Of course, we should all learn to play nice, but whether or not we should doesn’t always matter. And it’s hard to deny the entertainment value in a good sparring with words—especially when the insults fall on those far away from ourselves. When the L Magazine posted this slideshow of some of the most delightful author-on-author barbs, I couldn’t help but giggle.

Who’d have thought Charlotte Bronte had thoughts as snarky and as vicious as:

“Why do you like Miss Austen so very much? I am puzzled on that point. What induced you to say that you would rather have written ‘Pride and Prejudice’…than any of the Waverly novels? I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses.”

I’ll admit, this one is my favorite, just because it seems so unexpected.

Pro tip: it’s best not to think about how the authors on the receiving end might have felt after reading these comments. As tough as Hemingway made himself out to be, I can’t help but think he’s also a bit of a softie (I read The Paris Wife, okay? I know these things) and feel a little sorry for poor Papa getting all this flack for his writing.

So, while I’m not condoning flinging insults at our peers, per se, perhaps once in a while, it’s okay to appreciate the occasional carefully worded (and sometimes accurate) put-down. Especially when they’re just so colorful!

This isn’t new and don’t pretend you’ve never done it, never had oddly overly affectionate feelings for a character who not only doesn’t exist, but whose visage, demeanor and gait you’ve come up with all on your own, with only a little help from nice adjectives and descriptive phrases.

What about, though, falling in love with the person behind the words? Authors, especially authors long since gone, have a real mysteriousness and intangible quality about them that is just so. darn. attractive. I have a friend who is insufferably in love with Ernest Hemingway and another who would give anything, anything to meet John Keats.

Personally, though I have never before had any previous inclination, I’m leaning a little towards one Mr. J.D. Salinger, of late. Yes, the misanthropic shut in who also, apparently carried on an epistolary relationship with a young woman he had never met. Sure, the romantic aspect of this is ramped up by the long lost letters component, and today’s equivalent of emails and text messages just won’t compare, but his self-deprecating boasting and little endearments really show a different side to the man no one really knew too much about.

After melting a little bit at “Sneaky girl. You’re pretty,” tell me about any of your author crushes or any authors you’d do anything to simply exchange letters back and forth with for years, even if it only amounted to something to look back on and smile fondly at later.

I remember when a friend first introduced the collaboration feature of Google Docs to me. While the technology behind this is probably light-years less complicated than most of what’s out there, the idea that two or more people can write together, edit each other and share ideas on the same word document or spreadsheet at the same time brings a feeling of side-by-side mentorship that is lost in the world of solitary existence in front of computers.

Of course, it can also be used for fun and silliness—I can’t tell you how many ridiculous, probably unreadable stories I’ve “co-authored” with friends using this tool. A bit like Exquisite Corpse, but over the world wide web instead of with pen and paper.

Writing silly stories with your friends is all well and good, of course, but I’ve recently discovered a more…literary…collaboration you can try out. Google has done a demo where you can practice writing stories with the likes of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Emily Dickinson and Edgar Allen Poe. They’ll edit your words to their tastes and chide you if you slack off. I think my favorite is Charles Dickins’ accusation after too long a pause, “Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him.”

While this is really just a fun game you can play with yourself, I wonder if it also couldn’t be an exercise in trying out various writing styles and formats. Not that writing with Shakespeare’s prose or Nietzsche’s vindications is really anyone’s aim (or maybe it is!), but seeing how a simple word change or structure alteration in your own words can give an entirely different effect to the narrative is certainly eye-opening.

I suggest trying it out, whether for fun or for discipline (okay, it’s going to be fun regardless) and posting your favorite “edits” in the comments!

In more modern literature, the omens are tougher to spot, maybe requiring a careful rereading (and a helpful English teacher to point them out at every turn), but they are a mainstay. Whether it’s Poe’s raven or the harbinger of Anne Shirley’s doomed marriage as she envisions her funeral the morning of her wedding, the little things an author inserts into their work are rarely there by accident.

The Huffington Post ran a slideshow of some pretty interesting omens in literature, from ancient texts through to Harry Potter (that darn Grim!)—some I hadn’t even considered until they were pointed out. It goes back to that rereading aspect. Picking out nuances and theretofore unrecognized significances, symbols and yes, omens, upon reading a book over again with knowledge of how it all plays out is one of the many delights of literature.

Have you discovered any signs or portents while rereading a favorite book? Anything you didn’t notice the first time around that seem so obvious upon a second or third session?

Available for your reading pleasure here on the Hairpin, are just four very slight tales of love and romance, ultimately lost, rejected or simply faded away. The strength in these stories is that there is so much, so very much left out of them. There are no character names, sometimes the telling is a very straightforward “this happened and then this happened and then that happened and so there.” But somehow, as readers, we’re able to create an entire narrative arc. We can visualize the lovers, feel their hope, joy, pain, and ultimate loneliness.

It’s not just about writing a barebones plot and not saying much about anything, limiting yourself to a hundred and fifty words or so. Anyone can do that—I’ve tried. There’s a certain space that must be created. A vast emptiness between the lines where the real story lies. A good writer of short fiction can give just the right amount of information and the right type of information so that the story doesn’t feel cheap or lacking, but instead creates the feeling in the reader that they know exactly what the writer meant to be happening in the spaces left blank.

Love stories—particularly those about lost loves—are exponentially more effective when less is told. The emptiness and longing, nostalgia and regret are there simply because they are physically not there on the page. They become haunting instead of merely sad. Their brevity means they can be read over and over again, searching for any more hints of story, clues to what really happened.

I’d be interested in seeing any stories you can come up with in the comments—keeping it under 200 words.* It’s more difficult than you’d think! Otherwise, do you have a similar take on the style, or would you much prefer a long, fleshed out novel instead?

*The writer of my favorite story will be showered in cash and prizes! Minus the cash, but there is a DGLM mug in it for the winning, and you’re welcome to fill it wish cash of your own if you like.

***UPDATE***

This contest is now closed and I am pleased to announce the winner of a DGLM mug is Jan O’Hara! Jan, please email me with your information at rstout@dystel.com and I’ll be in touch!

These are, of course, true, if a little bit precious, completely clichéd, and totally overused statements. However, they are so because there is that grain of truth to them. Books really can make you forget your surroundings, drop all cares and make reality unimportant for a little while.

The problem is, however, getting there. Getting immersed in a book is heavily dependent on how much you can let yourself be taken in by it. I find, personally, that unless I’ve already gotten in deep with a book and it’s one of those that I’m thinking about even when I’m not reading, when I’m planning the next time I can really sit down and make another dent in the pages, that it takes some settling in to focus.

Oddly, I’ve found I concentrate best on a book when I’m not at home surrounded by all those cozy comforts. My favorite reading locales are bustling cafes, bars and coffee shops. Couldn’t tell you why, and I don’t know that it’s completely normal, but the complete familiarity of my apartment* and the quietness I find there is more of a distraction than continuous chatter, background music and movement.

Sometimes I prefer going out alone solely so I can sit by myself and read—it makes me happy and I focus on a book all the better for it. Just last night, I was reading alone at my favorite watering hole and it was there that I was finally able to get to the point of “okay, I’ve got the measure of this book now” where I couldn’t when I had started it at home mere minutes earlier. The lights went down, but one of the bartenders came over and made me a makeshift candle tower (not as precarious as it sounds, I promise) and so read on I did.

Where do you read best? Is it home with something nice to drink or munch on, in the park, library, café, bar or anywhere else? Am I less of an oddball than I imagined? Whenever I’m out at a coffee shop I see more people on laptops than anything else, so I suppose the home-away-from-home aspect transcends all media, but then again, computers come with headphones, and I’m no good at reading with headphones in, so there’s that. Rambling over, and awaiting your replies!

*Oddly, the same is not true of my childhood home, where I can read on the living room couch ‘til the cows come home, but I’d say that’s more a matter of habit than any kind of conscious preference.

In any case, I’ve decided that my biggest goal for this new year is organization. You know, I’m not too bad at it. I’m timely, I know where things that I need are and I know when I’m going to need them. I love alphabetization and sorting things by color or size. However, there’s got to be room for improvement. There’s got to be a reason that sometimes it’s midnight and oh my goodness where did the time go and I’ve still got all of these pages I want to read before tomorrow!

Luckily, not only is the low number on the calendar page a good impetus, but have you seen the weather out there? It is cold. Who wants to go outside gallivanting, throwing organization out the window when all we really should be doing is keeping that darn window closed, it’s windy, I’m cold, my papers are blowing everywhere.

So, what I want to know is hardly original, nor am I probably the only one asking, but it’s certainly interesting nonetheless (why would everyone ask the question otherwise?): What are your New Year’s resolutions? Whether they relate to writing, reading, or other literary ventures or not, it does not matter. Any sort of determination and willingness to sit down and really think about what you want and what you don’t need is an exercise that can be applied to all aspects, creative or otherwise. Go ahead, I want to know!

HOWEVER. Despite my poor penmanship, I still love writing things out by hand. I’m always fooled by the keyboard, thinking that I’ll be able to organize my thoughts better, more quickly and in a more logical fashion, but it rarely turns out to be true. Yes, the legibility decreases the more I write, as I find myself scrawling faster and faster so as to get the words out before my brain moves on to the next thought, but I find I care less.

When I’m typing, I’m completely conscious or every typo, spelling error or other sort of mistake that I make and am constantly frustrating myself by going back and correcting things that have really nothing to do with the ideas I’m trying to express. In the end, nothing you write the first time over ends up being the final product, so why should it matter if you’ve typed something wrong or skipped a word or letter here or there? Because things are clearer and because there’s that annoying little red or green squiggle under every mistake made in a furious rush to get the words on the page, every clerical foible takes precedence over the actual flow of script.

According to this article yesterday in GalleyCat, I’m not alone in my thoughts. Apparently, children in a particular study who wrote longhand, wrote “more, faster, and more complete sentences” than when they were faced with a keyboard and computer screen.

I promise you I’m no literary genius, hilarious person, venerable stringer-together of words or class-A wit, but I will say that when I read over notebooks I’ve kept over the years, I surprise myself over what I find there. I’m better pen to paper than I am on a keyboard, but the ease of typing still wins out time and time again, despite this knowledge.

Obviously, final products are pretty much required to be typed in today’s world, and I would feel sorry for the poor person who had to read more than one page of anything hastily scribbled by my own hand.* Ideas, though, personal journaling, observation and sudden flashes of inspiration are so much better served by pen and paper, no matter the legibility. After all, who’s going to really care what it looks like or how much your hand hurts if what comes out is the best thing you’ve thought of yet?

*Sincerest apologies to all of my high school teachers, particularly those of you in the English and history departments. You surely have suffered worse, but condolences just the same.

I have a list somewhere I made in a notebook a few years ago while sitting in Borders (R.I.P.) going through the entirety of one of those 1,001 Books You Must Read Before You Die compendiums, making note of every single one that I had read—occasionally scoffing at some of the books that were included, whether or not I had read them. I don’t remember how many books I ended up having on that list, but it was definitely less than 100. Obviously I declared the list unrepresentative and inaccurate.

Similar lists like the Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels and the sort still present themselves as obstacles to me to this day. While I no longer care that much about whether or not I’ve read the Top 10 Most Difficult Books, I still find all of these lists incredibly fascinating. Of course, as it’s literature, it can only be subjective. Yes, there are the “great books” that everyone is meant to have some understanding of, and there are those that are widely regarded as the epitomes of modern literature, but there’s always going to be someone to disagree.

What are the criteria for these lists? What makes a book great? What makes a books difficult? There’s really no answer to those questions that are universal, and the lists themselves are there only so people like me can get some kind of perverse pride out of having read some of them. But it really doesn’t matter, does it? As long as you read what you like, what you like is good. The only opinion that matters is your own, and simply because you haven’t read Finnegan’s Wake,* known throughout the land as virtually impossible to get through, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t enjoy the books you do choose to read.

We’re not in school anymore, though, and you don’t have to read anything if you don’t want to! So while it’s incredibly entertaining to tick off a list or check them out for inspiration (I’m of the belief that lists in any shape or form are just fun), they don’t have to be the be all end all. If the books you like to read aren’t revered by a great intellectual community, or you just don’t get what the big deal is with Catcher in the Rye or Pride and Prejudice, then you shouldn’t feel any pressure to try and slog through them.

Reading, at its core, is about exploring your own interests, losing yourself in the words, the story and the characters. It’s not about peeking over your book to see who can see what important work you’ve chosen or comparing yourself with others.

*(Which, I will say, is the only book I have ever actually thrown across a room, and yes, I did try and read it when I as sixteen because we were going to be reading Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man the next year in school and yes, I thought it would be better if I had read something else of Joyce’s beforehand and yes, I remember flushing with pride when my English teacher was impressed that I had tried to read it at all, and no, I did not make it past page 20.)

The other day, I came across this post from Picador USA. Picador has made up Spotify playlists for some favorite books, putting together soundtracks that seem appropriate for each. This particular one is for Jeffrey Eugenides’ The Marriage Plot, which I haven’t read, but desperately want to (Brenna, you did say you’d let me borrow yours…). I can’t confirm, then, if these are the perfect tunes for this book or not, but the idea is still one that I adore.

Immediately, I started thinking of all of the books I’ve read, which was a bit of a problem, because that’s a lot of thinking to do. Unable to pick the perfect book to come up with a soundtrack for, I considered the venture hopeless. I realized, though, that the book doesn’t have to be perfect, nor does it have to be venerable or complex. So, I settled on the first book I ever remember loving, which I’m told is the first book I read all on my own. I give you, Cookie Monster and the Cookie Tree, by David Korr and published by Golden Books in 1977.

In case you are unfamiliar with the plot of this seminal work of literature, let me break it down for you. It’s about a very selfish, not very bright witch, who is also the proud owner of a cookie tree—yes, a tree that bears cookies. Of course, Cookie Monster himself is also pretty selfish—when it comes to cookies, that is. When the little witch sees him trundling down the path towards her, she knows that if she doesn’t do something fast, he’ll eat all of her precious cookies. So, she casts a spell on the tree so that it will refuse to give a cookie to anyone who will not share it with someone else. Cookie Monster pleads and pleads with all of his friends on Sesame Street, but no one believes that he would ever actually share a cookie. Back at the tree, the witch is having similar problems—it seems her spell has backfired and the tree won’t give her any cookies either! Disastrous! Cookie and Witch agree to share the cookies with each other, which is the sensible solution—though nothing can stop Cookie Monster’s voracious frenzy when it comes to cookie eating!

Looking back over the pages of these book, it wasn’t hard at all to come up with some choice songs to accompany (some are based solely on title, others are the sentiment of the song, but they are all songs that I love):

Another Sunny Day – Belle & Sebastian

I Put A Spell On You – Nina Simone

All the Wine – The National

Fist City – Loretta Lynn

Go Your Own Way – Fleetwood Mac

Monster Ballads – Josh Ritter

Troubbble – Stephen Malkmus

No One Will Ever Love You – The Magnetic Fields

Rebellion (Lies) – Arcade Fire

1, 2, 3, 4 – Feist

I’m Gonna Make It Better – She & Him

Tables & Chairs – Andrew Bird

Folding Chair – Regina Spektor

Still Rock & Roll to Me – Billy Joel

I promise, it works! What are some of your favorite or first books? Could you come up with a playlist or a band to do the soundtrack for any of them?