#a swim in the pond in the rain

[cinematic-literature]

You Hurt My Feelings (2023) by Nicole Holofcener

Book title

To Paradise (2022) by Hanya Yanagihara

I Had to Tell It by Beth Mitchell

A Swim In The Pond In The Rain (2021) by George Saunders

Moon Witch, Spider King (2022) by Marlon James

On Freedom - Four Songs of Care and Constraint (2021) by Maggie Nelson

#you hurt my feelings #nicole holofcener #american literature #books in movies #to paradise #hanya yanagihara #i had to tell it #beth mitchell #fictitious books #fictitious books in movies #a swim in the pond in the rain #george saunders #moon witch spider king #marlon james #on freedom #maggie nelson

[vital-information]

[Anton Chekhov] was criticized for this perceived lack of a political or moral stance. Tolstoy’s early assessment: ‘He is full of talent, he undoubtedly has a very good heart, but this far he does not seem to have any very definite attitude toward life.

But this is the quality we love him for now. In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious).”

George Saunders, A Swim in the Pond in the Rain

#writing #george saunders #a swim in the pond in the rain #anton chekhov #chekhov #writeblr #litblr #literature

[valsedelesruines]

"In a world full of people who seem to know everything, passionately, based on little (often slanted) information, where certainty is often mistaken for power, what a relief it is to be in the company of someone confident enough to stay unsure (that is, perpetually curious)."

-A Swim in the Pond in the Rain, George Saunders on Chekov

#quote #saunders #george saunders #a swim in the pond in the rain #knowledge #mine

[m-c-easton]

A Revision Checklist

After finishing George Saunders' masterpiece "A Swim in the Pond in the Rain," I wanted to see if I could distill what I'd learned about writing. So here it is. A revision checklist that's helping me write better than ever before. #writing #revising

This was the week I said goodbye to George Saunders and his book A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I’ve learned so much from him that I worry it will be impossible to sum up, but I have to try. So here goes. My top lessons from Saunders over the semester so far: An initial complication must arrive quickly and, if it is in any way predictable, be dealt with quickly, so the story can find a new route…

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#A Swim in the Pond in the Rain #character change #character traits #creative writing classes #creative writing ideas #fiction craft elements #fiction writing #George Saunders #juxtapositions in literature #motifs in literature #patterns in art #plot of a story #plot structure #revising checklist #short fiction #short stories #writing descriptions #writing voice

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

this man!! keeps making Choices(tm)!!! sir why would you insist that LotR is simple and uninteresting and trite at a fucking FANTASY CONFERENCE?!!

#text #personal #books #reading #daemon voices #philip pullman #my dude you are once again missing all the points!! why are you like this!!!!! #gosh im so glad im almost done with this book lmao #everything ive flagged as worth revisiting has been like. a sentence. or a paragraph. and im being generous. #this is absolutely not rewiring my brain lmaooo #(A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN did) #(if thats how those articles translated) #anyway i read writing/craft adjacent things looking for insight and brain rewiring #this is patently Not That lmao

[blog2collectionsanfavs]

Posted by/at https://blog2collectionsanfavs.tumblr.com/  

#nature #rain #water #pond #swimming #creek #river #lake

[girljeremystrong]

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders

#❤️ #quotes #books #a swim in a pond in the rain #seriously read this book

[pinnithin]

every time i read another author's work and think "god why cant i write like that" i have to beat myself over the head with the saunders book again

#transcription in image description #a swim in a pond in the rain #i must write even if its less #pin talks #george saunders #writeblr

[morgan--reads]

A Swim in a Pond in the Rain - George Saunders

Summary: Author George Saunders closely examines Russian short stories by iconic authors in a series of essays, breaking down the process of reading and writing. 

Quote: “This writer may turn out to bear little resemblance to the writer we dreamed of being. She is born, it turns out, for better or worse, out of that which we really are: the tendencies we’ve been trying, all these years, in our writing and maybe even in our lives, to suppress or deny or correct, the parts of ourselves about which we might even feel a little ashamed.”

My rating: 5.0/5.0   Goodreads: 4.55/5.0

Review: Whether you’re familiar with any of these Russian short stories or not—or whether or not you even have any interest in them—Saunders’ enthusiasm is totally absorbing. He closely examines each story, drawing the reader’s attention to things that they might have missed or thought irrelevant and he does so with the attentiveness that comes from love. Each story is obviously special to Saunders and it’s impossible for some of that affection to not transfer. And just as much as the book is about reading, it’s about writing. Saunders stresses that it isn’t a how-to guide, but he offers excellent advice nonetheless, using the Russian stories as a springboard to broadly talk about the craft, process, and inspiration in a warm, accessible way.

#a swim in a pond in the rain #george saunders #book review #book recommendation #short stories #writing

[rotzaprachim]

oh had a lil helnik continuous brainworm that I was like this is light n fun a lil au action wacky Midwest gothic and then biking home I realised what the plot would be you will hate me

#Short story action! #Reading a swim in the pond in the rain and yeah times when this becomes a story #But also spn brainrot. That’s what I have to say

[eddis-not-eeddis]

Sometimes when I am bird-wrangling I will think to myself, could there possibly be any creature more brainless than a chicken?

And then I remember, Ah yes, ducks.

#look at the very least a chicken will make herself a nest to lay her eggs in #or if she is too lazy to make her own nest she will WAIT IN LINE to lay her egg in a nest someone else made #ducks could care less #i have watched the ducks get very excited the morning after rain to go swim in the big puddle out in the pasture #(almost but not really a pond) #and one near the end of the line will be waddling more ponderously than the others #when suddenly she squats a bit and lays an egg in a muddy rut of the trail #and hurries--shrieking--after the others #there is a reason everyone who owns ducks either incubates the eggs or keeps a surrogate chicken on hand #because ducks will NOT raise their own young #(they are too immature and fun loving) #(a mother will abandon her nest to go play in the rain and let all her babies die) #(stupid beasty)

[orange-sunshines]

i think i’m sad because i’ve been called inside from playing in the dirt

#no!! i don’t want dinner i want to pick blueberries and swim in the pond and catch frogs and watch ants carry leaves #i want to run and laugh and fall over and watch the clouds and stare at the stars #i am not a product of factories and warehouses and cars #i am dirt and bugs and rain #let me out !!!

[m-c-easton]

Let Characters Be Complicated

In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, George Saunders advocates for complicated stories that "avoid being merely a one-dimensional position paper." So I tried this out myself, and one secret I learned? Complicate the hell out of your characters. #writing

This week I’m thinking about a point George Saunders made on the value of digressions in fiction. In his book on creative writing A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he wrote that stories must “self-complicate, and thus avoid being merely a one-dimensional position paper” (335). However, when writing the first draft of a story, I’ve found there are two kinds of digressions. There are the valuable…

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#A Swim in a Pond in the Rain #art&039;s purpose in society #character development #character traits #complicated characters #complicated stories #creative writing #digressions in literature #first draft #George Saunders #position paper #revising stories #revising writing process #value of literature #victim characters #victimization of women #writing fiction #writing process

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

9. a book that was better than you expected it to be?

23. the book with the prettiest cover?

34. what's a book you've recommended the most this year?

hello! thanks!! referencing this post:

9. a book that was better than you expected it to be

okay the cheater answer here is ALL SYSTEMS RED, because the cover looks like very Not My Thing, but holy shit it’s one of my all time faves, and tbh i don’t think the cover does the first one justice. (this is the cheating answer because bot is only on my list from this year because i did a Reread)

the non-cheater answer is A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN: IN WHICH FOUR RUSSIANS GIVE A MASTER CLASS ON WRITING, READING, AND LIFE by George Saunders, because i didn’t love it (or the writer lol) at the start but he definitely grew on me by the end! i read it with a buddy as a writer craft thing, which was more fun than i thought it would be.

23. the book with the prettiest cover?

*sweats in covers work As Intended On Me, so most of my impulse buys skew Pretty* THE DAUGHTER OF DOCTOR MOREAU by SIlvia Moreno-Garcia is definitely a top winner (maybe The Top Winner), but honorable mentions to A PRAYER FOR THE CROWN-SHY, KATZENJAMMER by Francesca Zappia, and WHAT WE HARVEST by Ann Fraistat

34. what’s a book you’ve recommended the most this year?

i’ve been infecting everyone i possibly can with LEECH by Hiron Ennes, which has rocketed into one of my all-time faves but please approach with Caution and check the content warnings, because it’s a rough ride.

thanks again for asking, this was fun!!

#text #answered #book games #ask games #books #murderbot #all systems red #martha wells #george saunders #a swim in a pond in the rain #the daughter of doctor moreau #silvia moreno garcia #a prayer for the crown-shy #becky chambers #katzenjammer #francesca zappia #what we harvest #ann fraistat #leech #hiron ennes

[nochargebookbunch]

Musings: Why Bother

I’m always surprised when someone reads my reviews, even more when they are referenced. But it stings a little to discover my writing has been ignored or forgotten, when someone asks me if I’ve heard about a book, not knowing I wrote about it. Nevertheless, my own rereading of my reviews brings back not only the book but the feelings I was having while writing about it. The review reminds me of…

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#A Swim in a Pond in the Rain #books to read #George Saunders #Life Worth Living #Lincoln in the Bardo #reading #what matters #Yale University

[che-bur-ashka]

A SWIM IN A POND IN THE RAIN is a good book that stumbles, suddenly, into Stalin.

(this is the 5th of my brief responses to the books i read in 2023. last time i talked about lemony snicket’s POISON FOR BREAKFAST. there’s also a rolling list over on my twitter)

I liked George Saunders’s book, A Swim In a Pond in the Rain, maybe more than I’ve every liked a how to write book before. For one thing, Saunders actually knows how to teach—too often, I think, successful writers get to talk about their method and pass that off as pedagogy, which it is not. In A Swim In a Pond in the Rain, on the other hand, you get the clear sense that Saunders not only understands how he writes, but understands how other people write—which is important, since I am, in fact, not George Saunders. This might be trite, but—it really does feel like you’re learning, when you read this book..

So I liked Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I liked it a lot, actually, especially as someone who—if you couldn’t tell—isn’t usually thrilled with how to write books. I just have one question, though: What does George Saunders know about Russia? 

The answer is—and he’s honest about this—not much. He’s taught courses on Russian literature, of course—courses from which the readings in this book are drawn.He has a number of Russian friends—who he gestures to as a source of information throughout the book. He has a deep love and a familiarity for the literary giants who he handles in this book—Tolstoy and Gogol and the rest—but when it comes to talking about Russia, which he does only a handful  of times, you are given the distinct impression that Saunders is beginning to fall flat. The most egregious of these moments is in the conclusion of the book, when he begins to muse on the legacy of the Stalinist purges, wondering whether the occasionally anti-Tsarist sympathies of these books might have played into Bolshevik hands. I’d be willing to hear this sort of an argument out, at least, in most cases, but here—where it is clearly mostly speculative—I couldn’t help but start to think (as Saunders teaches us to think!): what happens when americans evoke Russia? What work is done by the subtitle of this book? What has Saunders done in teaching only pre-Revolutionary stories?

I think it would be difficult to deny that, for most americans, invoking “Russia” summons either a nostalgic memory of the gilded Romanovs or (more commonly) the terrifying specter of Soviet brutalism—a specter which still lingers even in american perception of the post-Soviet era. With these dual ghosts in mind, we begin to view Russian history as defined by a kind of a bottleneck—a moment, in 1917, when romance died and industrial modernity seized control. This is certainly true in the invocation of the great Russian authors—all of whom, at least all of those known in the west, were conveniently located in the century leading up to the fall of the Romanovs. That’s the space Saunders is playing in—a nostalgic, Shen Yun-esque look at the cultural wealth of feudal Russia, haunted by the impending catastrophe in the form of the monarchy’s destruction. He’s wearing a kind of political horse blinders which, incidentally, means he seems entirely to overlook 70 years of artistic continuity which was no less complex nor politically muzzled than the century which came before.

If you are going to read this book, then—and I really suggest that you read this book—please merely keep in mind that Russian history did not end in 1917, nor 1937, nor 1991. Saunders is a genius at what he knows—but there are many places he steps, awkwardly, into things he does not.

#ches 2023 booklist #george saunders #a swim in a pond in the rain #russian literature #soviet literature