THE OTHER PROCESSES OF WRITING: PROOFREADING AND WRITING AN INDEX

I am finally breaking a silence of four weeks after being snowed under a prodigious mountain of proofreading and being also busy writing indexes, aspects of writing we never discuss. I’m breaking that bad habit here.             I used my time off the classroom in 2022 to work on four volumes to be published in […]

Judging a book by its cover

This post is inspired by the article “Seventy-five years of richly illustrated literary classics – in pictures”, which celebrates the work of The Folio Society. This is a British independent publisher, established in 1947, which has so far published 2400 beautifully designed editions for book lovers. Not knowing anything about them, I was astonished not […]

Juzgar un libro por su portada

Esta entrada post está inspirada por en el artículo “Seventy-five years of richly illustrated literary classics – in pictures”, que celebra el trabajo de The Folio Society. Se trata de una editorial independiente británica, establecida en 1947, que hasta ahora ha publicado 2400 ediciones bellamente diseñadas pensando en los amantes de los libros, una categoría […]

STOP DYSTOPIAS: HOPEPUNK, AND A WARNING ABOUT GENERALIZED GRIMDARK

On September 14, the Spanish Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030 led by Ione Belarra, Secretary General of left-wing party Podemos, launched the campaign #BastaDeDistopías [#StopDystopias] to encourage the debate around the current general discouragement, especially among the young. The main piece is a 1-minute video in which various characters are seen in what […]

HOW TO READ 100 BOOKS A YEAR (AND WHY IT ELICITS REJECTION)

The article by Héctor García Barnés published in El Confidencial, “There are people in Spain who read 80, 150 or 300 books a year, and it is not as difficult as it sounds”, draws powerful attention both for the cases it presents of constant readers and for the rather negative comments they receive. According to […]

CÓMO LEER 100 LIBROS AL AÑO (Y POR QUÉ PROVOCA RECHAZO)

El artículo de Héctor García Barnés publicado en El Confidencial, “Hay gente en España que lee 80, 150 o 300 libros al año, y no es tan difícil como suena”, llama poderosamente la atención tanto por los casos que presenta de grandes lectores como por los comentarios más bien negativos que éstos reciben en los […]

AN HOMAGE TO MINISERIES

It’s evening, after dinner, time to relax and choose a film to watch from whatever platform you subscribe. This means employing about two hours on consuming a story, leaving aside the fifteen minutes (or more) it may take to select a minimally enticing movie, unless you have preselected and placed some on your list. If […]

CHRONICLING THE DEATH OF LITERATURE (II): THE WRITER AS INFLUENCER

The other article that has interested me and, in this case, appalled me is Laura Miller’s “The Unlikely Author Who’s Absolutely Dominating the Bestseller List” for Slate on the current US top best-selling novelist: Colleen Hoover. Miller’s analysis led me to Stephanie McNeal’s similar piece, “How Colleen Hoover Became The Queen Of BookTok” for BuzzFeed, […]