My second book, Follow Me Down had some success, got good critical notices, went into a second printing and things like that, but Shiloh was by far the most successful of those first five novels.
My feet never touched the ground. Lots of good groups with crazy and unique images. It was wild. I spent all of my time doing gigs, TV appearances, interviews, or recording. I could write a book - and probably will.
Academic experts may not be good at doing what they are experts in themselves, but they are good at explaining the subject matter to others. They write books, teach courses and offer lessons and give steps others can follow.
Funnily enough, the Federal Reserve produced comics about monetary policy, and there is a good comic book guide to microeconomics and macroeconomics out there. But it is not really appropriate for younger readers; it is really aimed at economics stud...
I never actually had a guitar lesson. I taught myself the guitar from piano exercise books, which led me to have a pretty good technique on the guitar and allowed me to find different ways to do things.
After years of practice, I can walk into a bookstore and understand its layout in a few seconds. I can glance at the spine of a book and make a good guess at its content from a number of signs.
According to the perverse aesthetics of artistic guilty pleasure, certain books and movies are so bad - so crudely conceived, despicably motivated and atrociously executed - that they're actually rather good.
If you look on Amazon - if you do a search for personal finance, there are literally 20,000 books written on personal finance, and there's no real reason for it. I mean, personal finance is pretty simple.
The vehemence with which certain critics have chosen not simply to criticize what I've written, but to challenge my writing this story at all, speaks of what the book is about: fear of disapproval.
All religions have periods in their history which are looked back to with retrospective fear and trembling as eras of persecution, and each religion has its own book of martyrs.
I don't want to be famous per se, but I want to write books for as long as I can. And I plan on writing a lot.
Great dislike to the Bible was shown by those who conversed with me about it, and several have remarked to me, at different times, that if it were not for that book, Catholics would never be led to renounce their own faith.
And I think that being able to make people laugh and write a book that's funny makes the information go down a lot easier and it makes it a lot more fun to read, easier to understand, and often stronger. So there's all kinds of advantages to it.
It's funny, I don't know where I would place myself in the literary landscape. I really just write the book that I would want to read. I put on the blinders, and I really - it is, for me, that simple.
What's funny about Jesus' Son is that I never even wrote that book, I just wrote it down. I would tell these stories and people would say, You should write these things down.
If I'm not clear with the character, I can't do anything with it. But once I get that character, the possibilities are endless. When you have such a defined character, I feel like I can actually read the phone book and make it funny.
The other day in the garage, I found a book report from the seventh grade that I did about silent movie stars. It's funny to look at now, because it really foretold what my future would be.
Given the current state of publishing, I think it helps to have a brand name on the cover of your book. Comedians are proven commodities with built-in audiences. They may not have the writing chops of a Dave Eggers, but they're salacious and funny an...
I can count on one hand the people who are legendary in my book, and Tom Waits is certainly right at the top. It's funny, though: When I tell people that I like Tom's music, it surprises them.
Muslims are not bloodthirsty people. Islam is a religion of peace that forbids the killing of the innocent. Islam also accepts the Prophets, whether those prophets are Mohammed, God's peace and blessing be upon Him, or Moses or the other prophets of ...
The Bible, that powerful book, has many effects: it comforts, counsels, instructs, and brings us into the presence of God. But trying to erase offense as one of its functions is a fundamentally misguided task.
