New York Times | catsignal

I know this looks awfully lazy, but there have been a number of interesting things I’ve found in the past couple of weeks that I want to share with you. Thus, a links post. Enjoy.

* The five most stolen books.

* Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary turns 100.

* The New York Times’s Bill Keller says, “Let’s Ban Books, Or at Least Stop Writing Them.”

* Kurt Vonnegut explains drama. I’m guessing he was qualified to do so.

* Everything you need to know about undressing a Victorian woman.

* Interview with Ira Glass. He talks about his career, creativity, and being wrong.

* Steve Pavlina tells us how to make brown rice. It has nothing to do with writing, but it’s foolproof (so sworn because it works for me). As for what he does once the rice is cooked, I have no comment.

Mark Twain is back in the news, not that he ever really left it. His unexpurgated autobiography is being published shortly, and I expect more than a few graveyards will hum with all the spinning some of the residents will be doing. (N.B.: I wrote the phrase “unexpurgated autobiography” before hunting up the NYT article that also uses it. Great minds, and all that.)

Twain had something to say about most everything, and he certainly did not spare his own field. He left us a great many thoughts on what makes a good story. Here is one collection of those thoughts. Finally, we have his masterful blast against novelist James Fenimore Cooper. Early on, Twain gives us twelve solid notions of what a writer should and should not do, and he makes note of how Cooper violated these points of literary order.

Enjoy, and make good use of what the old master taught us.

Pen to Paper: Potpourri

Pen to Paper: Mark Twain’s Writing Advice