A day with Ishiguro, Morrison, Dickens, and Joyce. #111Words #KazuoIshiguro #NeverLetMeGo #ToniMorrison #TheBluestEye #CharlesDickens #HardTimes #JamesJoyce #FinnegansWake #Novels #Fiction #Literature #CloseReading https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2025/03/a-day-with-ishiguro-morrison-dickens.html

Saw this French comic on a Mastodon banner. Decided to put #AI to the test. #Gemini is still a bit slow on the uptake of #ComicIrony. If you ever want a wild experience with #AI, take a song that has deep meaning to you and ask #AI to do a #Hermeneutical or #CloseReading of it

@Kierkegaanks #AI can do some amazing things. #Hermeneutical or #CloseReading of #JumpTheySay by #DavidBowie

"We hear a pop song many times on the radio (or wherever), then buy it and listen to it repeatedly. Soon, we know the lyrics by heart. We force our parents to listen to it. The whole song is present to us as a single concept, more than as a narrative arc. In this way, a three-minute pop song is more like a three-second slogan than like a thirty-minute show or a short story.”

#Music #PopSongs #PaulSimon #America #CloseReading

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/12/let-us-be-lovers.html

“And so they went on […] keen for the worry”: An evening with the Finnegans Wake Reading Group in Basel. #111Words #JamesJoyce #FinnegansWake #FinnegansWakeReadingGroup #Literature #CloseReading https://andrewjshields.blogspot.com/2024/11/and-so-they-went-on-keen-for-worry.html

Here's something amazing we've been working on in Lit!Commons:

https://bit.ly/40kTkSM

There's this amazing thing about reading & writing--when you come across a passage that you love or hate or find strange--you can dig right down into the words to figure out how that effect was achieved.

Here's me doing a close read of a few lovely sentences because I wanted to study how they created such a dreamlike tone:

https://bit.ly/3tfVNQC

How do YOU mine what you read for writing techniques?

#Closereading of the day: When does the "They" become "we"?

“They’ve got some really heavy lifting ahead,” said the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, John Thune, of South Dakota.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/house-speaker-kevin-mccarthy-messy-fall_n_64ff01eee4b09ab9955c3cd5

#CloseReading of the day. Why does the #WashingtonPost give the title of #GeoffDuncan's piece in one place as this: "I testified in the Georgia probe. I hope Trump’s indictment is a pivot point" by Geoff Duncan but also as this: "I testified despite Trump’s urging. The Georgia indictment lands with a thud.
Opinion by Geoff Duncan.
They are two very different -- maybe even antithetical? -- ways of "spinning" the piece, which shouldn't be spun in the first place. Thoughts @jayrosen_nyu

#CloseReading for today: "DeSantis blamed the state Department of Education — “I wasn’t involved,” he claimed — but also defended the abomination: “They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life.” No, I "don't know" (that "you know" sounds really pathetic) because it's NOT knowledge. It's fiction or what #EugeneRobinson in this #Washingtonpost opinion calls "obscene." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/24/florida-curriculum-slavery-benefits-desantis-offensive/ (paywalled)

" 'Oh no oh no': an immediate, almost instinctual response. Was the injury inflicted on Trump by the sight of the spilled papers so sharp that he forgot whose phone he was holding? Or maybe he’s just in the habit of casually overwriting the identity of those around him."

I wrote about the latest Trump indictment:

https://calebcrain.substack.com/p/a-novelist-visits-the-trump-presidential

A novelist visits the Trump presidential library:

https://calebcrain.substack.com/p/a-novelist-visits-the-trump-presidential

@Teri_Kanefield. Love a good #CloseReading! Thank you.