D. A. Hosek

Just another writer

  • 098.3 KAT Literary Hoaxes: An Eye Opening History of Famous Frauds

    This seems like it should be a fascinating area to write about: From the fabricated Shakespeare documents that took in Charles and Mary Lamb in the 19th century to James Frey’s “memoir” in the twenty-first century, there’s a lot to write about. As it turns out, though, most of the stories aren’t that interesting. JT…

  • 081 REQ Requiem for a Paper Bag: Celebrities and Civilians Tell Stories of the Best Lost, Tossed and Found Items from around the World

    Found magazine is one of those concepts that I wish I’d come up with: publishing the strange and unusual artifacts that end up as the detritus of civilized life. In this case, Rothbart, the editor of Found canvassed assorted celebrities and civilians (as near as I can tell, this designation is for those people who are…

  • 2014 in reading

    I set out this year to make my reading a bit more diverse. I fell a tad short of my goal for women writers making only 39.6% when I was aiming for 40% but had 13.5% non-white. I ended up choosing my next book to read 10.8% of the time in pursuit of these numbers.…

  • 2014 in rejections (and acceptances)

    2014 apparently ended up being the year that I got the most pieces out thusfar (although the general trend has been upwards). My personal rejection rate is up to 25% from 20%, a new record and this year’s acceptance rate came out at 3.1% (three acceptances versus 93 rejections).  My plan for 2015: Finish draft…

  • 070.92 THO Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

    Some time after college, I realized that drunk and stoned people were not all that fun or interesting to be around. This, in the end is the big problem with Hunter S. Thompson’s book. On the flip side, the narrative voice here is so compelling that it’s hard not to read on. The second part…

  • 051 GRO The Receptionist

    When the current craze for memoirs struck, I kept finding myself wondering who these people were and why we should care about their lives? It seemed to me that having done something notable with one’s life was a prerequisite for a memoir being worth writing, let alone being read. Janet Groth falls on the edge…

  • 069.5 OLD The Secret Museum

    As a child, one of the treats of the year was members’ night at the Field Museum. We’d get to go to the top floor of the museum where the researchers worked and see the stuff that wasn’t on display, that was being actively used in research. More than anything else, what remains in my…

  • 031.02 MAT The Concise Guide to Sounding Smart at Parties

    Here’s a rule: If you’re going to put together a humorous collection of facts, it should be (a) humorous and (b) not contain unintentional mistakes. Matalon and Woolsey manage to miss the mark on many fronts, with factual errors that were unintended (e.g., saying that Bohemia became part of modern-day Austria) and having humor which…

  • The Big Countdown

    In this year’s edition of my countdown to death, I drop from 90 years to 84 years. My biggest source of additional life expectancy would be diet and exercise. Losing six years of life is a bit sobering. I knew this last year, but it’s even more important now, especially that I have progeny to…