Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 50

Can you remember the first lines of your favorite books? Take this quiz. (Updated with answers)

The first session of our Writing Boot Camp was held last Saturday at WSI Corporate Center in Makati. We discussed the basics of writing a short story and how to develop a story beginning with the protagonist. At the second session on Saturday, the participants will read their first drafts (and if not, engage in […]

Can you remember the first lines of your favorite books? Take this quiz.

The first session of our Writing Boot Camp was held last Saturday at WSI Corporate Center in Makati. We discussed the basics of writing a short story and how to develop a story beginning with the protagonist. At the second session on Saturday, the participants will read their first drafts (and if not, engage in […]

What we owe Sesame Street

Whenever there is a lull in dinnertime conversation, we fill it with memories of Sesame Street. Sesame Street was one of our biggest formative influences, shaping our sense of humor and use of the English language. It wasn’t just a TV show we watched twice a day; we lived there. If we were the Nobel […]

Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize in Literature!

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2016 is awarded to Bob Dylan “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”. Desolation Row by Bob Dylan They’re selling postcards of the hanging They’re painting the passports brown The beauty parlor is filled with sailors The circus is in town Here comes the […]

Last call for participants in the Writing Boot Camp on Saturday, 15 October

The objective of Writing Boot Camp is to start and finish a short story between the two Saturday sessions. Writing Boot Camp consists of a lecture, readings, discussions, and the screening of a classic short film. Light snacks will be served. Here’s the map to the venue. To register, email saffron.safin@gmail.com before Saturday. The fee […]

The Power of Checklists

Checklists provide an effective method for avoiding error. They trigger the right action by the right person at the right time. Effective checklists activate the specialized knowledge most applicable at a particular point in time, and optimize communication between different sets of specialists. In this way, checklists help avoid one of the principal challenges of […]

Very brief movie reviews: Girl, Derailed and Crimes and Misdemeanors Lite

Girl On The Train tries so hard to out-Gone Girl Gone Girl, it derails itself. Incoherent, irritating, suspense-free and a waste of Emily Blunt and Rebecca Ferguson. Like most recent Woody Allen, Cafe Society is a retread of peak Woody Allen—in this case Crimes and Misdemeanors—but if you need cheering up you could do worse. […]

Monday Links: Nazi drug use, Nobel Prize in Literature bets, and a wonderful takedown of Tom Wolfe’s attack on Darwin

Workers at the Temmler factory in Berlin produced 35m tablets of Pervitin for the German army and Luftwaffe in 1940. Photograph: Temmler Pharma GmbH & Co KG, Marburg Read High Hitler: How Nazi drug abuse steered the course of history. The story Ohler tells begins in the days of the Weimar Republic, when Germany’s pharmaceutical […]

A Gentleman In Moscow is a delightful novel about staying civilized in a squalid world.

A Gentleman in Moscow is available at National Bookstores, Php755. Did you know that National Bookstore delivers? Go to nationalbookstore.com for details. I try not to go out on Fridays when the traffic is even more horrible than usual (You didn’t think this was possible, but it is!). So Friday is Hole Up With A […]

All it takes is a small number of brave, stubborn people for society to function properly.

Finally read the Nassim Nicholas Taleb essay that I bookmarked weeks ago and it’s cheered me up immensely. N.N. Taleb wrote The Black Swan, in which he blasted the bad mathematics that toppled the global financial system. Never listen to economists who cannot grasp the math. I’ve always been too lazy to pay attention to […]