At Sketch For Nothing I found the fortune cookie that should have been mine yesterday.
At culturespace I found this post that I would describe as a prescription good for all that ails you.
At The Missouri Review, a web exclusive – On Reading Nonfiction by Michael Piafsky – where he quotes Samuel Johnson:
“the two most engaging powers of an author are to make something familiar new and to make something new familiar.”
Piafsky is partial to:
“a piece so skillfully crafted that despite its seeming mundanity, the author is able to bring to life for me something I’ve seen a million times but never quite looked at so closely, a piece whose writer could rivet me detailing an ant’s walk across my front yard.”
While Piafsky’s description could apply to fiction, here he is describing a genre called by many names, among them creative nonfiction or literary nonfiction. The University of Oregon, has online a good definition – What is Literary Nonfiction? – as well as a series of Q&As with some terrific writers including Ted Conover (Newjack), Melissa Fay Greene (Praying for Sheetrock) The New Yorker‘s Susan Orlean (The Orchid Thief), Alex Kotlowitz (There Are No Children Here, The Other Side of the River), Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickle and Dimed), to name a few.