A reading recommendation: Russell Hoban's The Hungry Three series (and also some accidental spicy werewolf romance novel plans, but that's on me, not Russell)
My friend Lars likes to use the phrase, "Garbage in, garbage out." He's usually talking about data reports, but I believe that it also applies to artistic endeavors. By which I mean: READ DUMB CRAP = WRITE DUMB CRAP. (This is, I believe, why niche genres so quickly become a race to the bottom as each generation is written by people who have only read the previous generation until the dialogue of our domineering-but-emotionally-vulnerable-CEO-mobster-werewolf-in-gray-sweatpants love interest becomes so thin that you could shave with it*, but I digress.) *See Chapter 47: He Reached for His $57 Bergemot-scented Shaving Cream with Taloned Hands, and I Melted Anyways, today, we are going to talk about reading good crap. Specifically, we're going to talk about reading critically underrated Anglo-American author Russell Hoban's literary masterworks. Most people (that is, 3 out of the 5 who know what I'm talking about) associate Ru...