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Annie Dillard is one of the few women whose writing I really love. And that is because, I think, she is writing for everyone, not just for women. Andrea Barrett is another women I like to read. Joyce Carol Oates, also. I don't like books written by women that come across as for women, whether...

Use a pseudonym. Let the readers assume what they want about you.

Great counter example. The worst IMO is when the author reads his own work. John Updike may be a transcendent author but he is a stone cold boring reader.

Its funny. I love some audio books more than the physical book. For example, I love hearing a Lee Childs book, read by Dick Hill. Makes the book wonderful. In print I find Lee Childs unreadable. Just cant get through it. The narration makes all the difference in this case. But Dick Hill could...

Reading to them has great benefits. But if you yourself are not a reader, it will not work. I am preaching to the choir I know, but the biggest influence on our kids is who we are. If we are readers and talk with other adults about our reading, they will emulate. I know many parents who read to...

Will You Miss Me When I'm Gone: The Carter Family & Their Legacy in American Music by Mark Zwonitzer and Charles Hirshberg A must read if you are into old time music, roots of country music, and Carter Family. Great bio, great nonfiction.

There is one thing that Stephen King does better than most, maybe better than anyone. He makes you want to turn that page. He makes you want to know what is going to happen next, how is this going to come out. I have finished Stephen King books I didn't even like very much because I couldn't put...

The White Goddess is not the kind of book you sit down and read front to back. Its more like a jigsaw puzzle, you work around the edges, along certain lines, fill in all the pieces with red on them, and eventually it all fits together. I really loved it. He wrote a book on Greek Mythology, "The...

Nah. I read a good deal of classics, maybe mostly classics, and I am not going to give Ulysses another try. Nossir. There is a lot of good, fun, very worthwhile, literature out there other than Ulysses.

What makes a good sci-fi story is a good story well told.

I have read it two or three times. I love it each time.

Get the book from a movie that you really liked. Try that.

A movie is a collaboration. You have the original author (maybe) and then a script writer, director, and then the studio and big money who may want this or that changed, etc., not to mention the actors and their take on how the character should be portrayed, etc. A book is the artistic...

In Kafka's story "The Penal Colony" the narrator goes into meticulous detail about the torture/execution machine, how it works by carving the sentence of the condemned prisoner into his body until he bleeds to death. The narrator is even perhaps enthusiastic about his description, the way...

I just read Mind and Cosmos. He received a lot of flack for it, some of the criticism rather biting. A dense challenging read that repays effort and gives one something to really think about.

I agree with you there. I much prefer direct prose, or else hide the simile in some tasteful unobtrusive way. Or at least be very clever and good at it. I am thinking of Shakespeare or especially John Donne's conceits, which are very obvious but fun for how clever they are. In general though...

There is a lot of metaphor in Hemingway. It is perhaps deeper because of his straight forward prose. But any google search yields many scholarly papers and essays discussing metaphor in Hemingway. I am not sure you can get away from it in any great writer.