Daniel > Recent Status Updates

going much quicker than the last volume

been waiting for that since the beginning

idk why i let this sit on a shelf for 18 years unread.

still good

good. i do wish the kindle version wasn't so outrageously overpriced.

yes, there are many words. but they are arranged in funny ways and the overabundance is part of the joke. :) the only real negative so far is that it's been so long since i read brust regularly that even though i recognize certain names in here, i don't remember anything about the characters they're attached to.

Changed my mind. I would clearly rather read a cereal box, or my spam folder, or nothing at all rather than another chapter of this. DNF it is.

Hi GR peeps. Just FYI, if I am interacting less lately, it's probably because I had mostly been relying on the updates email rather than checking my GR feed regularly and since GR updated the update email to be mostly worthless, and the site itself is more flakey and unreliable than ever, I'm pretty sure I'm just missing most of everyone's updates. :(

the fire-maker's daughter - allegedly about fun preceding theme, but mostly just about a play he wrote

imaginary friends - best piece in a while? children, reading, play, and belief. a response to something stupid richard dawkins said.

i feel like there's a pretty clear distinction between pieces where he has something to say, and the ones that are just a fluffy intro as a favor or something.

Oliver Twist: good piece on Dickens / Twist

Let's Pretend: fluff piece. cinema vs theater

I was read to dnf this, the first couple chapters were so completely uninteresting. It's finally picked up a bit so we'll see how it goes.

It's like writers today never even heard of a "hook". Like you think I'm just going to pick up your book and keep reading for no reason? WTF.

now it's gone all "fainting damsel" and the "mysterious foreign gentleman" >.>

quickly hooked by the voice, but soon started thinking the mc is just way too meek to tolerate. and also it seemed a bit too scooby doo, which could be good, but isn't always. now i'm not sure again. idk

this has gone hard in a direction i wasn't expecting

i really like the dead guy. meh on the detective.

still good, im just slow

borderlands: starts out discussing reading as a liminal space but quickly turns into a rambley reminiscence about illustrations

the classical tone: the narrator, pov, tense - interesting, but perhaps somewhat underdeveloped, constrained by nature of being a themed talk relating to a particular author

good

a bar: modernism ( a bit of meta )

poco a poco: tiny events/actions as the building blocks of story ( and basis of metaphor ), and an overly lengthy examination of one example

getting bored of this. not entirely uninteresting, but less practical than one might hope.

Very enjoyable so far. This is only my third Chabon book, and longer than the other two put together.

clear as water: characteristics of a folk tale

epics: this could have been usefully expanded.

folk tales of britain: useless rah, rah book intro.

GR update emails now like here's a random event from the past.

Children's Lit w/o Borders: An argument against audience segregation, and a bit on authorial stance.

Let's Write it in Red: One of the more "on writing" pieces, not mechanical at all though, bit of content vs form.

quite enjoying this so far. shouldn't have let it sit on the shelf for 2 years. not entirely sure why i bought it in HC, would be fine in ebook, no footnotes or anything to worry about.