This is the second time around for Swan River Daisy by Tom Sheehan as a rerun. It originally appeared in 2015 then was first rerun in 2018. The debut year is close to the beginning of the site and the second is from the earliest weeks of this feature.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Swan River Daisy by Tom Sheehan”
Well hello there peeps and all old China’s!!
Here we are at the exciting Week 489.
…Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, so I’ll start again.
Here we are at week 489.
This week a comment between us made me consider this.
Continue reading “Week 489 – Constants, Next Year Hopefully And Spreading The Bad!”
Sarah parked in the small lot beside Lava’s Bar on Lower Main not knowing what to expect. The ancient and industrial part of Wailuku looked the same as it had when she was a kid: non-descript dingy buildings, narrow alleys with the odd apartment sprinkled in, a snuffling dog on the corner. Despite the post-sunset, orangey sky, the area emanated an enticing melancholy, a feeling she remembered from the seat of her dad’s tow truck back in the early seventies en route to the junkyard, stereo shop, or TV repair. But now, there’s a bar! Maybe there was always a bar—or bars—here, but bars weren’t on her radar in those days, obviously. She’d always been curious about the dusty, mid-island pit of industrial Wailuku, compared to the tourist-dotted beaches in Kihei, where she had grown up a mere ten or so miles away.
Continue reading “Lava’s Bar by Marisa Mangani”
Bernie loved this day and age.
Before, he was always cold.
He never had enough to eat.
And he hated to admit it, his weakness, his curse, his companion, his reason to stay alive was the sauce. These days he had as much booze as he wanted…Well…
Continue reading “Sign Of The Times Too (The Mile-Stone Inspector)”
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
The TS Eliot quotation is appropriate here. As time passes some books become better known for their film counterparts than as novels–as it is with Nevil Shute’s On the Beach. Yet despite some here and there details, the film remains faithful to the story.
Continue reading “Auld author – On the Beach by Nevil Shute”
But First a Special Announcement
The Special Announcement:
Our Sunday features continue to thrive, especially the long standing rerun and the relatively new interview segment. And what we call the Auld Author has done well, but we feel that restricting it to the fairly obscure and/or nearly forgotten is unfair to well known works, which need to be kept alive lest they fall into obscurity.
So we proudly announce that articles about famous authors and books will now be welcomed. For example, you may either extol something like Stephen King’s unabridged The Stand or even let fly against it because you feel that the short version is better. (That is an actual opinion held by yours truly.)
We believe that highlighting works that more than one person is familiar with will stimulate conversation to an even higher degree.
Still, if you do have an obscure or lost subject, we are still happy to see it come in.
One bit of caution: back in the old days, in New York City, there was a practice called “log rolling” (called that for a reason that appears lost to time), in which author friends who did reviews at different publications gave each other rave notices to plump up sales. I would never suggest that any of our esteemed contributors or readers would use this feature to tout a pal’s book if I didn’t believe that some of you are capable of it!
We hope to see your articles flood the inbox. And if there are any questions, we will be happy to answer them.
We Now Return to Regular Programming
The worst thing that can happen to an author is to become the object of assigned reading in high school. Somehow William Shakespeare continues to survive that curse, but it has been the kiss of death for historical authors who do not always deserve the “boring” label. Boring is in the yawn of the beholder and should not be an automatic reaction to something your fifth period Lit teacher has dumped into your life.
Continue reading “Week 488: The Classics and “Hey, the teacher smells like beer.””
“It’s hard to believe I exist in this place,” I tell my wife Rita.
On this trip to her hometown L. A. I’ve felt increasingly unreal. My eyes scan the ground, try to see this city at a basic level. There’s too much to take in if I raise my sight, the sheet white mist, streets lined with tents, people staggering and shouting.
Continue reading “La Cienaga Boulevard by Harrison Kim”
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“Hi,” I said when Anna-Lou finally answered the door. She looked like hell but that greatly improved when I showed her a thirty milligram bottle of Methadone. I had guessed her situation correctly and for the first time in ages I had the power to ease suffering.
“Sarah–what?” She said, confused, as she had a right to be. I imagine she experienced a moment similar to wishing for something utterly impossible and seeing it come true. In the forty years I had known her, not once had I directly addressed “her condition.”
Continue reading “The Designated Shepherd by Leila Allison”
We often run pieces that rub some persons the wrong way. Some folks are sensitive, others as Jack Nicholson once observed “can’t handle the truth.” Still, it is far better to provoke a reaction than not. Sort of like there’s no such thing as bad publicity.
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – Franky and Jesus by -Hugh Cron”
Who is the greatest writer ever?
Is that a loaded question?
Literally snobs will come up with the usual suspects that I’ll not mention. I can’t really as there are very few of the so called classics that I have read.
Continue reading “Week 487 – Famous Five, Charlie and Young Mr Bell!!”
literally stories 