Tag: reading-is-hot

Confirmation of my skepticism AND that reading is hot

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve rolled my eyes when people share “What I’m Reading” on their blogs. And this story from BBC News explains why.

Nearly half of all men and one-third of women have lied about what they have read to try to impress friends or potential partners, a survey suggests.

Men were most likely to do this to appear intellectual or romantic, found the poll of 1,500 people by Populus for the National Year of Reading campaign.

The men polled said they would be most impressed by women who read news websites, Shakespeare or song lyrics.

Women said men should have read Nelson Mandela’s biography or Shakespeare.

Among the 1,500 who took part in the research were 864 teenagers.

About four in 10 of the 1,500 said they had lied about what they had read to impress friends or potential partners – 46% of men and 33% of women.

Among teenagers, the figure rose to 74%, with most saying they would pretend to have read social networking pages or song lyrics.

One in five adults said they would read their chosen material whilst waiting for their date to arrive in the hope of making a good first impression.

Honor Wilson-Fletcher, director of the National Year of Reading campaign, said: “Reading is a brilliant tool for self-expression.

“I love the fact that every generation seems to know that it can help us all increase our potential appeal in the search for love and romance.

“For all the talk of our superficial obsession with beauty, it looks like underneath it all we know that brains contribute to sex appeal too.”

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/education/7776046.stm
Published: 2008/12/11 02:47:26 GMT

Such gifts!

No, I’m not talking about Christmas gifts. For those who read my LJ but may not read Timothy’s, he’s been doing interviews with the contributors to Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction, the anthology he and I edited with a release date of early next year. The most recent interview is with one of my favorite writers–one of the first writers of gay fiction I ever read when I “discovered” the genre back in the late 1980s. I can’t adequately express what a gift it is to read an unpublished short story by Felice Picano, and to have him contribute it to a collection I helped edit.


Photo by Christopher Oakley, 2007,
used without permission

You can read Tim’s interview with Felice here. At the end of the interview are links to earlier ones. Tim’s order follows where these writers’ stories appear in the anthology, and there are lots more to come.

Button Sunday

Using certain tags, I’ve gone through four years of LJ archives to fix bad photo links. I know this doesn’t matter to anyone other than me, but when one of my reasons for keeping a LJ is to publish photos, it’s kind of ridiculous to think of people ever meandering through my archives only to see “This photo is no longer available.”

Please, if any of you ever stumble over a missing photo or dead link, let me know. I try to keep this place always at the ready for that moment when one of you wakes in the middle of the night–or the middle of the day for some of you–and MUST FIND THAT PHOTO OF THE KENS WITH BAD HAIR. How tragic if you should be denied seeing it. Not that I remember seeing it when I was fixing things. It could be missing for all I know. My brain is fried from looking at old posts, and what I want to know is, WHY are you people reading this thing? Has anyone ever been more random and unfocused and needlessly verbose than I am?

I figure you’re here for the man and dog photos. So from the true archives–the ones from the shelves in the study–here’s a shot from April of 1999, when Stevie became the first of The Compound dogs to adore Tim. Whenever he was here, she was all his.

My own personal Hump Day Happy

One of the most fun parts of writing a novel is the day you get the galleys. It’s the last part of the process before the actual physical book is printed. It’s the moment when you can not only hold accomplishment in your hands, but still feel the wonderful anticipation of the book to come.

Today, that fun has been doubled for me, as Fedex delivered my galleys for A Coventry Wedding from Kensington, and Tim and I also received the galleys from Cleis for Fool For Love. I’ve been sitting here reveling in the joy of it all, and I’m not making it up that when I flipped to the first page past the front matter and I saw this:

it made me every bit as happy as when I saw this:

Yes, I whited out the lines of David’s story. You don’t think I’d give it away for free, do you?

ETA: If any other contributors to FFL would like to see your first printed page, with text whited out, let me know. I’ll put it in comments for you.

Fools For Love

You would think, looking at my photos, that I sought a co-editor and contributors to the anthology Fool For Love: New Gay Fiction on the basis of handsomeness alone. You’d be wrong to think that, however, as I can’t imagine a more talented group of writers. It makes me want to start another anthology right now just so I can invite them to contribute.

herding cats

Don’t forget your hairbrush

Later I’ll be making a trip to buy all the things I forgot to pack. Though how I forgot anything is beyond me, since half of what I own is lying on the bed behind me.

There’ll be more on the Saints and Sinners Literary Festival later, but right now, some quick photos:


Authors Greg Herren and Mark G. Harris seem to have settled the Great Cafe Du Monde Powder Feud.


Author Stephen McCauley taught a very animated master class on creating characters in fiction.


Stephen McCauley gets writing tips from author David Puterbaugh.


Books! Tables and tables of books for author Timothy J. Lambert to peruse and purchase. (Not that he has any money, Tax Man. Leave him alone, or you’ll be talking to Rex’s attorney.)

More later…

State of The Compound

Because the painters are here, I’ve lost my kitchen again. Everything’s taped over with paper and plastic, and we’re back to using the bathroom sink to clean dog bowls and such. We’re all shut off in one half of the house. I was writing on my laptop when I decided to check on the whereabouts of my quiet family.

they seem to be handling exile pretty well

Random Thursday Musing

Today is novelist Anne Rice’s birthday. In honor of the occasion, I’ll share–and probably somewhat repeat past entries–some of my favorite moments with Anne Rice’s work.

Back in the mid 1980s, I made a new friend who, upon finding out that I was an avid reader, suggested that I read Interview With the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat. While anxiously awaiting release of The Queen of the Damned, he wanted someone to talk with about the novels.

I wrinkled my nose. Although I enjoyed the artistry of classic literature with some characteristics of horror or the supernatural–most notably works of Poe, Hawthorne, and the Bronte sisters–my heart and mind didn’t really go in that direction. But I valued his friendship and his opinion, so I said I’d give Interview a go.

read more about Anne and me here

This woman is amazing

Sometime back in the Dark Ages, or maybe it was 2005, I went for the first time to a signing at Houston’s Murder By the Book. Prior to that, most of the signings I’d been to (at least those of other authors) fell into three categories.

1. There was a reading, during which an author sat or stood, read from his or her work, fielded a few questions from the audience, then got down to the business of signing books.

2. A celebrity author, or a hugely successful author, did a signing without a reading and without a Q&A session. Mostly this consisted of people lined around a block or two hoping to actually meet the author before it was time to be at work the next morning.

3. An obscure author with a hesitant smile was tucked into a corner of a bookstore at a table with a stack of unbought books and maybe a poster (paid for by the author) to prove that he or she wasn’t there to give directions to the restroom or the cookbook section.

Since Tim and I don’t want to read, and because there are often four of us present to sign books, we have always eliminated the reading part. Timmy once endured the obscure author horror (luckily, he was not alone, but had a Famous Author with him so they could at least enjoy berating authors who weren’t present), but when the TJB writers have signed together, or when Tim and I have signed, we’ve been very fortunate to have enough friends and loyal readers show up so that it’s not depressing. And of course, we had two signings in bars, where the atmosphere was too noisy, busy, and alcohol-tinged for us to feel uncomfortable–plus we had a lot of friends there, too. Not that I’m saying all our friends are drunks.

My point is that most authors who aren’t Anne Rice or Hillary Clinton aren’t really sure what the hell they’re supposed to do at a book signing if they don’t read from their work. I wasn’t, and then I went to that signing at Murder By the Book, where authors Harley Jane Kozak and Randy Wayne White showed a deftness with the crowd that awed me. (Later, I saw author Dean James do the same thing, but HJK and RWW were the first.)

Of course, Harley Jane Kozak is an actor with performances in theater, television, and movies under her belt. She’s trained to look poised. But I suspect that when she’s standing** in front of a crowd talking about her own work, as opposed to interpreting someone else’s, it’s not any easier for her than for any other untrained soul. Her genius is that she makes it look effortless. She makes people laugh. She shows the right amount of humility and gratitude. And even if her books didn’t already prove it, her discussions of her novels show that she clearly loves writing.

I completely enjoyed her previous Wollie Shelley mysteries, Dating Dead Men and Dating is Murder, and I’m looking forward to having time to read the new one, Dead Ex. If any of you writers ever get the chance to go to one of her signings, grab it. Like me, you’ll probably learn a lot that will help you with your own signings.

But I still don’t want to do it alone. Ever.


The enchanting Harley Jane Kozak signing her new one
at Murder By the Book last night.

**STANDING. As Harley explained, in theater classes, she learned that having to perform sitting down, or even worse, lying down, gives the audience permission to sleep. Trust me, no one sleeps at her signings!