{"product_id":"9780879466534","title":"Reading in Bed, Updated Edition","description":"\u003cp\u003eIf you love to read, or write, or both, you'll appreciate Brian Doyle-passionate observer of and commentator on all things written. In this ultimate collection of his thoughts on writers and writing and readers and reading, he covered everything from literary genres of books about nature or travel or Portland or almost any subject you can name, to (in his humble opinion) the great and not-so-great-but-still-essential writers, to why the essay is the coolest wildest literary form of all. But don't believe us, listen to him: \"Think how many times in your own work you were typing along happily, cursing and humming, and suddenly you wrote something you didn't know you felt so powerfully, and maybe you cried right there by the old typewriter, and marveled not always happily, at what dark thread your typing had pulled from the mysterious fabric of your heart. Maybe that happens the most with essays. This could be.\" And Brian didn't just talk about writers. He filleted editors as well, explaining, for example, the various and hilarious reasons they give for rejecting your latest submission. But don't believe us, listen to him: \"There are lots of kinds of editors, not just one. There are coaches, who suggest and propose but do not assign or dictate. There are machinists and carpenters, who are superb repairmen of broken and dogged prose. There are genius excerpters, who are eerily able to see the shining nuggets amid the bedraggled dross. There are meticulomaniacs whose eye for typographical and grammatical errors and muddled captions and missing credit lines and obtuse subheads, outtakes, rubrics, summaries, abstracts, and other minutia verges on the paranormal. There are punctuation junkies and masters of the absolutely brilliant accompanying art that is neither illustrations nor stand-alone glory.\" Mostly, he insisted, what is left are the stories: \"I mean, really, in the end, what have we to exchange that matters except stories of grace and courage, laughter and love.\" Hence the Western Screech Owl on the cover of this book. Brian would have appreciated that, and probably written a story about how it got there.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"ACTA Publications","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47022480425200,"sku":"9780879466534","price":19.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780879466534","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}