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Category Archives: Sighted Elsewhere
Medieval Misconceptions
Check out these ten misconceptions about life in medieval times. It turns out the Middle Ages was not exactly like a D&D campaign. It was often quite a bit more interesting. 🙂
What Should You Read Next?
There is a website that can tell you, as Erin McCarthy of mental_floss explains:
If you, like me, have ever finished a book and thought, “What should I read next?” then the aptly-titled website WhatShouldIReadNext.com is for you. Enter in a title, author, or ISBN number, and the site analyzes reviews and ratings from other readers and recommends books.
Resolutions to Help Out Indie Authors
Via Coffintree Hill:
I’m sure that many of you made resolutions and goals for the year; to finish that novel, to make more time to read, to update your blog more regularly. But how about setting some time aside to help out some fellow indie authors? There are heaps of different ways that you can support your peers, to pay it forward.
- Follow their blog. Read, comment and share their posts.
- Follow their social networking profiles. Again, read, comment, share, retweet, reblog.
- Run word sprints/word wars. Find other writers online and write together. Set a time limit, and see who gets the most words out. They’re great fun and great motivation.
- Join the Insecure Writers Support Group. Once a month, writers all over the world write blog posts about their own insecurities, and offer advice and support to other writers. You’ll find new friends, new followers, and they’re all there to cheer each other on. Sign up here: insecurewriterssupportgroup.com/p/iwsg-sign-up.html
- Host them on your own blog. If they have some news or a book coming out, you could let them have a space on your blog. You could run interviews with other writers, or let them guest blog. It’s win-win: they get exposure and your followers, you get great blog content and their followers.
- Offer to beta read. Writers always need beta readers to give their opinions on their work. You get to read upcoming books before anyone else, and they are likely to return to favour when you need beta readers for your work.
- Buy their books. Kind of obvious, right? But why not set a goal for the number of indie writers you’ll read this year? You might discover your next favourite writer.
- Review their books. Whether on Amazon, Goodreads or your own blog, reviews mean so much to indie writers.
- Recommend their books. If you enjoyed it, let other people know. Recommend their books on social media, to your friends, to your family. Recommendations really do sell books.
- Give their books as gifts. Enjoyed it? Why not buy a copy for a friend or family member?
And there are loads of other ways you can help. Writers are often looking for cover critiques, or advice on marketing, formatting, character names etc etc. Just network, keep an eye out, and use your strengths to help someone out.
Cutting The Hobbit Down to Size
It was only a matter of time. Someone has created a fan-edit of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy that slices the runtime roughly in half. As Rob Bricken suggests, this is a good first step in getting the material down to the length of a single movie!
New Harry Potter Illustrations
Via mental_floss:
Harry, Ron, and Hermione are getting a makeover. British artist Jim Kay, who won a Carnegie Medal in 2012 for illustrating Patrick Ness’s fantasy children’s book A Monster Calls, is reimagining the look of Harry’s world for a new edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. According to The Guardian, Kay is slated to create full-color illustrated editions of all seven of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, with the first expected to hit shelves October 6. The subsequent novels will be released one per year.
A Harry Potter fan himself, Kay tells The Guardian that “hearing the news that I’d got the commission was an explosion of delight, followed instantly by an implosion of brain-freezing terror.” Kay continues, “From my point of view it is, without doubt, the best commission you can be given—I’m a bit of a control freak, so to be given the opportunity to design the characters, the clothing, the architecture, and landscapes to possibly the most expansive fantasy world in children’s literature, well, let’s just say I’m extremely excited about it.”
And after a sneak peek at Kay’s work—well, let’s just say we’re extremely excited about the new editions.
Is the Star Wars Universe Mostly Illiterate?
I don’t know, but this article by Ryan Britt made me think.
Not once in any Star Wars movie does someone pick up a book or newspaper, magazine, literary journal, or chapbook handmade by an aspiring Jawa poet. If something is read by someone in Star Wars, it’s almost certainly off of a screen (and even then, maybe being translated by a droid), and it’s definitely not for entertainment purposes. As early as the 1990s-era expanded Star Wars books and comic books, we’re introduced to ancient Jedi “texts” called holocrons, which are basically talking holographic video recordings. Just how long has the Star Wars universe been reliant on fancy technology to transfer information as opposed to the written word? Is it possible that a good number of people in Star Wars are completely illiterate?
He concludes,
Obi-Wan may have put a lightsaber in Luke’s hand, but really he and Qui-Gon should have been going around teaching people on poor planets to read years and years prior. After all, hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good book in your hands.
Indeed.
Flossie Familiarizes Fans with Frightening Female Fiends
It just another Mythic Monday at Flossie Benton Rogers’s eponymous blog. Today, she describes seven female monsters from world mythology.
Rowan Williams on Fairy Tales
From his New Statesman review of a trio of recent books relevant to the topic:
In 1947, J R R Tolkien published a celebrated essay on fairy tales in which he insisted that their association with childhood was recent and unfortunate; it misled us into thinking that the genre was not worth serious analysis, not something to “think with”. Marina Warner’s wide-ranging and handsomely produced book Once Upon a Time will reinforce Tolkien’s insistence that these stories are very far from being a simple style of narrative to be outgrown. She surveys the literary history of the fairy tale, from the elegant fables of 17th-century French aristocrats to Angela Carter and beyond, discusses the feminist move to reclaim women’s agency from generations of patronising images of languishing princesses, and offers a partiÂcularly interesting analysis of recent film treatments of the classic tales. Her conclusion is that “fairy tales are gradually turning into myths”: paradoxically, in our day, it is adults who seem most to need and use them, because they are just about the only stories we have in common with which to think through deep dilemmas and to keep alive registers of emotion and imagination otherwise being eroded. The fairy tale now has to carry an unprecedented burden of significance, and it is not surprising that modern versions – retellings or radical rewritings, like those of Angela Carter – produce a darker, more complex, less resolved narrative environment than hitherto.
Tolkien Geek’s Review of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
Heading into the theater I was a little disconcerted by the mixed reviews of this last installment in the Hobbit series from both critics and fans alike. I suppose a lot of one’s appreciation for (or lack thereof) this grandiose cinematic interpretation of such a small but beloved book depends primarily on the expectations that are brought to it. Personally, from the outset I’ve been very happy with what Peter Jackson and company have presented. And I know that I’m probably considered very much to be a Jackson homer/fanboy, blind to the mistakes, imperfections and downright presumptive liberties taken in the execution of turning “The Hobbit” from written word to visual media.
A 1901 Version of “A Christmas Carol”
Via mental_floss:
Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost, a silent film from 1901, is the earliest known film adaptation of Charles Dickens’ 1843 A Christmas Carol. Produced by the English movie pioneer R.W. Paul, the film is based more on J.C Buckstone‘s 1901 stage adaptation Scrooge than on Dickens‘ original story. Like in the play, the silver screen Scrooge is shown the error of his miserly ways all by the ghost of his deceased business partner, Jacob Marley—played surprisingly convincingly by a man in a sheet.
Darrell J. Pursiful 