Top all-time · #25934
Sheila O'Malley
Personal blog · sheilaomalley.comculturewriting
Sheila O'Malley writes The Sheila Variations, a personal blog at sheilaomalley.com about culture and writing. Since 2009, 3 different Hacker News readers have linked it 4 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-11-01, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (4) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite this blog's posts on literature and Tolkien, including a Jefferson letter on fiction, and on US passenger rail history via E.B. White's essay. The comments only cite or link it, without judging the writing.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 4 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
What Hacker News says?
Oh wow! That's a lot of reasoning for making a story boring.This is far from the truly interesting analysis you can make about LotR. [spoiler alert just in case] The one I like the most is the topic of why Frodo fails. When Frodo reaches Mt Doom he finally loses himself to the power of the ring and proclaims himself its master. This is both a product of his character growth and his proximity to Sauron. In the words…
Comment linking /?p=334
on “Could the eagles have flown Frodo into Mordor? (2000)”I would urge those who think fiction a waste of time to read Thomas Jefferson's letter[1] to Robert Skipwith. In particular: everything is useful which contributes to fix in the principles and practices of virtue. 1- http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/007403.html
Comment linking /archives/007403.html
on “The Way I Work: Jason Fried of 37Signals”E.B. White has a wonderful essay called The Railroad that describes how the railroads and the government worked together to cripple US passenger rail. It isn't online, but I found a blog post[1] discussing it. It's also in the collection Essays of E.B. White which I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys perspicuous prose. The gist of the essay is that the railroads incrementally made the passenger experience worse a…
Comment linking /?p=91313
on “DEA agents conduct surprise searches of Amtrak passengers”It's easy to forget what a big deal rail is in the USA, because the freight lines successfully lobbied Congress to allow them to eliminate the passenger cards they used to be required to add to the end of their freight trains. Back when that was the case passenger rail travel in the USA was cheap and ubiquitous, because it went everywhere the mail did. E.B. White has a wonderful little essay[1] about it. The full te…
Comment linking /?p=91313
on “The future of long-haul trucking in Europe is electric”