FF: More Than Usually Varied

News Flash!  This week, SnackReads/SnackWrites is reprinting a piece I wrote about narrative hooks.  Don’t know what a narrative hook is?  Turns out, neither did Roger Zelazny – even though he wrote great ones.  Read more here.

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A Tale for Sun and Shadow

For those of you just discovering this feature, the Friday Fragments lists what I’ve read over the past week.  Most of the time I don’t include details of either short fiction (unless part of a book-length collection) or magazines.

The Fragments are not meant to be a recommendation list.  If you’re interested in a not-at-all-inclusive recommendation list, you can look on my website under Neat Stuff.

Once again, this is not a book review column.  It’s just a list with, maybe, a bit of description or a few opinions tossed in.

Recently Completed:

Roverandom by J.R.R. Tolkien.  Edited by Christina Scull and Wayne G. Hammond.   A children’s story.  This edition has notes and a long introduction.  My recommendation is to read the story first, the ancillary material later.

In Progress:

Knight of Shadows.  Audiobook.  Eighteen episodes of The Shadow radio drama.  I’ve now listened to the first four.  They don’t benefit from too many at once since, like many radio dramas of the time, they rely on set pieces and a lot of repetition.

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency by Douglas Adams.  Audio of the radio drama.

The Venetian’s Wife by Nick Bantock.  More text than his best-selling “Griffin and Sabine” trilogy, but still heavily and creatively illustrated.

Also:

Considering works on the Nebula Ballot.  Anyone have any strong feelings about the offerings this year?