May 27, 2024 | Book Media, Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
I was honored to be asked to be this year’s Judge for the Willow Springs Press 2024 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction. After reading all the entries with great diligence, I selected Nightwatch by Mathew Goldberg, and in concert with the Willow Springs team,...
Feb 2, 2024 | Current Ned Note, On Books, Past Notes, Reviews
First great read of the New Year! This wonderful, amazing, powerful insightful novel tells a story of our generation. I’ve longed for a novel that is this all-encompassing, this full of heart, and this honest about the current media environment in which we live....
Dec 1, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
The holiday season sees a million variations on Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol, yet this marvelous supernatural tale all too often overshadows the ghostly echoes that permeate Dickens’s entire oeuvre. In John Irving’s book of personal essays, Saving...
Jun 13, 2023 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
On June 13, at the age of 89, Cormac McCarthy passed away at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I was profoundly unsettled and provoked by McCarthy’s work, and I found his work to be powerful and insightful. His writing always delved into the darker aspects of...
Dec 5, 2022 | Current Ned Note, On Books, On Writing, Past Notes
Turns out, that Shakespeare may have taken Advent Season into account when deciding not only where his play would be set, but precisely when. Scholar Steve Roth has written a paper outlining the astronomical history of November 1601, and the holiday season for...
