#litblog

Litblog Roundup 58

Do grade-school kids still have to write or speak about what they did during summer vacation? I’m not a kid, so I don’t get to take the summer off, but I did anyway. At least, I took a break from some things, and the roundup was one of them. I’m back for now. If there are enough readers, I’ll keep going. Let me know if you’d like more of this, or if you have any thoughts at all, in the comments below.

Litblog Roundup 57

This roundup begins with a roundup, followed by another roundup, making it a roundup of roundups and offering the opportunity to say “roundup” many times, in a sentence about roundups. Ok I’ll stop.

Litblog Roundup 56

This edition of the litblog roundup offers up an entire buffet of food for thought, sourced from corners of the literary internet far and wide. Bon appétit !

Litblog Roundup 55

Any questions? Yeah, plenty! This edition of the litblog roundup is written in the form of mostly twitter-worthy questions. Each one contains a link to something that’s been making the rounds lately across the literary internet. This way you get even more links, in less time. Enjoy!

Litblog Roundup 54

The litblog roundup offers a summary of the topics of conversation lately on the literary internet. With stolen books, other crimes, and a whole lot to say about money, there’s sure to be something to intrigue you this time.

Litblog Roundup 53

I do my best to write the Litblog Roundup on a bi-weekly basis. This time around, I think to myself: well holy shit could any pair of two weeks possibly be any more different from each other! I’ll do my best to recap, but I can’t promise to be apolitical. It simply wasn’t an apolitical pair of weeks.

Litblog Roundup 52

One of the rules I set for myself, as I crawl the literary Internet for this column is that I’ll write about the interesting highlights. Some things, I’ve decided, don’t make the cut. They’re not highlights because they’re too frequent and they’re not interesting for that same reason. So I don’t pay attention to literary awards for the most part. I don’t pay attention to anything related to Neil Gaiman or Harry Potter. I don’t mention obituaries. I’m going to break one of those rules now.

Litblog Roundup 51

It’s the end of 2016. Everyone says “good riddance!” but before we kick this year into the bin of history, let’s do a roundup of it.

Litblog Roundup 50

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. In this roundup: the politics of naming, a mysterious manuscript, adjectives and more.

Litblog Roundup 49

November 8, 2016 was Election Day here in the United States. November 9 was strange. It was then that the literary internet began to question: what happened? what’s going to happen? what do we do? Here’s a roundup of that conversation.

Litblog Roundup 48

Show Don’t Tell If you’ve ever taken a writing class, you’ve probably head the old adage, “how don’t tell.” It means you should prefer a visual description over a more verbal one in your prose. But why is this the preference? Namatra Poddar explores the issue in an essay, “Is ‘Show Don’t Tell’ a Universal Truth or a Colonial Relic? ” In the essay you’ll find:

Litblog Roundup 47

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Seven years ago, Seth Grahame-Smith concocted a book called “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.” You still don’t have a copy? I think you can find it in one of those stores that sells lumberjack soap and framed pictures of bacon. If you’re looking for his new book, well I’m afraid he’s had some trouble “writing” it .

Litblog Roundup 46

In a series about the intersection between literary culture and online life, every so often I’m tempted to stray into writing exclusively about one of those areas. It is one of those occasions, because this week marks the 25th anniversary of the World Wide Web . (It is not, however, the birthday of the Internet , which booted up in 1969.) This week also marks what some might consider to be a historic milestone: the end of Gawker’s blog-based media empire .

Litblog Roundup 45

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. This roundup features an oompa-loompa, messing with fonts, a moment of zen, and more.

Litblog Roundup 44

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. This roundup features door-to-door poetry, books delivered quickly to your house, an obligatory reference to Pokemon Go, and more.

Litblog Roundup 43

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. This roundup gathers together some new ways to look at books, with a Netflix for books, a Rotten Tomatoes for books, and more.

Litblog Roundup 42

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. In this roundup: the very first work of science fiction, reading tons of magazines, and more.

Litblog Roundup 41

Would You Know an Allegory if You Saw One? Laura Miller, writing for Slate, says no, you might not know an allegory when you saw one . First of all, it’s not a very common form. Second, the word “allegory” is misused so frequently, and so often confused for “metaphor” as to render it meaningless.

Litblog Roundup 40

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. In this roundup: a look at subjective things like loneliness, authenticity, and more.

Litblog Roundup 39

For this edition of the Litblog Roundup, let’s look across the literary Internet for commentary about several different literary topics. Poems Lithub has an impressive roundup of 30 Poets You Should Be Reading . It’s a thoughtful roundup with commentary that introduces a list of contemporary poets to read for National Poetry Month.

Litblog Roundup 38

The Litblog Roundup took a break for Easter. Now I’m back, with a roundup of recently popular items from across the literary Internet. In this roundup: the new book critics in Los Angeles, and speaking of Los Angeles what’s up with that big writers conference that just happened there?

Litblog Roundup 37

A posthumous publication from Allen Gisnberg, smuggling short stories out of North Korea, computer-text analysis, and more from the Litblog Roundup: topics, trends, and highlights from writers, readers, and publishers throughout the literary Internet.

Keep Blogging. We Read You: A Huge List of Literary Blogs

I like to think, though, that all these bloggers need is some encouragement. I’m sharing this list, not to call out these hundreds of bloggers for being slackers, but to offer up some encouragement. For the readers out there: take a look at this list, see if anything strikes your fancy, and go post a comment to get a conversation started. For the writers of these blogs: take heart, keep blogging. We read you."

Book Cover Breakdowns

Book cover breakdowns. Images are replaced with diagonal lines and text is replaced with bars of colour. Ongoing project since 2011. (via Readings : Jan Avendano )

Litblog Roundup 36

Shortlists The superbowl is over. Baseball season hasn’t started yet. A lull of noncompetitive peace would fall over the land… No. There are some book competitions to pay attention to. The Shortlist for the 2016 PEN Literary Awards has been published. It’s one of the most important literary awards . Like any contest or award, it definately has the attention of many people. The Morning News’s Tournament of Books may not be as old or prestigious, but it looks like fun. Members of a Goodreads group can read and judge the books on the list of nominees .

Litblog Roundup 35

What do you get when you combine prominent politicians with bullshit detectors? The new Litblog Roundup, that’s what! Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet.

Litblog Roundup 34

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. In this roundup: it’s a tumultuous time for electronic writing, how many kinds of stories are there, David Bowie and more.

Litblog Roundup 33

It’s the end of the year, time for looking back, for bucket lists, and yes even for roundups of roundups. To put it another way, here’s a roundup of the big events of 2015 on the literary Internet. They’re in no particular order.

Litblog Roundup 32

Why do companies pretend to invent the very things that they work so hard to make obsolete? Now, from the creators of the amazon.com website that you may have heard of, it’s a bookstore. Is it the Apple Store of bookstores or just the Barnes and Noble of Amazon Stores? It’s in Seattle. The books are all shelved with their covers facing out, with little cards to show the Amazon reviews. Online reviews are printed out on the shelves of a store. Other than that, it’s a bookstore, but it has raised so many questions.

Litblog Roundup 31

What’s going on with blogs and forums? Are they worse a worse place for serious conversation than established publications? All this and more in the Litblog Roundup, a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet.

Litblog Roundup 30

Do writers get picky about music? Are E-books sufficiently advanced? What’s up with the new line of books coming out? All this and more in a new installment of the Litblog Roundup, a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet.

Litblog Roundup 29

Is twitter a form of literature? What do you think about banned books week? All this, dead oysters, and more in the Litblog Roundup. The Deal with Blurbs You’re not supposed to judge a book by its cover. You’re supposed to judge it by its blurb. But how are we to judge the blurbs themselves? Lately, that judgement has been a popular topic. First, there was the piece on “blurbspeak ” a while ago. Now, NPR asks “Forget The Book, Have You Read This Irresistible Story On Blurbs? ” One of the payloads of this discussion is that they’ve unearthed what appears to be the very first blurb, and the book for which it was written. If that’s not enough blurb action for you, Real Pants has you covered with free blurbs for your book .

Litblog Roundup 28

What happens when a white man pretends to be a member of another ethnicity in order to get published? Let’s survey the fallout in this edition of Litblog Roundup, a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. (You could think of this as a cross-over post, because it’s already been mentioned recently here at Real Pants in Mike Young’s roundup , but there’s more so I’ll keep going.)

Litblog Roundup 27

Is there such a thing as a writer that’s too prolific? What’s it like to work at Amazon? What does the CIA have to do with literary magazines? All this and more in this edition of Litblog Roundup, a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet.

Litblog Roundup 26

In this roundup: Patti Smith, the crap they write on book jackets, and more. Our Capacity for “Serious Noticing” Complex literary works demand an effort from the reader that is becoming harder to justify, given the sink-or-swim pressures to make profitable products for a global marketplace. Who can blame writers for spending more time ornamenting their Facebook page than revising their manuscript? — Joanna Scott

Litblog Roundup 25

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. In this roundup: literary maps, writing about not writing, hip-hop poetics, and more.

Litblog Roundup 24

Harper Lee’s new/old book, rejection letters, the poetics of information overload, and more.

A Guide to Literary Podcasts

In honor of Real Pants’ new foray into podcasting, this roundup offers an overview of the wide world of literary podcasting. Podcasting! It’s the hip new thing. It’s more than ten years old, but nevermind that, podcasting is the hip new thing again!

Litblog Roundup 22

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. In this roundup: how to host a literary reading, the poetics of failure, and an assortment of creepy children.

Litblog Roundup 21

Another important conceptual writer is accused of racially charged appropriation. Here’s what happened.

Litblog Roundup 20

some greatly exaggerated rumors about Mark Twain, the value of paragraphs, and more.

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a massive digital archive of literary recordings, and also the question: are there too many books?"

Litblog Roundup 17

In this roundup: there’s a push for a better critical vocabulary to use when we talk about books, reading and writing. Boring is Boring Weird Sister is a blog about the intersections of feminism, literature and pop culture. Caolan Madden has a new post there, on the word boring:

Litblog Roundup 16

Litblog Roundup is a bi-weekly overview of topics, trends and highlights from the literary Internet. In this roundup: fragments of ancient poetry, writing of the future, and more.

Last of the Typewriter Men

If you have a laptop that quits working, you can take it to one of the many computer repair shops all over the country to have it repaired — for a while, until it becomes obsolete in just a few years. If you have a typewriter and it’s a good one, it should last 100 years or so, but where can you take it for repair? Typewriter repair is a dying art.

Litblog Roundup 15

a new novel from Harper Lee, the upcoming launch of the Lit Hub website, why Americans don’t read foreign fiction, the killing of the creative class, and more

A Place to Make Poetry

Does it help to understand the working conditions of a writer? Does it change the meaning or value of their work to know about such conditions? What was their space like? How did they use their time? A new book explores what it must have been like in Geoffrey Chaucer’s apartment, and The Spectator has a review .

Follow the Money

One of the most popular topics of conversation in the literary Internet recently has been a post on Salon entitled, “‘Sponsored’ by my husband: Why it’s a problem that writers never talk about where their money comes from. ” There are long threads comment threads about it on Reddit , Metafilter and The Passive Voice .

The Library is On Fire

If we’re to regard the Internet as analogous in any way to “publishing” then the Internet will need to have something like a library, so that the published work can be kept safe. Some of the first books ever printed some 500 years ago are kept safe and are still usable. Will the early Internet be around in 500 years time? If it will be available by then, it may be thanks in part to projects like the Internet Archive, which is described in detail in a recent New Yorker article .

Proto-Hipsterism

Was J. Alfred Prufrock a hipster , before it was cool to be a hipster, before the word hipster had even been coined? If so, does that make him some sort of great, grand hipster? Maybe not, but the author of J. Alfred Prufrock is credited with the first printed use of the word bullshit.

Towards a Safer Reading

The Rah! Rah! Roundup has an overview of a conversation that began recently at the Poetry Project in New York City. The Poetry Project hosted a panel discussion . The topic was “What is a reading? What should it be? What is read there? And to whom?” During the discussion of literary readings, their culture, etc., poet Eileen Myles described “personal instances of assault and harassment,” according to one of the other panelists, Jennifer Tamayo.

Litblog Roundup 14

Writers and Editors on their Literary Resolutions Benjamin Samuel at electric literature asked 19 writers’ resolutions for the new year . Naturally, many writers resolved to have new relationships with books. Some would write books by hand. Others would read more books, or more books in translation. Others resolved not to buy new books until reading the ones they already have.

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