The Daily Bookmark

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: It's unusual for a blog to make the national news, but it happened recently when Gawker Media was forced into bankruptcy by a whopping $140 million judgement in an invasion-of-privacy case brought by Hulk Hogan. Now there's a lot of interesting background to this event, including a shadowy billionaire with a grudge who was funding lawsuits against Gawker's owner, but the upshot is that Univision bought Gawker Media's seven websites at auction earlier this week. Six of them remain, but the flagship site, Gawker.com, has closed.

Why this run down of media business? Because I am SO bummed that one of my daily stops on the internet is gone! I'd check in with Gawker every day,usually briefly in the afternoon and reading in depth in the evening. Now it's not there, I struggle with this information-age, existential blankness that has no name. It's like walking down the street to discover a smouldering hole where your favorite cafe was. Or learning that your local library has been turned into a parking lot. Sic transit gloria interrētis.

Fortunately, I still have several must-reads every day. We subscribe to three newspapers online, The New York Times, the Washington Post and the Portland Press Herald. I tend to read the first for opinion and arts, the second for politics, and the third for the gloriously wacky local news (much of it thanks to our governor, who is a choleric nut job.) Of the remaining Gawker Media sites, I love Jezebel, subtitled "Celebrity, Sex Fashion for Women." It has everything from gossip about the Kardashians and Real Housewives to investigative reporting about women in politics, campus sexual assault and income inequality. It has a strong "third wave" feminist slant that keeps me - who absorbed feminism in the seventies and early eighties - on my toes.

Also on my personal blog roll? John Scalzi's WHATEVER, which is, as its name suggests about whatever the award-winning SF author has in mind: science fiction, politics, publishing, cat pictures, ukeleles...the list goes on, and is all entertainingly well-written. On the more frivolous side, I adore home decor/home improvement blogs (you all may recall my home is 200 years old, which means at any given time, something about it needs improving.) Decor, like fashion, is very much a matter of taste, which in my case means no matter how beautiful the pictures or how well-written the prose, I'm not going to be bookmarking anything that features a boho, apartment in Brooklyn, Scandinavian modern or minimalist aesthetic. Instead, my recent faves are all about a bright Southern more-is-more look. I'm particularly enjoying 702 Park Project, about a young couple bringing back his grandparents' 1902 North Carolina foursquare house, and The Pink Clutch, written by a woman who looks a lot like me ten years ago, and prominently features bar carts and cocktail recipes among the decorating advice. My kind of gal!

How about you, Reds? What do you read while drinking your first cup of coffee, or while skimming your tablet before bedtime? What are your must-visit stops on the internet - and have you ever lost one, ala Gawker?

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Oh, I read Gawker, too! So sad... for blogs I tend to go with home design—am a fan of Decor8, Domino, and Design*Sponge. I also follow a bunch of the perfume blogs, including NowSmellThis, Bois de Jasmin, and Perfume Posse. I love it when people write about perfume—it becomes poetry in the right hands....



JULIA: Susan, I confess I have never gotten the allure, but I know several other authors who love to read and write about perfume, including MJ Rose and Denise Hamilton. On the other hand, I enjoy opera and classical music reviews, despite the popular saying that writing about music is like dancing about architecture.

HALLIE EPHRON: I never followed Gawker so I won't be missing it. I do subscribe the Boston Globe, The New York Times, and only recently since I am obsessed with this election, the Washington Post. AND the New Yorker (they send nearly daily posts which are usually excellent reads). Also the Huffington Post, even though there's  never much there that isn't covered better elsewhere. For laughs I read Tom and Lorenzo, fashion bloggers. And I follow my kids on Facebook (does that count?)

In fact, it's amazing that I have time to do anything besides read what's on the web. It's a terrible time sink.



JULIA: I read TLo too, Hallie!


HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Yeesh, this makes me feel out of it. We subscribe to papers: the Boston Globe, and the Boston Herald and The New York Times, which I read out loud to Jonathan the way to work. I get a fabulous email news briefing every day from the Washington Post, with great links, which I am addicted to, and the New Yorker daily posts.  I read TV Spy, about the news business.   And the RTNDA (radio television news directors association) daily newsletter. I follow the NYT, Wash Post and LA Times and The New Yorker and New York Magazine on Twitter, and that is surprisingly worthwhile. Hey, is Vogue on Twitter? Off to look.

JULIA: Yes it is!

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I didn't read Gawker! Now I think I've missed something great. Damn. I do read The New York Times online everyday (and paper Friday-Sunday), and now the Washington Post, because I kept hitting my limit on the political stories. I get the Dallas Morning News on paper everyday because their online format is from the dark ages. I read mostly for local news, and the editorial page. And I get all kinds of things on Flipboard everyday. I subscribe to several cooking blogs but don't usually find time to read them, and just looking at my list so far makes me wonder how I ever get anything else done. Oh, and I try to check out the UK news everyday.

I'd really love the home decor blogs.  Hmm, wonder how I can squeeze a little more in...

JULIA: How about you, dear readers? What would you recommend to us from your daily bookmarks?

ON PLASTIC

On May 9, 2007 Tupperware announced Brooke Shields as the celebrity spokesperson for Tupperware’s "Chain of Confidence" campaign in the USA. The campaign invites women to celebrate the strong bonds of female friendships and the self-confidence derived from those relationships.

**Wikipedia
I‘m generally not a yeller. In the face of adversity, I’m usually more in the problem-solving mode than the victim mode.

So why, the other day, was I in my kitchen howling? Because a whole raft of plastic containers and lids—-separate and I’m sure none matching any other-—came tumbling clattering sliding down onto my head from the highest shelf in the cabinet. Apparently they were finally executing their long-plotted plan to escape.

It was hilarious, I’m sure, if you aren’t the one being buried in a plastic avalanche. I tried to bat them away, unsuccessfully, as they attacked me. I wound up surrounded by plastic stuff, the cabinet empty, the floor covered. Me enraged.

To make it worse, my darling husband started laughing, always a mistake in situations like this, and he later told me I was yelling “Why? Why?” (Kind of like Nancy Kerrigan without the little skirt.)

Why? Why? As if the world doesn’t allow things to happen without a reason. (And it doesn’t count that the reason is that I had Fibber McGee’d them into the cabinet and of course they were gonna fall.)

But it got me thinking. In books, nothing should happen without a reason. And if Charlie McNally had Tupperware fall on her head, there would have to be a bigger picture reason why. To prove she's disorganized. Or a pack rat. Or to remind her of gravity, which then reminds her of a clue.

When I was editing PT from 743 pages down to 323, I did it by asking why, why, why. Why is this scene here? Why does this character say that? Why does she drive to the police station? And if it didn’t mean something, out it went.

So—shall we talk about motivation? Or-- whether anyone has conquered the Tupperware problem? (Hallie, I think I still have one container of yours…)

JAN: I feel the exact same way when I inadvertently create a mini earth quake or catastrophe -- which is not an infrequent occurrence. Why me?? Why have the Kitchen Gods done this to me now? Right now when I was (probably) rushing to get something done in the too-little time I always leave for it. And now have five minutes to get somewhere twenty minutes away.

But that's me. I have a feeling you are better with time management. And your tupperware catastrophe was probably a good omen. In fact I'm sure someone must have done a Feng Shui book about how Tupperware earthquakes in your "wealth corner" or "creativity corner" are predictive of good fortune!!! The tumbling out of fortuituous ideas..... See if you are a novelist Hank, you can make up a new meaning for every life event!

As to writing a scene -- I think every little bit of dialogue, action and characterization has to be there for a reason, or else we don't have storytelling -- we have life as it is -- with all its randomness and tedium. NO one wants to read about actual life. We want to read the meaningful, moving, suspenseful and condensed version.

RO: I tend to write lean so when I ask why, I generally have to add stuff as opposed to taking stuff out. More often I find myself asking "why wouldn't she..." If I can convince myself that it isn't too far-fetched for a character to do something, then I let her do it. But when you write an amateur sleuth, she will invariably do things that most real people wouldn't do..like stick her nose in where it doesn't belong.

Re: rubber containers...that's why I store them in a bottom drawer.

ROBERTA: Me too, Ro: I'm in the spare camp. I would never, ever, ever be in the position of having to edit from 743 pages to 300-something. I don't think I've hit the 300 page mark yet for a book! I think I must make assumptions about what's in my head and how well it's translated to the page.

And some day we should talk more about sticking noses where they don't belong. Every once in while it's enough to make me want to write a police procedural. Except (sigh), it sounds like so much work...

HALLIE: You know, what we're talking about is the intersection of plot and character. Your plot requires your Fiona to do X, but it only works if you've established a personality and history for Fiona that makes her doing X inevitable. And in a first draft, sometimes you write 443 pages of backstory that later needs to be cut. Not me...I'm like Roberta and I have to layer that stuff in later in order to make actions ring true.

If I store my plastic containers on the bottom of that closet, then I'll have to store the vacuum cleaner on the top shelf and then... it's too ugly to even contemplate.

HANK: Intersection of plot and character. I love that, Hallie. Because it also creates a moment of action. At an intersection, you have to make a decision. Turn? Go straight? I was reading a pal's manuscript, and at one point I asked : "Why does she do that?" And the answer came back: "She just does." That's a dead end.

But really, I do want to know what you do with your Tupperware-ish stuff. I found one of those plastic-containers-stacked-on-a-lazy-susan things. At the drug store? And it's terrific. (Next blog, pan lids.)

And PS--did you all see the cover of the new New Yorker? (My husband was laughing when he saw it (see above.) I said, all in denial, "It's a thesis she's writing, I think." He kept laughing)