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Monthly Archives: November 2006

Novel Hybrids

Wednesday, November 8, 2006

Gentle Ben Hur
Thrill to the heartwarming saga of a 600 lb. brown bear who befriends a lonely young boy, wins a chariot race, and witnesses the crucifixion of Christ.
Little Women Who Run With the Wolves
…try valiantly but can’t keep up, which is probably just as well.
Suddenly Last Summa Theologica
The prolonged agony and hideous death [...]

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Sexiest Letter of the Alphabet

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

B
Runner-ups:  L and H

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Funny-Looking Words

Tuesday, November 7, 2006

(a work in progress)
Adjectives:
Berserk
Blotto
Gassy
Eleemosynary
Flocculent
Verbs:
Disembosom
Buttress
Gainsay
Lambaste
Nouns:
Crabapple
Loblolly
Kumquat
Bomb
Blowtorch
Botfly
Flange
Lardoon
Galoot
Poltroon
Spittoon
Besom
Disembosomee
Frottage
Onus
Larb
Phlebotomist
Philatelist
Nozzle
Rumpus
Nosegay
Yurt
Haboob

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Why I Love Automatic Translation

Friday, November 3, 2006

Here’s automatic French-to-English translation on Amazon.fr of part of the page flogging the French version of my Jenny and the Jaws of Life. (I supply the original sentences for the quoted passage from “Melinda Falling.”)
She was disconsolate. It was inconsolable. For hours she lay face-down on the living room couch, sobbing wildly, angrily brushing off [...]

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Prologue to new novel The Writing Class (to be published June 10, 2008)

Friday, November 3, 2006

THE FAT BROAD
lumbers into class five minutes late, dragging, along with her yard-wide butt, a beat-up vinyl briefcase stuffed with old notebooks. A contender once, it’s obvious, she’s got great hair, long and wavy and thick and white gold, but she’s pushing fifty++, pushing two hundred, and she wears polyester fat pants and a big [...]

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What you should be reading instead of this

Friday, November 3, 2006

Moby Dick
Great Expectations
Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Anything by Robert Benchley
Anything by James Thurber, except his late stuff
Ditto by S.J. Perelman
“The Young Immigrunts,” by Ring Lardner
Archy and Mehitabel, by Don Marquis
Nonsense Novels, by Stephen Leacock
The Once and Future King, by T.H. White
Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis
Portable Prairie, by M.J. Andersen
Skinner’s Drift, by Lisa Fugard
Anything by David Sedaris
Anything by Tobias [...]

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