Would you like to read a book in which this happens?
It’s one of my all-time favorite books. It’s called Ella Minnow Pea by Mark Dunn. He describes it as an “progressively lipogrammatic epistolary fable.”
It is written in the form of letters between the citizens of the fictional island of Nollop, an independent nation off the coast of South Carolina and home of Nevin Nollop, who invented the phrase “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.” That phrase is written in tiles over a statue of Nollop in their town square, and when one night a storm causes one of the tiles to fall, the council decides that it’s a sign from Nollop that they are no longer allowed to use that letter, in speech or writing, on pain of progressive punishments including public beating and up to banishment.
Then another tile falls. Then another.
The citizens, who are all very attached to their words and writing, mount a campaign to come up with a phrase that uses all 26 letters but is shorter than Nollop’s, thus proving that he was not divine and negating all the edicts.
Because the novel is told in the form of letters the citizens write, and this is the genius part…the author must also stop using the letters as they fall. So the book gradually stops using letters until at one point I think they’re down to just five.
The resolution literally made me get up and dance around the room.
It’s clever, creative, and a not-really-veiled-at-all parable about monotheistic oligarchy. It’s not a long book, you can read it in an afternoon.
GO READ IT RIGHT NOW.
WOW I want to read that book
Very rarely is there a book that I must read at any cost This is now one of them
Note: locate book
I actually bought this book because of this post and let me tell you, it was a fucking great decision. Besides having a brilliant concept, it’s also so well written that in the beginning you don’t even notice when another letter is removed. There was one part I had to re-read because I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a single ‘d’ in the last five pages. Seriously, this book is fantastic
I had to read this for high school and I loved it. I have no idea where my copy went though :(
I’ve owned 5 copies of Ella Minnow Pea because the people I’ve loaned it out to have refused to part with it, ha. Ended up investing in a copy for the Kindle where it’ll always be safe. But yes, it is a very cleverly written book!
woW it was before?? like four months ago but idk why they removed it, it’s pretty weird since the king’s men and the raven king are still available, maybe you should ask @korakos :/
Distribution to iBooks is handled via Smashwords, and since we’ve got a conflict going on right now Smashwords had no choice but to temporarily archive the book mid-October. Books 2 & 3 aren’t involved, which is how they’re still up. Still waiting to hear back from the 3rd party so we can get book 1 up again. In the meantime, @ais-n offered to host the file in a couple different formats over on her site:
A little girl hears for the first time the Muslim call to prayer.
Subhanallah
If you don’t think the call to prayer is one of the dopest sounds out there, you have no ears.
Will you please just look at how mesmerized this child is
this is beautiful.
“That’s a good one.” She’s so mesmerized! And her mom just doesn’t even notice.
I love this because a lot of the time in western culture Muslim traditions and practices don’t get highlighted for the beautiful things they are and here’s a little girl exposed to just a small aspect of that and she’s in awe. That’s wonderful.
The true look of wonder in this girls eyes…. It is truly a beautiful thing
I remember hearing the call to prayer in Kuwait City–it always made me pause to listen. What a beautiful sound.
see also: I can’t quiet my thoughts enough to be legitimately productive, so here are 200-odd words of unedited shit from the 3 different projects I am currently juggling. I have probably posted at least one of these before, but I am incapable of looking up my posts right now. SORRY.
Back when I was brave enough to query agents, the general advice was that the first 250 words of a story could make or break a project’s chances. 250 was the difference between a request and insta-trash—-it was the space in which an agent could decide whether to reject you or request a little more of the story for consideration.
I haven’t had a project worth querying in … 6? 7? years, but that advice sticks with me, and when I run aground all I can do is count to 250 over and over and over again. It’s as soothing as it is maddening.
These beginnings have a helluva long way to go before they can entice anyone into committing, but for now the only audience I have is me, and all I do is start and start over, again and again and again.
One day I’d like to learn how to write like an adult; this simplistic style I can’t seem to shake gets depressing after a while.
1. I cannot speak about the election results here yet. There is too much poison still in me, too much sickness and rage, and I am trying to contain it to closed doors and private threads until I can be coherent again. Just know that I love all of you, and I need you, need you to stay safe, stay together.
2. In true Nora fashion I have restarted my NaNo project three times in the last nine days, because why write 50K words and edit them later if you can just revise the first 10K over and over and over again. Somebody save me from myself.
3. Smashwords, by the way, has a very lovely team in charge–or at least, anyone I’ve ever had to deal with has always been super communicative and supportive. The last person I talked to has done everything he could to resolve things on their end of things. Now I’m stuck waiting to hear back from the other party.
4. There was something else but someone just sent me another post about the protests going on here in Portland and my thoughts have officially derailed again. Off to drink & then to write until I cannot think anymore.
Regardless of the outcome of tonight, y’all be careful.
If Trump wins, hate crimes are going to increase because, as we have already seen, groups like the KKK and those who think like them are emboldened by the popularity of Trump. They will become more open about their bigotry, which will lead to violence.
On the other hand, if Hillary wins, there are going to be a lot of very angry Trump supported out there, of the historically violent and hateful variety who are going to be looking for things and people to take their anger out on and an excuse to do it.
Be careful. Look out for each other. Stay safe.
this is a very real concern, guys. after brexit there were about five times as many reported hate crimes in the UK, and several police officers still believed hate crimes were significantly under reported. if trump wins it’s likely that something similar, perhaps even worse, will happen in the US. and if he loses, a lot of trump supporters (about 30% according to the washington post) have said they’re going to protest the outcome of the election
I did absolutely nothing except show up drunk & late to the party. Ya’ll are just the most amazing people in the world and nothing can convince me otherwise. I do not understand the how of it–nor do I understand how the heck I lucked into all of you. It is as bewildering as it is frightening, tbh. :D
The Smashwords thing is a little more complicated than I want it to be, and I get to spend this weekend searching for & contacting people to try and get it resolved. Since Smashwords was the main distributor to non-Amazon networks eg the Apple iBooks store, some of ya’ll have noticed that book 1 has vanished pretty much across the board. Exciting. ((she says in sarcasm font)) Thanks for your continued patience. ;_;
ngl, this was a jarring end to a week that had some potentially exciting things happening. Leave us some good news if you’ve got cool things going on with you & yours– we could use a bit of pick-me-up to get through the weekend <33
which reminds me: GUYS IF YOU WANT TO START THE SERIES BUT YOU CAN’T FIND THE FIRST BOOK ANYWHERE THAT ISN’T AMAZON (AND YOU DON’T OWN A KINDLE) JUST CONTACT ME - OR POTENTIALLY ANYONE ELSE IN THE FANDOM- SO WE CAN SEND IT TO YOU!
You can also contact me if you want the first book and i can send it to you!
Thank you, lovies ;_; <3
Also! The lovely @ais-n has created a temporary page for TFC downloads to help out – that way if ya’ll want, you are free to download copies from a site instead of wrangling ‘em via email. Right now we’ve got the pdf, mobi, and epub versions hiding there.
