ironSoap – Complete

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 26, 2012 at 09:38AM

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 21, 2012 at 01:50PM

The Difference Between Private and Public Morality:

robertreich:

Republicans have morality upside down. Santorum, Gingrich, and even Romney are barnstorming across the land condemning gay marriage, abortion, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, and the wall separating church and state.

But America’s problem isn’t a breakdown in private morality….

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 21, 2012 at 10:53AM

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 21, 2012 at 10:48AM

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 20, 2012 at 04:40PM

The Elements.

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 20, 2012 at 08:28AM

There were the expected neighborhood tales of hauntings and murders and other grotesque goings-on, passed from inventive older child to naive, wide-eyed audiences. The occasional prank would be set up to coax or goad a child desperate to fit in or demonstrate a degree of courage that might elevate their status in the eyes of peers to near deific levels. Most of these were thwarted by the heavy—and heavily rusted—iron gates, the burly padlocks and the fortuitous decay patterns that had not quite rendered the wood brittle or soft enough to permit entry.

In truth, there had been no ominous occurrences, and the only deaths seen within the walls were that of several past generations of vectors who had slowly taken up permanent residence inside: The rats, pigeons, bats and raccoons who now called it home.

When it had been occupied, it was warm and open and full of cheerful laughter from the children, glowing within as a haven from the world around it which had, since the departure of the last caretaker forty years prior, slowly begun to creep inside, reclaiming the space back to the surrounding wilderness which once existed in that space before the carpenter’s nails and architect’s dreams invaded.

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 19, 2012 at 09:37AM

Cascading Books:

by Alycia Martin.

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 19, 2012 at 09:25AM

Why Finish Books?:

by Tim Parks | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

This got me thinking about narrative engagement by the reader in fiction. Two things come immediately to mind: One is those old Choose Your Own Adventure books I used to love as a kid. The other is Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy.

I mention The Hunger Games because I loved books one and (especially) two. But Mockingjay just didn’t work for me. I kind of hated how the series ended. Someone I found on Goodreads went ahead and rewrote the ending (WARNING: Hunger Games spoilers abound!) and I found it to be much improved (though still not exactly how I would have like it to end).

But I was thinking, what if Collins had allowed the readers to select how Katniss acted at the end? Choose Your Own Adventure, as far as I recall, was always written in the second person, but I think an interesting idea would be to simply engage the reader in a normal first- or third-person narrative.

It wouldn’t even have to be as pervasive as CYOA: Maybe at a couple of key moments the narrative could say, “If you’d like this character to do A, continue to the next page; if you’d prefer to read about them doing B, skip over to page N.”

Obviously this is something that would be handled better by ebook than a print novel, but the idea that readers, who are being asked to engage with the writer’s stories, should have a voice in how that story unfolds, is one that I think warrants some additional attention.

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 17, 2012 at 11:35AM

The Hunger Games Fan Comic:

by Faith Erin Hicks.

What I can’t figure out is why no one is paying her to finish the job.

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from Like a Detuned Radio — March 16, 2012 at 02:54PM