Friday, July 20, 2018

Luke Shelton’s Tolkien Experience Project | A Pilgrim in Narnia

Luke Shelton’s Tolkien Experience Project | A Pilgrim in Narnia:

The basic format is that participants reflect on a set of five questions, and then respond to them in short-answer format. This means that answers can be one sentence, or a few paragraphs! The great thing is that there are no wrong answers, because you are just sharing your own experience!

The questions are:

How were you introduced to Tolkien’s work?
What is your favorite part of Tolkien’s work?
What is your fondest experience of Tolkien’s work?
Has the way you approach Tolkien’s work changed over time?
Would you ever recommend Tolkien’s work? Why/Why not?

These questions are intentionally vague to allow contributors to talk about a variety of things. ‘Tolkien’s work’ is not meant to exclude adaptations, so they feel free to share experiences about movies, video games, board games, etc. All of these are important experiences in someone’s fan history! If they want to use ‘part’ in question two to talk about a specific scene from a book, great! They could also use ‘part’ to talk about their favorite book in general.

Participants can take as much time as they need to answer these questions, then they send their answers to me using the Contact page on my website or by direct email. I usually respond directly to the participant once or twice to clarify what they would like to be called on the post and to fix typos, but the answers are largely unedited/unfiltered.

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Time to put Nelson Mandela where he belongs | IOL News

Time to put Nelson Mandela where he belongs | IOL News:
Our leaders seem to have forgotten how to speak of and to us as a nation. It is one thing for our leaders to speak truthfully and honestly about economic and political disparities.

It is quite another thing, when leaders conceal their lack of a unifying vision of South Africans as a people, by pandering to sectional, provincial and tribal interests.

Every time a South African leader invokes the phrase “our people”, we look at one another with bewilderment, wondering which particular people he or she is talking about.

We have come to know instinctively and to take for granted, that today few leaders if any use the phrase “our people” to refer to all South Africans.

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

Pitch your book and convince Jacana Media it needs to be published! | The Reading List

Pitch your book and convince Jacana Media it needs to be published! | The Reading List:
We are offering you the chance to participate in a 15- to 20-minute session where you’ll be able to pitch your book to a panel comprising of three publishers and a high-powered bookseller. External panelists so far include Michelle Magwood from the Sunday Times and Sharon Naidoo from Exclusive Books. This is your chance to impress and persuade us in person to consider your work for publication. We realise this isn’t an approach that will work for all authors, but if you would like to be one of the 20 candidates who will present at the Live Pitching Session on 28 August 2018, we encourage you to submit an entry on our website.

Monday, July 02, 2018

CS Lewis Was a Red

CS Lewis Was a Red:
He did not believe that Christianity was the same as capitalism. He did not believe that Christianity had anything to do with material success. (Lewis gave away the money he made from religion—unlike many famous preachers and authors.) He did not hobnob with the powerful. He hated British imperialism.