his new book (written about some of the same obsessions as the blog, and after his success with the blog) will do.

That's all I've got. I'm feeling rather uninspired this week.

2 comments:

NetFliXer~ said...

Ellen, i have a favor to ask u as ur regular reader..Suggest some good books, books which are life changing and which were fun to read.. I would be very happy, and yeah can i add you to be blog roll?

Jess said...

I agree that it requires discipline to make yourself write something every day, but the thing about a blog is that you don't need to be coherent from one post to the next. You don't have to follow any kind of dramatic structure or build a particular plot. That's what I find so complicated about writing a book.