Saturday, August 5th, 2006
King Dork is the first novel by Frank Portman, who is more widely known as Dr. Frank, the guitarist/singer of the pop-punk band Mr. T Experience. But don’t automatically lump it in your mind with all those other get-me-I’m-a-celebrity-writing-a-children’s-book types – it’s actually not bad. And it totally took me back to high school, whether I wanted to go there or not.
Tuesday, August 1st, 2006
My friends — including my partner-in-crime here, Eisha — have informed me that I tend to speak in hyperbole (which is oh-so phenomenally and just categorically untrue). But with my abuse of hyperbole aside, I have to say that Sonya Hartnett, one of my favorite writers, is brilliant. Really, people. Just flat-out brilliant. Her writing is precise, exacting. It’s economical yet truly evocative. The reason she has quite a few one-sentence paragraphs is ’cause she writes like this: “My mother’s world had contracted like a dying spider.” There. She nailed it. What else do you need?
