Just another writer
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Writerly resolutions: March status
Another month has come and gone and I continue to make decent progress on the novel. I have yet to miss a day’s work so far this year. I’ve finished the rewrite and revision of chapter 25 and done a lot of writing on chapter 26. I’m pretty sure that this chapter is going to be…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 832 BRE Saint Joan of the stockyards : a drama
After a couple rounds of writing about writing, I decided to go for some actual writing when I got to the 830s, “German and related literatures.” Spotting this book, I decided that a bit of Brecht would be good refreshment. It’s a bit of a “lost” play, one which never saw a theatrical production until after…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 820.93 GOL Sexual repression and victorian literature
After my disappointment reading Mamet, I decided to go in a direction that was bound not to disappoint because I would come at it with low expectations: An academic approach to some obscure corner of literary study. This is one of those books that I sometimes wonder how it got on the shelves and if…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 814 MAM Writing in restaurants
I first heard of this book sometime in the late ’90s when I was, on occasion, literally writing in restaurants, sitting at Mitchell’s Diner at Clark and North with a ham and cheese omelet, a 5×8 spiral-bound notebook and a fine-point felt-tip pen. Mitchell’s is gone now, replaced by an Elly’s Pancake House which Google informs…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 808 DAG The lifespan of a fact
To initiate the 800s—literature—I picked this odd ittle book. I first encountered it in excerpts during my MFA and I was curious to read the whole thing, both D’Agata’s essay and Fingal’s fact checking of it. There was some exaggeration in the conflict between the two as it was portrayed on the page, as revealed in…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 791.092 JAY Jay’s journal of anomalies : conjurers, cheats, hustlers, hoaxsters, pranksters, jokesters, impostors, pretenders, sideshow showmen, armless calligraphers, mechanical marvels, popular entertainments
The 700s conclude with “Sports, ames & entertainment.” I had thought perhaps I might read a book about chess or even sports but then I spotted Ricky Jay’s name on the shelves. I have a vague notion that this might have been something that Jay mentioned in a Fresh Air interview, but even if I’d never heard…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 780.904 ROS The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
I believe I heard about this book when it was first published and it was something that intrigued me. I had dabbled in listening to twentieth-century classical music in my twenties, but didn’t really start digging deeply until I began singing with the choir at Holy Name Cathedral in Chicago. The choir director at the time,…
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Dewey Decimal Project: 778.925 JAN How to photograph children
Picking something out of photography seemed a bit of a bore and I ended up going with this book as an option. Of course, since I’m over a year behind in these write ups, I don’t remember much of the book other than it was not notable in either positive or negative terms so I’m going…
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Writerly resolutions: February status
2021 continues to be a good year for writing. It was even a good year for physical fitness for a while with my hitting my move goal every day until we had an extended cold spell this month which broke my streak. On the novel, I finished a first draft of chapter 25 and am almost…