I love it when Wait Wait picks up on something I first heard about here at b.org

Sophocles - Oedipus Rex:

"You'll marry your mother..."

"No I won't!"

"well, ya did."

(not mine - saw it in Cassie Edwards' to-use list)

Huh. Cell phone novels are huge in Japan

Whatever their literary talents, cellphone novelists are racking up the kind of sales that most more experienced, traditional novelists can only dream of.

One such star, a 21-year-old woman named Rin, wrote “If You” over a six-month stretch during her senior year in high school. While commuting to her part-time job or whenever she found a free moment, she tapped out passages on her cellphone and uploaded them on a popular Web site for would-be authors.

After cellphone readers voted her novel No. 1 in one ranking, her story of the tragic love between two childhood friends was turned into a 142-page hardcover book last year. It sold 400,000 copies and became the No. 5 best-selling novel of 2007, according to a closely watched list by Tohan, a major book distributor.

Wow.

The legendary and otherwise unavailable Flying Karamazov Brothers version of Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors is up on YouTube.

Ok - I just picked up the first Libba Bray. While I won't be opening the book tonight I am confused - she looks like my kinda book - why hadn't I heard of her of her until she showed uo in the thread a couple of days ago?

Has anyone ever read Cecilia Dart-Thornton? I checked out a couple of her books from the library, based on rave reviews...and I don't like her at all. I just kept reading with a huge feeling of her trying WAY too hard to be Lyrical and Poetical...and I LIKE formal court-fantasy...but I just felt like I wanted to take her thesaurus away from her and beat her with it and scream "Show! Don't tell!"

I dunnno wht it irritated me so much, but I had to vent. I feel better. Anyone?

why hadn't I heard of her of her until she showed uo in the thread a couple of days ago?

Gaps in the hivemind exist, is my guess.

why hadn't I heard of her of her until she showed uo in the thread a couple of days ago?

We need to be better about posting in Literary? :)

Has anyone ever read Cecilia Dart-Thornton?

Y'know, I thought I had just seen the book "Ill Made Mute" everywhere, but then I looked on Amazon, and read the description and realize I actually read it, at some point? Clearly, it did not make a strong enough impression that I read the rest of her stuff...and yet, I vaguely recall enjoying it. Hrm.

My experience with Dart-Thornton's Bitterbynde Trilogy was decidedly mixed. I loved the first two books ( The Ill-Made Mute and The Lady of the Sorrows ). Her prose was at least a little purplish, but the plot was tight, and I loved the way she mixed in older folk stories. The characters were interesting and developed in logical ways.

I thought the last book ( The Battle of Evernight ) was an absolute disaster. The plot was all over the place. She threw out every bit of character development at a critical point in the story. She decided to write an "Author's note" to the paperback version to explain the ending because (paraphrased) "fans had been writing and asking her to explain". I can't help but think if she wrote the story to be consistent with the other two, such a note would not have been necessary.

I read The Iron Tree, the first book in "The Crowthistle Chronicles". I haven't bothered to read the other books in this series, due to the extreme eye-rolling experience I had with the first one.

I did love the first two Bitterbynde books so much though. It was largely my experience with Dart-Thornton that prompted me to stop buying books and to start using my library more. I find I'm less likely to be so annoyed by books I haven't spent hard-earned money on.