Gadget Archives 4

Blog of Week
Ulysses “Seen”
A cross between a Classics comic and a graphic novel, this blog showcases a monumental effort to turn Joyce’s masterwork into visual story telling.

Writers on Writing
"Poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance." John Keats

Nice Openings
“ “So now get up!’ Walter is roaring down at him, working out where to kick him next. He lifts his head an inch or two, and moves forward, on his belly, trying to do it without exposing his hands, on which Walter enjoys stamping. “What are you, an eel?” his parent asks. He trots backward, gathers pace, and aims another kick. It knocks the last breath out of him; he thinks it may be his last. His forehead returns to the ground; he lies waiting, for Walter to jump on him. The dog, Bella, is barking, shut away in an outhouse. I’ll miss my dog, he thinks.”
From Hilary Mantel’s novel Wolf Hall

RasoirJ’s Movie Notes
Friday Night Lights (2004) **
Superb book, top-notch TV show, but the movie suffers by comparison. Even the great Billy Bob Thornton as a small-town Texas football coach can't bring enough complexity to the story.

Good Reads
Are Stories Still Hip?
Can 8,000-word articles – let alone novels – stories survive Web 2.0 attention spans? Joel Achenbach lines up some big thinkers to weigh in.
Washington Post

Favorite Words
Gimcrack – a cheap, gaudy, tasteless object; a geegaw. “…if he knew she broke off the hand off that little gimcrack statue with her roughness and her carelessness before she left ...from James Joyce’s Ulysses