Quick looks
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One of the things I think can add to one’s enjoyment and also improve one’s writing is to read stories from other cultures.
Read MoreThis article is an excerpt from a longer one that appeared on my Eclecticism newsletter.
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I’ve been sent the following books by publishers, and will review them in due course. Here is some information about them.
Read MoreHere are a few of the books I’ve been sent for review recently, covering AI, maps, time travel and language.
Read MoreMy Jane Austen collection
Since I read Northanger Abbey when I was in my twenties, I have to say that in the interim it has much improved. Clearly, Jane must have taken a creative writing course or two because it is now much funnier, more cutting and more modern, what with her stepping outside the story to comment on her characters and the novel form itself.
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A very timely publication. The first section is replete with anecdotes about trigger warnings and similar. Some of these are, in my opinion, ill-informed (such as the charges levelled against Jane Austen) while others are ridiculous (like the rewriting of parts of the Noddy books).
Read MoreHere are a couple of suggestions for your reading pleasure. They are not Christmas books, but big hefty tomes that need a bit of time to wade into.
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Back in April 2023 I reviewed The Writer’s Journey, and this is a companion volume by the same author.
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I recently received this book, and I’m enjoying it very much. It looks at the (usually hidden) existence of maths in literary works.
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This is packed with useful information. I’m especially looking forward to reading the the sections called How to Show Instead of Tell, and Using the Techniques of Fiction to Enhance Nonfiction.
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This comes out on 2nd November. It has a very readable style, and interestingly the footnotes are in a different font from, and bigger than, the main text.
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This book arrived recently, and I’m very much enjoying reading it. It’s a kind of guided tour or survey of the types of fiction that have appeared in the last fifty years (mainly).
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Berkman has written an interesting and very academic examination of the links between maths and literature.
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This is a book about strategy and meeting objectives rather than a how-to-write guide.
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This book is aimed at the small business person who has more energy than money to spend on publicity. That sounds like a description of most writers!
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One of my ambitions, once this pandemic is over, is to visit New York if I can. In the meantime, this look at the various cultures and dialects in New York is a reasonable substitute for actually being there.
Read MoreScreenshot by Terry Freedman
Do you have a child you’d like to encourage to write? This writing prompt website may be of interest.
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This book provides compelling reasons for including audio as an integral part of the writer’s portfolio and tools of the trade, not merely an add-on or afterthought.
Read MoreClick the pic to be taken to this book’s Amazon page. (This is an Amazon affiliate link.)
Perhaps a useful aim of writers is to lead the reader to put the book or article down, and disappear in a flight of imagination. After all, surely one measure of success is that what you’ve written led someone to think of something, or to make connections, that had not occurred to them before?
Read MoreClick on the cover to be take to the book’s Amazon page (please note, this is an Amazon affiliate link).
You may be very good at condensing a complex argument and proposals down to no more than six bullet points (as one of my line managers always demanded). This book makes it clear that there are more creative opportunities too.
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