Wednesday, April 8, 2015

on the blogs

I was going to highlight this post from Shane Kuhn, on Mystery Fanfare, in which he laments the passing of an era when Real Writers Lived Dramatic Lives.  Remember the good old days when all the really good writers were alcoholics or mysoginists or womanizers or drug addicts?  Yeah, back then not only could writers write but they were colorful.  Who cares how many lives were upended by all that "character?"  I get his point that we're all a bit anodyne these days, but the alternative was only entertaining if you got to observe it; not so much if you were living with it.

But when I went to confirm the link, the post had mysteriously (of course) disappeared!  Was it too inflammatory?  It was kind of obnoxious in tone, but I suppose one is allowed.

In other news, I'm really enjoying a new blog from Sarah Weinman, a.k.a. The Crime Lady.  Well, I don't really know how new it is but it is new to me.  The CL is actually a newsletter, to which you subscribe.  She offers some short and sharp reviews of books I'd not otherwise find, and includes some interesting links, too, like The Rap Sheet does sometimes.  These may be only tangentially related to crime fiction, but that is what makes them interesting, you actually have to think about it.  But what really cemented my as-yet-brief infatuation was a link to an obituary for Stan Freberg, one of the most brilliant comedic minds of the 20th c., who answered the Call of Destine this week.  RIP, madcap adman.

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