THE STORY SPOT

Make of this what you will.

“Famous Literary Drunks & Addicts” (all 46 of ‘em) from LIFE Magazine.
Click through to the LIFE site to read the captions (and names, sheesh!) about each author.
Thanks to Mike H. for the linkage.

We’re sure, being the literary wunderkinds that you are, you already knew that April is National Poetry Month, the month when “publishers, booksellers, literary organizations, libraries, schools and poets around the country band together to celebrate poetry and its vital place in American culture.” That’s from the official website of National Poetry Month, www.poets.org, presented by the Academy of American Poets.

While poetry’s “vital place” may sometimes be questionable in these times but you wordsmiths and lovers of lyrical artistry know the value poetry has for your own work…don’t you? (Hint: if not, it’s time you found out.)

National Poetry Month(2009 poster)

• Re-discover your favourite national, international, living, and historically significant poets.

• Find new poems to enjoy.

• Marvel at your state’s poetic history & current happenings.
(Californians, click here!)

• And, if that’s not enough, here’s your free Poem Flow iPhone app.

Now go write some haiku or something.

What will you read for Read an eBook Week? The future is upon us. Jump aboard.

Yes, yes. The smell of books, reading in the bathtub, writing in the margins, a bookshelf full of books, etc. etc. People will still have that choice and there are some books that simply can’t be replicated digitally. But when faced with a better option, consumers shift extremely quickly.

From Don’t Believe the E-book Skeptics by Nathan Bransford

Pop over to the “Read an eBook Week” Official Site for goodies such as:

• An interview on eBooks, DRM and universal formats with your friend and mine, author Cory Doctorow
• A look at Calibre, the free converter for eBook readers and publishers (downloadable at http://calibre-ebook.com)
• Free eBooks from participating partners

This may not exactly be news to the avid reader but it’s worthy of stating again, if not only for picking a nasty fight (as are all “Top Whatever” lists, no?) Here are the “100 Best Novels” and “100 Best Nonfiction” books as listed by The Modern Library, a division of Random House. Note the literati smackdown already in play between “The Board” and “The Readers”. Fun!

If you haven’t read ‘em, what are you waiting for and, if you have, which are your faves?

The Modern Library’s “100 Best Novels” and the “100 Best Nonfiction” books

A recent piece in the Los Angeles Times by staff writer Susan Salter Reynolds offers writers and readers a reminder of the transcendence of the written word in the Age of Distraction.

A few choice quotes:

[L]iterature has a big head start when it comes to helping us live our lives. On the world map literature would be Europe and the Internet, America. Escaping is one thing — science fiction, romance novels and nonfiction make excellent magic carpets — but for turning and facing, there’s nothing like good old literary fiction.

In order to be truly useful, fiction has to have a certain psychological density and depth. And as much as authors like to deny it, much of that depth comes from the autobiographical component of all fiction.

[A]uthors have to be particularly conscious. And so do readers… If we become too depleted by, say, the pace of life, the bombarding of information or our disconnection from the natural world; too emptied out, too dependent on external stimuli, we run the risk of being lousy writers and lousy readers.

Discuss.

“Cutting through the din of the dotcom age: The real battle was waged with the Internet.” by Susan Salter Reynolds via the Los Angeles Times online edition, December 20, 2009.