"[...] a poisoned madeline"

"The French novelist Marcel Proust immortalized the connection between food and memory when the narrator of his novel Remembrances of Things Past bit into a madeleine and was transported to thoughts of his childhood.
     But what if that madeleine were poisoned, so to speak?
     That is the question underlying Russian American writer Anya von Bremzen’s new memoir, Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking. Though it contains recipes, this is not a cookbook but rather, a history of a family and of Soviet Russia.
     'In this book, I bring up the idea of a poisoned madeline,' Bremzen tells Morning Editon host David Greene. 'Because what happens if a taste of your childhood evokes memories that are sometimes traumatic, that are sometimes complicated? That the whole layering of emotions is present in every bite that you take?'"

— OPB
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Short. Sweet.

"What exactly is a short short story, I wondered, as I opened Ethel Rohan's second story collection, Goodnight Nobody. Are her micro fictions, most between three and five pages, sawed-off longer stories to be read with the same expectation for plot, character development, setting and illumination that I hold for longer stories? Or are these flashes to be read like poetry, with an eye and ear for rhythm, extremity and intensity, an experience of the words?

     Rohan's bright, engaging fictions immerse us in the lives of characters from her native Ireland to her adopted home of San Francisco, and points in between. Some satisfied my criteria for stories, some for poetry, while the most successful contained elements of both."
— Audrey Ferber, San Francisco Chronicle
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hotchpotch (Chapter One)

From: ME Studio

The Canada Council for the Arts, announces finalists for the 2013 Governor General's Literary Awards.

"Tom Clancy, a celebrated author of crime fiction and military thrillers, died on Tuesday in a hospital in Baltimore. He was 66."

'Some Great First Lines in Literature"

"Bill O’Reilly wrote about Jesus because God told him to"

E-Books: "[…] we should stop using terminology like 'bestseller lists' — when it really should be 'most leased' lists"

fiction (teaching [fiction]) learning

From: the Archives of Washington University, St. Louis, MO

"[…] But you're a fiction writing professor. You're here for a reason. It would be perhaps frustrating to students who have signed up for your course if, every time one asked a question, you threw up your hands and said, What do I know? You need to offer something. You need to wrangle a set of guidelines from what feels to you like your own desperate, manic-depressive, slap shot approach to writing fiction, where minor successes have been more the result of persistence or luck than skill. You have a hard time imagining how the things you've experienced or discovered, which seem abjectly personal, could be of use to another writer. You're aware that you can follow every single rule in the book, and still write a crappy story. You're aware of the constant disappointments of writing, of falling short again and again, of seeing ideas shrivel up or simply die. You're aware of the elusiveness of art, and that the aspects of a story or novel that take it from being good to great are mostly mysterious, inexplicable, magical, utterly original, and unrepeatable.

     However, you're a fiction writing professor. This is a class. You need to provide a take-away. You say that fiction can be broken down into three main elements: plot, character, and language. Good.
     You say that we'll break the workshops down into these three areas. Good. You say that these are like the pistons that the engine of fiction runs on, or maybe the cylinders, and then you acknowledge that you have no sense of how an engine works and actually aren't sure how to open the hood of your car, so you shouldn't be using automotive metaphors. […]"
— Justin Kramon, Glimmer Train
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a rose by any other name...

From: Fork in My Eye

"One summer day when I was about twelve, I complained to a friend that I couldn’t find anything interesting to read. My friend gave a little laugh and said, Come with me. Leading me to her garage, she flicked on the light, waited a moment for dramatic effect, and said, Pick.

     I was in awe. One whole wall of the garage was covered by homemade bookshelves and those shelves were stuffed to overflowing with, what I would soon discover, were science fiction paperbacks.
     'They’re my dad’s,' my friend said. 'He’s kind of a sci fi junkie. You can borrow anything you want.'"
— Fork in My Eye
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From: Museu do Cinemaxunga

"If there's one thing science fiction fans love, it's an argument. And if there's one argument they love more than all others, it's the attempt to define what science fiction actually is, and what is or isn't included in that definition.
     David Barnett set fire to the dry tinder of the genre argument recently by declaring a preference for 'sci-fi' over the generally more respectable 'SF'? But, I hear the still sane among you declare, what does this even mean? And why should
you care?
     For the ever growing army of writers, bloggers, editors, critics, academics and just plain old obsessive fans of this thing that may (or may not) be called sci-fi, there is at least some method in this madness. Each name and definition reveals a different aspect of the immense creativity sheltering within sci-fi. Or SF. Or whatever the hell it's called! So, here is a brief glossary of the various competing definitions of sci-fi. […]"
— Damien Walter, The Guardian
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bound to enlighten

From: Huffington Post

"Measuring about 11-by-10 centimeters, the 50-page, tan-colored book is written in an archaic form of Hebrew with Babylonian vowel markings, according to the Religion News Service. The fact that that book appears to still have its original binding makes it very special, according to Dr. Jerry Pattengale, director of the Green Collection’s research arm, the Green Scholars Initiative.

     'It is certainly the earliest copy of such a book that has been known,' Pattengale told The Huffington Post.
     Predating the earliest known copies of the Torah by several hundred years, the [ninth century] prayer book—also known as a siddur—could prove to be an important link to religious scholarship of the era.
     'This artifact may very well be the earliest connection today’s practicing Jews have to the roots of their rabbinic liturgy,' Green announced at the Religion Newswriters Association conference, according to Forward. Jewish tradition dictates that holy texts be buried or hidden when they wear out, Green notes, which has led to very few surviving before the 15th century.'"
— Meredith Bennett-Smith, Huffington Post
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From: The DailyGlean

"This little beauty—a handwritten copy of St John’s Gospel from the New Testament—was just bought by the British Library for a cool $9 million. Its provenance is impeccable, having been placed in the coffin of St Cuthbert at Lindisfarne Priory in 698, where it lay undisturbed for the next 400 years. In 793, the Vikings attacked, and the community had to leave the island around 875, carrying Cuthbert’s coffin with them. The gospel was discovered in 1104 when the coffin was opened for reburial and enshrinement in Durham Cathedral."
— The DailyGlean
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"The codex was the early form of what we know as a book—that is, pages bound together (the term codex is Latin for 'block of wood.')
     Papyrus codices date from the First Century A.D. and by the Fourth Century A.D. codices (of papyrus or parchment) had supplanted scrolls as the reading devices of choice. Codex users valued the format over scrolls for the same qualities we value in books today: portability, ease of finding your place, and the ability to write on both sides of the page (save parchment!)."
— Valerie Peterson, About.com
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Bill Berkson poetry reading cancelled...

Due to illness, New York School poet and art critic Bill Berkson’s upcoming visit to Elora, Ontario, sponsored by the Elora Poetry Centre (Saturday, 5 October, St. John’s Church, Elora, 7:00 P.M.) and all the other events surrounding it have unfortunately been cancelled. Hopefully Bill will be joining us all at a later date.

Visit the Elora Poetry Centre website here...

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