David Cranmer's Blog, page 21

Whole Lotta Writers

Open Culture brought this to my attention: 1,500 hours of audio & video featuring 2,200 writers.

Morning Read: Microsoft Is Hustling Us With...

Microsoft Is Hustling Us With "White Spaces" by Susan Crawford.

Martin Amis and Elmore Leonard interview (1999)

My Influences... And Yours?

I'm back at LitReactor with a new article. Please share, stop by there/leave a comment, write home to mom, etc. Here's a sample:

Like many writers, I was reared on a never-ending veneration for big guns such as Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Authors who’ve passed some ‘immortal’ litmus test for stuffy academic types to get overly excited about. Harsh? Perhaps, because most of the top tier lit club have deservedly earned their marks. But along the path I’ve learned some of the best prose originates from sources other than these writing titans. Here are two actors—who apparently fancied putting pen to paper over starring roles—and one journalist that I would stack up with the best of the best and have returned to often for inspiration.

Royal Excursions

We stopped at the charming Royal Oak Bookshop where I picked up the eclectic trio of Visiting Mrs. Nabokov (1993) by Martin Amis, The Backgammon Book (1970) by Oswald Jacoby and John R. Crawford, and a math book on Algebra. We also went to a nearby park where we enjoyed about an hour until the sun heated things up a little too much. Still, a fun excursion.
Royal Oak Bookshop in Front Royal, Virginia.
Bookstore's Simone making Ava feel welcomed.
At a nearby park heading off for other worlds.

40 Ton Humpback Whale Leaps Entirely Out of the Water!

Willie Nelson - The Redheaded Stranger

Interrogation

I'm publishing Glenn Gray's next book Transgemination and he talks about that and a lot more in this interview with S.W. Lauden.

Subversive, Expressionistic, and Harrowing

“Gotta Light” is a subversive, expressionistic, and harrowing episode with prolonged scenes—even by Lynch standards—of no dialogue. “As soon as you put things in words, no one ever sees the film the same way,” he was quoted as saying in The New Yorker. The sobering result: we hear the eerie, discordant “Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima” by Penderecki as we bear witness to the first atomic bomb test at White Sands, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, and are pulled into the mushroom cloud among the swirling atoms of hellfire and destruction.
Rest of my thoughts on The Return Parts 8,9, and 10 at Criminal Element.

13 Is Who's Lucky Number

I'm not familiar with her work but have heard that Jodi Whittaker is a fine actor. I'm looking forward to her portrayal but more importantly a fresh direction to the series that I thought had become very stale last year. If you haven't already seen it, here's the big reveal that sent shock waves through the universe. Your thoughts? And not long ago, I rated my Time Lords in this order:

Matt Smith
Tom Baker
David Tennant
Patrick Troughton
Jon Pertwee
Peter Davison
Christopher Eccleston
Paul McGann
Peter Capaldi
William Hartnell
Sylvester McCoy
Colin Baker