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Author: David Letzler
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496201647
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
What is the strange appeal of big books? The mega-novel, a genre of erudite tomes with encyclopedic scope, has attracted wildly varied responses, from fanatical devotion to trenchant criticism. Looking at intimidating mega-novel masterpieces from The Making of Americans to 2666, David Letzler explores reader responses to all the seemingly random, irrelevant, pointless, and derailing elements that comprise these mega-novels, elements that he labels "cruft" after the computer science term for junk code. In The Cruft of Fiction, Letzler suggests that these books are useful tools to help us understand the relationship between reading and attention. While mega-novel text is often intricately meaningful or experimental, sometimes it is just excessive and pointless. On the other hand, mega-novels also contain text that, though appearing to be cruft, turns out to be quite important. Letzler posits that this cruft requires readers to develop a sophisticated method of attentional modulation, allowing one to subtly distinguish between text requiring focused attention and text that must be skimmed or even skipped to avoid processing failures. The Cruft of Fiction shows how the attentional maturation prompted by reading mega-novels can help manage the information overload that increasingly characterizes contemporary life.
Author: David Letzler
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496201647
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 324
Get Book
Book Description
What is the strange appeal of big books? The mega-novel, a genre of erudite tomes with encyclopedic scope, has attracted wildly varied responses, from fanatical devotion to trenchant criticism. Looking at intimidating mega-novel masterpieces from The Making of Americans to 2666, David Letzler explores reader responses to all the seemingly random, irrelevant, pointless, and derailing elements that comprise these mega-novels, elements that he labels "cruft" after the computer science term for junk code. In The Cruft of Fiction, Letzler suggests that these books are useful tools to help us understand the relationship between reading and attention. While mega-novel text is often intricately meaningful or experimental, sometimes it is just excessive and pointless. On the other hand, mega-novels also contain text that, though appearing to be cruft, turns out to be quite important. Letzler posits that this cruft requires readers to develop a sophisticated method of attentional modulation, allowing one to subtly distinguish between text requiring focused attention and text that must be skimmed or even skipped to avoid processing failures. The Cruft of Fiction shows how the attentional maturation prompted by reading mega-novels can help manage the information overload that increasingly characterizes contemporary life.
Author: David Letzler
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803299621
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
Based on the author's dissertation (doctoral)--City University of New York, 2014.
Author: Neil Gaiman
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0060530944
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
It takes a graveyard to raise a child. Nobody Owens, known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neither the world of the living nor the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy—an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack—who has already killed Bod's family.
Author: Iain M. Banks
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316075965
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 343
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Book Description
There is a world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse. Such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organization with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers? Among those operatives are Temudjin Oh, of mysterious Mongolian origins, an un-killable assassin who journeys between the peaks of Nepal, a version of Victorian London and the dark palaces of Venice under snow; Adrian Cubbish, a restlessly greedy City trader; and a nameless, faceless state-sponsored torturer known only as the Philosopher, who moves between time zones with sinister ease. Then there are those who question the Concern: the bandit queen Mrs. Mulverhill, roaming the worlds recruiting rebels to her side; and Patient 8262, under sedation and feigning madness in a forgotten hospital ward, in hiding from a dirty past. There is a world that needs help; but whether it needs the Concern is a different matter.
Author: Howard Mittelmark
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061862894
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
"What do you think of my fiction book writing?" the aspiring novelist extorted. "Darn," the editor hectored, in turn. "I can not publish your novel! It is full of what we in the business call 'really awful writing.'" "But how shall I absolve this dilemma? I have already read every tome available on how to write well and get published!" The writer tossed his head about, wildly. "It might help," opined the blonde editor, helpfully, "to ponder how NOT to write a novel, so you might avoid the very thing!" Many writing books offer sound advice on how to write well. This is not one of those books. On the contrary, this is a collection of terrible, awkward, and laughably unreadable excerpts that will teach you what to avoid—at all costs—if you ever want your novel published. In How Not to Write a Novel, authors Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman distill their 30 years combined experience in teaching, editing, writing, and reviewing fiction to bring you real advice from the other side of the query letter. Rather than telling you how or what to write, they identify the 200 most common mistakes unconsciously made by writers and teach you to recognize, avoid, and amend them. With hilarious "mis-examples" to demonstrate each manuscript-mangling error, they'll help you troubleshoot your beginnings and endings, bad guys, love interests, style, jokes, perspective, voice, and more. As funny as it is useful, this essential how-NOT-to guide will help you get your manuscript out of the slush pile and into the bookstore.
Author: John Scalzi
Publisher: Tor Books
ISBN: 0765388987
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 239
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Book Description
New York Times Best Seller USA Today Best Seller io9's New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books You Need to Put On Your Radar This Fall Kirkus' SF/F Books to Watch Out for in 2018 Popular Mechanics Best Books of 2018 (So Far) Goodreads' Most Anticipated Fantasy and Science Fiction Books The Consuming Fire—the New York Times and USA Today bestselling sequel to the 2018 Hugo Award Best Novel finalist and 2018 Locus Award-winning The Collapsing Empire—an epic space-opera novel in the bestselling Interdependency series, from the Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author John Scalzi The Interdependency—humanity’s interstellar empire—is on the verge of collapse. The extra-dimensional conduit that makes travel between the stars possible is disappearing, leaving entire systems and human civilizations stranded. Emperox Grayland II of the Interdependency is ready to take desperate measures to help ensure the survival of billions. But arrayed before her are those who believe the collapse of the Flow is a myth—or at the very least an opportunity to an ascension to power. While Grayland prepares for disaster, others are prepare for a civil war. A war that will take place in the halls of power, the markets of business and the altars of worship as much as it will between spaceships and battlefields. The Emperox and her allies are smart and resourceful, as are her enemies. Nothing about this will be easy... and all of humanity will be caught in its consuming fire. The Interdependency Series 1. The Collapsing Empire 2. The Consuming Fire At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Author: Percy Lubbock
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 294
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Book Description
Author: Janet Burroway
Publisher: Longman Publishing Group
ISBN:
Category : College readers
Languages : en
Pages : 420
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Book Description
Janet Burroway's bestselling Imaginative Writng: The Elements of Craft explores the craft of creative writing in four genres: Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Creative Nonfiction. A trade author as well as a professor of creative writing, Burroway brings her years of teaching and writing to this book. "Try-This" exercises appear throughout each chapter. Provocative and fun, these exercises help writers develop the specific writing skills discussed within the text. "Working toward a draft" exercises encourage writers to develop their ideas into complete drafts. In response to reviewer requests, the preface "Invitation to the Writer" has been expanded into a full chapter. This new chapter introduces writers to important skills such as reading like a writer, journaling, and participating in the writer's workshop. This book offers lots of ideas and encouragement at a great price!
Author: Rochelle Tobias
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803215924
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
"Pseudo-Memoir explores the twentieth-century return of a genre that had largely gone out of fashion after the novel came of age in Europe in the eighteenth century"--
Author: James S.A. Corey
Publisher: Boom! Studios
ISBN: 1613988532
Category : Comics & Graphic Novels
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
Based on the bestselling books and tying into the hit television series, THE EXPANSE ORIGINS reveals the untold origins of the crew members of The Rocinante. As interplanetary tensions reach an all-time high, the crew of The Rocinante finds themselves at the center of a conflict that threatens to destroy all of human civilization. But before they were heroes, each member of the crew faced moments that would come to define them and brought them one step closer to the ship they now call home.
