Christopher Meeks's Blog, page 17
September 25, 2010
Zorro Now Would Buy Double-Edged Safety Swords
In 1975 when Saturday Night Live was brand new, the show's very first episode with host George Carlin offered a faux commercial for the Triple-Trac razor, which offered three blades instead of two. A caveman, played by Al Franken, now a senator, tried to shave using a club. We then saw a host of shaving instruments through history from the straight razor to the twin-blade cartridge. To convince ...
September 19, 2010
THE GENDER OF WRITERS
Mystery writer L.J. Sellers (The Sex Club) started an interesting thread on www.kindleboards.com, saying, "I've had to admit to myself recently that I'm more likely to try a new author in the crime genre if he's male. Don't get me wrong, I read female crime writers, but typically after they're highly recommended. With other genres, the author's gender seems less significant. Does author ...
September 12, 2010
SIX DIFFERENT THINGS TO DO IN LOS ANGELES
Two good friends were hit head-on in their car on Shakespeare Bridge in Los Feliz on Friday. The airbags came out and they're extremely sore and happy to be alive. They're college English teachers, too. I can see the headline now: "Two College Professors Hit on Shakespeare Bridge." On Saturday, my stepmother, four years older than me, had extremely rapid heart palpitations. The ...
September 9, 2010
KURT VONNEGUT AND TIME
For those of us who write books, our souls leap when we witness others gush over the love of a book, any book. We're reminded of how books can swim in the synapses of people, and we may flash on our own favorite tomes. In this morning's Los Angeles Times, book editor David Ulin writes about rediscovering Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, which is a touchstone book for me.To explain, I have to ...
August 28, 2010
Literary Tidbits
Here is an eclectic gathering of some small literary items and news that I've come across recently on the Internet, much of it thanks to Facebook:There's an interesting debate going on about the New York Times Book Review. Best-selling authors Jennifer Weiner (Fly Away Home) and Jodi Picoult (House Rules) are noting that although their many books are popular and best-selling, they never get ...
August 25, 2010
Food and the Words We Eat
Food is on my mind. That's because I teach College English. In searching for ways to get the class of 2014 interested in essays and stories, I'm trying a single theme for this semester, that of "Food." We'll be reading three books, Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel, The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood, and Food Rules, by Michael Pollan. We'll talk about food in relation ...
August 23, 2010
Good Bosses vs. Bad
There is one person that most of us have—a boss—and as I've heard from close friends recently, most of those bosses are just not great. These bosses do not fire up the workplace or make anyone feel secure. They're not empathetic or willing to fight for them or clever in how to raise morale. They micromanage, allowing little freedom in how to get a job done.A National Public Radio story a ...
August 14, 2010
15 OVERRATED CONTEMPORY AMERICAN AUTHORS—AND HOW MANY ANGELS ARE ON THE HEAD OF A PIN?
There's a recent Huffington Post article by Anis Shivani on the most overrated contemporary American writers. Such an article, of course, is almost compulsory to look at in the way a burning wreck on the side of a highway is. See what favorite writers of yours gets skewered. Shivani's list includes Jhumpa Lahiri, Billy Collins, Junot Diaz, and a dozen others. Still, one can't help but get swept ...
July 10, 2010
Why Apocalypse--Why Now?
Late to teaching College English as a profession because I started as a full-time journalist and a creative writer, I've come to see English combining nearly everything under the sun. In my class, we've covered such things as quantum physics (Copenhagen by Michael Frayn), the circus (Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen), Afghanistan (The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini), and most recently, about ...
July 4, 2010
HOW TO NOT DIE IN GIVING A READING
Writing recently about attending Aimee Bender's reading made me reflect on my own readings and how I approach them. Before I started teaching, I was deathly afraid of public speaking. In grad school, when I'd have to give a presentation to my class of just eight people—people I liked and could easily chat with while sitting—I'd freeze if I had to stand at a podium in front of them. I ...
