Got a kitten, kitten, kitten, kitten in my hair

[sovay]

It is the seventh anniversary of Kittening Day, when the children of golden-eyed Hera left their fosterage with the family of a_reasonable_man and came to live with us. We celebrate them constantly.



Hestia, presiding over the remains of her scratch box. One of her cult titles is Death to Cardboard.



Autolycus, sacked out on my shoulder. A few nights ago he chased a plastic bottlecap through the apartment at exactly the hour we wanted to be asleep.

I learned tonight that in 1930, John Steinbeck wrote, shelved, but did not destroy an unpublished werewolf novel called Murder at Full Moon. "Its characters include . . . an eccentric amateur sleuth who sets out to solve the crime using techniques based on his obsession with pulp detective fiction." Take my money, please.

Comments

[jreynoldsward]

And I would never, EVER teach The Pearl. That one put me off Steinbeck until high school, when an advanced writing class teacher used Travels With Charley as a text. That one brought me to The Grapes of Wrath, Journal of a Novel, and East of Eden.

[sovay]

That one put me off Steinbeck until high school, when an advanced writing class teacher used Travels With Charley as a text.

I did come around to liking Of Mice and Men when I rediscovered it on my own time. We were actually shown the 1992 film in class, but it took until last year for me to catch the 1939 one.

[kore]

Journal of a Novel is SO GOOD, isn't it? His nonfiction is really underrated -- I was knocked out by Once There Was a War when I was a teenager.

[jreynoldsward]

Yes! It has been very inspirational for me as a writer. And Steinbeck's nonfiction is quite good. Better (I dare say) than Hemingway's, from that era.