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The fact that the story is told in letters, diaries, newspapers and other texts, will kill the impact off any tense situation: if you're writing a letter about it, it's because you made it; if you're writing an entry in your diary, it's because it's already happened. There's no feeling of being...

Pop writers are getting a lot of heat around here.

William Least-Heat Moon has some interesting things to say about the USA, that aren't mentioned in the world media whenever they're news. Blue Highways is a must!

I believe some non-fiction falls in the category of technical writing, and the criteria I apply to fiction are the same to non-fiction. This is why I can't stand The Da Vinci: a lot of the content of that book - Goddess myths, conspiracy theories, mathematical formulae, theology, Art history -...

Isn't Gravity's Rainbow about rockets and government secrets?

Arghh! I listed Eça by default; it wasn't a serious suggestion! But seriously now, I hope you enjoy it. And if you ever want to try some poetry, go for Fernando Pessoa; you won't regret it :)

Language: The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski The Tyranny of Words, Stuart Chase Neuroscience: Descarte's Error, António Damásio How the Mind Works, Steven Pinker The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker Politics: Failed States, Noam Chomsky Hegemony or...

I already did, you wouldn't want to know what I thought it meant :D But after yahooing it (yes, I repudiate google!), I felt pretty stupid for not guessing its meaning.

Rest in peace, Mr. Styron. I regret saying I have never read anything by him; Sophie's Choice has been sitting comfortably on my bookshelf for months now.

Damn it, I knew ennui :(

When book jackets start annoying me, I just take them off. This is also why I prefer paperbacks.

Actually, I think Saramago is the only translated Portuguese writer :( Saramago has the luck of having a wife who owns a prominent Spanish publishing house that promotes his work all over the world; Pilar, to whom all Saramago novels are dedicated, also translates his work into Spanish herself...

Baltasar and Blimunda is the novel that brought Saramago international renown, and ever since he won the Nobel, it's been cumpolsory reading for 12th grade students :rolleyes: I barely escaped having to read it, and I'm thankful for that, for I would have probably hated it when I was 17. Four...

But hasn't From Hell always been in print?

Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Gambler Dostoevsky, Fyodor: The Double Fowles, John: The French Lieutenant's Woman Goethe, J.W.: Werther Kundera, Milan: Identity Saramago, José: Baltasar and Blimunda Voltaire: Candide Plus some non-fiction. It wasn't a bad month :)

It's been a good morning: Don Quixote, Cervantes The Magic Mountain, Thomas Mann The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker.

Saramago developed that style in his second novel; if you're not taken with it by now, you'd better just give him up :D honestly, I love his work, I don't love any other contemporary writer as much as I do him, but I doubt you can't find more writers who say the same and write in a traditional...

No one Writes to the Colonel, The Autumn of the Patriarch, The General in his Labyrinth... Yeah, Marquéz knows how to invent great titles!

Are you trying to pick a fight with me? :D J.D. Salinger doesn't bother me a lot; I find The Catcher In The Rye a great book, an excellent example of how to write an idiolect, and I don't mind millions love it. It just bothers me that people love it for what seems to me like the wrong...

A sentence is a statement, true, but some writers are better than others at making interesting long statements. The telegram type of writing doesn't appeal to me; too many sentences die before they have the room to blossom. Gary, I'm sure all the greatest writers, at one point or another...