For a long time literary critics and philosophers have argued, along with the novelist George Eliot, that one of fiction’s main jobs is to “enlarge men’s sympathies.” Recent lab work suggests they are right. The psychologists Mar and Keith Oatley tested the idea that entering fiction’s simulated social worlds enhances
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A Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Sunday Ramble
I never did post all the photos I wanted from my last Sunday Ramble and there’s been another ramble since! (Click on any photo to enlarge.) This old Hi-Fi cabinet reminded me of my childhood though I think it pre-dates it with about 4 settings for different radio stations imprinted
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: No Translation Needed
Fabulous images in different media from Russian artists in LiveJournal. This one is my favourite because it transcends alphabets: Тоже люди. But a close second, vivid thumbnails bursting with life on sheet music, are here. Filed under: Beautiful, Interesting Tagged: paper art
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Does Facebook Make You Lonelier?
It might. According to Moira Burke, interviewed by Stephen Marche for The Atlantic, her studies show that people who compose comments on their “friends’” walls are less lonely than people who just “like” a post or who just read their friends’ status. Stephen speculates that’s because everybody is glossing up
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Winnipeg Web of Angels
It’s taken me all week to recover from my week of travels, and I’m off again tomorrow. Winnipeg was a whirl of media, a live TV interview early morning, and four back to back in the afternoon (print, radio, TV, radio). But I managed to get a walk in right
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Braving the Police Station
Some of you may remember how I had to overcome my shyness to do the final research for Web of Angels. I’m very comfortable in interviews and I can do the extroverted thing when required (though admittedly after days of it, I just want to sit quietly in a semi-dark
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Monday Sun
The sky is shining this morning and I have a bit of time to post a few pictures from a walk I took earlier in the month. (If only the squirrels scurrying along the flat roof outside my window would stay still for a moment, I’d take a picture and
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Saturn’s North Pole–a Hexagon
APOD: 2012 January 22 – Saturns Hexagon Comes to Light. Filed under: Beautiful, Interesting Tagged: astronomy
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Dignity and Solidarity
“If I were to register and cooperate… I would be giving helpless consent to the denial of practically all of the things which give me incentive to live,” he said then. “I must maintain the democratic standards for which this nation lives. I am objecting to the principle of this
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Momo by Emile Ajar
I loved this book so much I made my husband read it, which was no trial for him as he is still quoting it. I first heard about Momo and its author, Emile Ajar (a pen name of Romain Gary’s), in Litlove’s book blog. The storyline intrigued me: Momo, an
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: God and Resisting Temptation
God references slipped into tests decreased student’s belief that they controlled their own destiny, researchers report, but made them more resistant to junk food temptation. via God’s Situational Effects « The Situationist. The studies were done at a Canadian university (University of Waterloo) with engineering students, and the results were
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Menstruating in India–Radical Change
When Arunachalam Muruganantham hit a wall in his research on creating a sanitary napkin for poor women, he decided to do what most men typically wouldn’t dream of. He wore one himself–for a whole week. Fashioning his own menstruating uterus by filling a bladder with goat’s blood, Muruganantham went about
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Schizophrenia vs DID (dissociative Identity disorder)
Thanks to Becca’s comment on my previous genesis post, I thought it would be useful to post a quick explanation of the differences. People who are schizophrenic hear voices. So do people with DID. What’s the difference? The voices that a person with DID hears are rooted in reality and
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Willpower and Headspace
The first quarter of Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister (researcher) and John Tierney (journalist) is packed with fascinating research conducted by Baumeister and his colleagues. And it’s presented in a thoroughly enjoyable way. The term “willpower” conveys the moral baggage and Victorian judgment that permeates
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Unknown Millionaire Author
When Amanda Hocking was a depressed 17 year old, she wrote a novel about a girl who falls for vampire brothers. It was rejected by 50 publishers and it isn’t hard to imagine why. Ten years later, she decided to self-publish it as an e-book, following it up with romance
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Congratulations Tessa Bonhomme and David Pelletier
Picture this: tiny figure skater and hulking hockey pro paired up to dance music on ice. That is Battle of the Blades, a Canadian reality tv show with the prize money going to charity. Only this season there was another twist. In one of the pairs, the hockey player came from the gold winning Canadian […]
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Happy Tears–the Horsie Runs
This is one of those wonderful stories that give you faith. I won’t say anything about it but let you watch for yourself and provide a link to all the details.
Via Wonderland.
Filed under: Interesting, Uplifting Tagged: animal stories, prostheth…
A Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: On Writing
Books say: She did this because. Life says: She did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t. I’m not surprised some people prefer books. Books make sense of life. The only problem is that the lives they make sense of are other people’s lives, never your own. (Flaubert’s […]
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!
This is a photo of a Thanksgiving Service in France 93 years ago: October 13 1918. It was held in a chapel in Notre-Dame-de-Grace. Did these Canadian troops know that armistice was coming in less than a month? (Nov 11th, which happens to be A’s birthday, albeit 2 generations later) I look at this and […]
Continue readingA Novelist's Mind: Lilian Nattel Online: Software for Writers: Scrivener
I’ll post a complete review later but I just have to tell you folks about this. When I think of all the work that Scrivener could have saved me in my last novel–or what it could have done for A when he was working on his PhD dissertation, it boggles the mind. This is software […]
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