Perhaps the most interesting thing to me about Enoch's Rules of Engagement is how much more interested she is in her hero than her heroine. Unlike mosPerhaps the most interesting thing to me about Enoch's Rules of Engagement is how much more interested she is in her hero than her heroine. Unlike most romances, we start off in the male lead's head, and while that's more common these days than it used to be, I can't remember the last time I read a romance where it took thirty pages to even bump into the female protagonist. (And it's another ten pages or so before we pop in to see what she thinks of everything.) Without having read the preceding entries in this series, I'm not sure if that's a standard here, or related to the fact that the male protagonist, Bradshaw Carroway, is related to a couple of previous Enoch heroes, and thus the sort-of familiar entree to this world.
Unfortunately, once we get past that one little narrative quirk, there's not much to say about the inoffensive but uninspiring Rules of Engagement. The story follows the progress of Carroway's ship as he transports Zephyr and her famous botanist father around the South Seas, and while there are a few seafaring contretemps tossed in, there's never any central conflict between the characters. Bradshaw likes Zephyr, Zephyr likes Bradshaw - there's absolutely nothing standing in the way of this relationship (unless it's the impossibility of generating a lyrical romantic portmanteau for the couple), which makes it a slightly dull fait accompli. Even the possibility of Zephyr being torn between her beau and familial duty is snuffed midway through the narrative when Enoch begins turning the latter into an insensitive git.
Enoch will forever remain toward the top of my list for her excellent Stolen Kisses, but her Rules weren't enough to really engage me....more
Somehow I missed Cross and Packer's first Classical collaborative effort on The Odyssey, but that just means I got to be delightfully surprised by howSomehow I missed Cross and Packer's first Classical collaborative effort on The Odyssey, but that just means I got to be delightfully surprised by how good their version of The Iliad was. Packer's illustrations are ravishing, and I adored how he cleverly mimicked the style of painting common to Greek vases and used every opportunity to work either characters from the Greek alphabet or Greek versions of the story's characters names into his pictures as design elements. Paired with Cross's simple, lucid translation, they make for a near-perfect introduction to Homer's tale for young readers.
If I have any quibbles at all, it's that so much of The Iliad's cadence was predicated on it being an oral epic, the length and meter of which meant Homer would add an epithet to each character's name (fleet-footed Achilles, man-killing Hector) either to help the listener remember who amongst the near-infinite cast of characters he was talking about or to ensure he filled out the syllabic line correctly. Cross's translation avoids any hint of such rhythms, which makes for a more straight-forward reading experience but leaves those of us who've read other translations feel that there's just a little something lacking here.
While it's no Fagles, this edition of Homer's tale is both gorgeous and engrossing, and a great entree to Classics for children or young adults. (Also fun for regular adults who just like Homer.)...more
The last time I was in New Orleans and took a ghost tour, I was lucky enough to land a guide who happened to have an M.A. in History who was able to eThe last time I was in New Orleans and took a ghost tour, I was lucky enough to land a guide who happened to have an M.A. in History who was able to embroider her tales of Quarter spooks with painstaking historical detail, making them far more real through context than I could have through imagination. Given Roberts' background in history and as a tour guide, I expected something of the same from Heavy Words, Lightly Thrown, a deep dive into history from the entree point of nursery rhymes. Instead it turns out that the author is that other more common kind of guide - the kind that has two or three facts to rub together, and then just uses them as a jumping off point for speculation or personal digressions.
With one or two American exceptions, all the nursery rhymes contained in this volume are of British origin, and (to me at least) mostly obscure. Some Roberts can actually provide historical provenance for - "Little Jack Horner" being about a cunning steward during the reign of Henry VIII who managed to skim off the top of a bishop's bribe for the king, etc. - but for most he just offers a variety of possibility and guesses.
The lack of sources at the end should have tipped me that Heavy Words was perhaps going to be more lightly thrown together than I was hoping. Still, had the author been a better raconteur I might have been willing to set aside historical accuracy for the sake of a good tale, as I have done on so many tours. Unfortunately, the stops Roberts makes here feature little more than a bit of dry detail and a speculation or two....more
Phaidon's 55 series is intended to give you a snapshot overview of the work of the photographer featured in each volume - in this case, the incrediblePhaidon's 55 series is intended to give you a snapshot overview of the work of the photographer featured in each volume - in this case, the incredible Mary Ellen Mark, whose work easily merits encyclopedic coverage.
Deep dives are for other volumes, however, and this compact collection (it measures only 5"x6", roughly) opens with a brief biographical and thematic overview of Mark's work by former NYT art critic Charles Hagen before moving directly to what's basically a highlights reel of her photographs. The images are, by necessity, fairly small, but the reproductions are gorgeous, and each image is accompanied by a brief paragraph of explanatory text which situates the photo within the context of Mark's life and work. I personally have a weakness for the photographer's series on Indian, Vietnamese, and Mexican circus workers, but many of her other famous portfolios (early work in Turkey, Bombay's brothels, Seattle's homeless teens) are represented here as well.
Phaidon's 55 on Mark is a great introduction to the photographer's work, and one that does its job at whetting your interest to seek out more complete volumes to explore....more
The second volume of Garth Ennis's Preacher is split neatly in two, with the first taking us back to where it all began for Jesse Custer and explaininThe second volume of Garth Ennis's Preacher is split neatly in two, with the first taking us back to where it all began for Jesse Custer and explaining just why he took off on Tulip all those years ago and the second introducing us to a shadowy conspiracy known as the Grail who've apparently spent a couple thousand years inbreeding messianic off-spring.
These halves are so thematically distinct I'm hard-pressed to come up with any real through-line, other than maybe "families are weird and fucked up," and their combination seems to owe more to the necessities of publishing a trade of a certain length rather than a cohesive story arc. Of the two, I find the first half dealing with Jesse's backstory to be by far the stronger - it delves into what drove him to become a Preacher and why he hallucinates John Wayne - though I'll admit there's at least one fantastically wrong armadillo joke in the latter half dealing with the depraved parties of one Jesus de Sade that left me snickering for a good ten minutes.
This second volume in the series continues to slowly unspool its mythology while taking copious time out for interludes of extreme violence. While I'm enjoying it, I can't help but hope that in the future the theory and the action are more of a seamless blend....more
The ever-delightful Sandra Boynton offers up an adorably illustrated revision of her 1982 Chocolate: The Consuming Passion, which if you've ever longeThe ever-delightful Sandra Boynton offers up an adorably illustrated revision of her 1982 Chocolate: The Consuming Passion, which if you've ever longed to see chocoholic hippopotomi plant cacao trees is just the book for you.
Boynton's tongue-in-cheek tone gives the text a silly, breezy air that matches her trademark illustrations, but it can occasionally make it difficult to discern what's meant to be a fact and what's pure tomfoolery. I'd actually been hoping for something a little more informational, and while I found Chocolate amusing, it quickly became clear that this is intended to be more of a simple gift-book than an actual primer of any kind.
As a person who serves chocolate more for others' benefit than her own, I'm far from the target audience of this cheeky little volume, but I'd strongly recommend it as a present for the chocoholic in your life....more
Editor Brian Wallis smartly opens Weegee: Murder is My Business with an excerpt from the eponymous photographer's titular work on his coverage of the Editor Brian Wallis smartly opens Weegee: Murder is My Business with an excerpt from the eponymous photographer's titular work on his coverage of the hits committed by Murder Inc. "Each one of their murders was a masterpiece," claims Weegee in that piece - the same could easily be said of his own work.
This lovely volume, put together as part of a show at the International Center of Photography back in 2012, is a riveting look at the life and work of the man who basically invented tabloid journalism. Opening with the aforementioned excerpt, Murder continues with a reproduction of Rosa Reilly's piece on Weegee as a free lance cameraman from Popular Photography in 1937. Having provided snapshot presentations of Weegee-as-perceived-then, the book then provides five different essays by contemporary writers (including the editor) on how a man called Arthur Fellig turned himself into a brand. Eddy Portnoy's piece provides what biographical information is available on the photographer, and works to fill in the gaps of his early life on the lower East side by providing alternate contemporary accounts of what that life might have looked like, while Carol Squiers explains the historical context of gangland violence that gave Weegee so much material to work with. Interspersed amongst these essays are four "dossiers" of photos, gorgeously reproduced, in which the original images are frequently shown in juxtaposition with reproductions of the newspaper articles they appeared in.
Arthur Fellig was a fascinating figure, and as far as I know the only photographer to inspire both an episode of The X-Files and a Jake Gyllenhaal film. Weegee: Murder is My Business offers both a fantastic tribute to his work and insight into the insanity of his life....more
Heppermann's Poisoned Apples are tart literary treats that grow from their mythological and fairy tale roots (Eve and Snow White would recognize theseHeppermann's Poisoned Apples are tart literary treats that grow from their mythological and fairy tale roots (Eve and Snow White would recognize these fruits) but in the utterly modern orchard of teenage life. Prince Charming and the Wicked Queen appear side by side with body image issues and the tangled pressures of burgeoning sexuality in these poems, which are darkly and gorgeously illustrated with black and white photographs. (I skimmed through the photo credits at the end; apparently, Shutterstock must have a metadata tag for Creepy Shit. God bless 'em.)
The audience for these works is clearly teenage girls with a fine appreciation for sarcasm, which would have put it squarely in my wheelhouse back in the day. I can still appreciate the style and finesse on display here, even if the issues Heppermann is tackling aren't quite as immediate for me anymore. Beautifully prickly in all the right places, Poisoned Apples will likely satisfy any poetic teen or tween's feminist cravings....more
I read a fair amount of horror and an even greater number of dystopics, but all the way through Alex Adams' excellent White Horse - which falls nicelyI read a fair amount of horror and an even greater number of dystopics, but all the way through Alex Adams' excellent White Horse - which falls nicely into both categories, as well as one I like to think of as Zombie Adjacent - something felt ever so slightly different. I'm ashamed it took me as long as it did to put my finger on it, but I finally I realized: Every major character in this novel is female. Sure, there are a handful of male antagonists and a love interest who exists largely as an offstage MacGuffin, but in the violent, bloody world that Adams has created, any part that might rate star-level casting comes equipped with a pair of XX chromosomes.
Protagonist and all-around badass Zoe was cleaning cages at a pharmaceutical company when the world ended. As if the apocalypse isn't enough, Zoe can't help suspecting that the global pandemic which left the population of the world either dead or hideously changed might have started with the mysterious unmarked urn that appeared in her apartment just before everything went to hell. Strangely immune, Zoe travels through the aftermath, running from her suspicions of her own complicity in this disaster and toward the hope of reunion with her lover.
So let's recap: A female-centric horror novel penned by a woman with all the conflict and gore of the best episodes of The Walking Dead but with a Pandoran origin story and a propulsive narrative structure that flashes back and forth between outbreak and aftermath? If you're not screaming "Yes, please!" by now, we probably can't be friends.
White Horse was an utter surprise and a complete delight (well, presuming you think novels that come with the occasional decapitation can be delightful). I fully admit that I picked this up under the mistaken presumption there were zombies in it, but in the end I was far better pleased with the nuanced monsters with which Adams presented me. Beautifully and brutally written, this is the novel I wish Colson Whitehead's Zone One had been....more
Clearly I'm either hyper-cynical or desensitized (or both) after years of horror movies and American politics, because the much-vaunted uber-violence Clearly I'm either hyper-cynical or desensitized (or both) after years of horror movies and American politics, because the much-vaunted uber-violence and blasphemy of Preacher didn't even register on my offense-o-meter. Perhaps Gone to Texas, the series' first volume, seemed much more shocking when it debuted back in 1995/6, before horror went Hostel and fiction pivoted so completely from the hero to the antihero.
Which is not to say there's not a fair share of blood and violence in Preacher, or that is shies away from potentially touchy religious themes, though I might argue that the idea of an absent God is not particularly original, as the concept of a deity that wound up our clockworks and then simply peaced out goes back at least to the 17th century (and probably a great deal further, but I'm too lazy to hunt a citation for that). Still, this introduction of Preacher Jesse Custer, who finds himself melded with a powerful religious entity known as Genesis, his complicated ex-girlfriend Tulip, and bystanding vampire Cassidy (whom I'm now convinced is the pattern for The Unwritten's Richard Savoy) lays a lot of groundwork for potentially challenging material. And given that there are far too few theologically themed Westerns in my life, I'm willing to at least see how Ennis develops the themes of this particular sermon....more
Bagley’s Makerspaces provides a simple and straightforward overview of the issues to consider if your library is considering moving into making - fundBagley’s Makerspaces provides a simple and straightforward overview of the issues to consider if your library is considering moving into making - funding, staffing, marketing - followed by nine profiles of makerspaces in various libraries. The emphasis on public libraries is strong, but there are two academic libraries and one school library included on the list. Each profile is broken down into a more or less standard format, with sections covering funding, physical space, marketing, and the demographics of the library, which allows readers who may only be interested in, say, what equipment each makerspace purchased to skip easily from chapter to chapter reading only the TOOLS section.
Makerspaces’s pedantic tone and highly-structured format make it less than scintillating as a read, but it does its job of introducing readers to the issues attendant to making well. Who, for instance, would have immediately thought of the noise issues associated with equipment they’ve never seen or the need for release forms? The only true failing of Bagley’s work is that of timing; given that she was trying to ride the cutting edge of the trend, most of the profiles she offers of spaces are of ones in development, not ones that have been running for any length of time. The lack of any kind of long-term study raises the question of what issues might not be addressed by this book, simply because they hadn’t had time to develop. But although you may want to proceed with caution – and additional research – Bagley at least offers us a place to start. ...more
The subtitle for Library Analytics and Metrics could just as easily be: “DATA: This is how you do it.” Filled to the brim with highly detailed case stThe subtitle for Library Analytics and Metrics could just as easily be: “DATA: This is how you do it.” Filled to the brim with highly detailed case studies, Showers and his cast of contributors offer up extremely specific ways in which libraries and other cultural institutions can leverage their data for various purposes: for collections management, to demonstrate value, to improve user experience.
Kicking off with a quick tutorial on the difference between metrics and analytics (as well as a cheat sheet on chapter content that allows targeted readers to skip ahead), LAM immediately follows with a chapter exploring the relative values of big and small data. From there we segue into collections management, with a section that includes a case study of Harvard’s work to build an analytics toolkit that will likely leave you gnashing your teeth in jealousy that you can’t afford your very own Library Innovation Lab. (The projects seem to be open source and offer downloadable code, but still. Harvard.)
Perhaps the most useful section for any manager or administrator comes next, focusing on how data can demonstrate value; the three case studies covered offer useful stats to trot out in your next conversation on how libraries contribute to student success and retention, and offer a pattern for cross-departmental holistic data collection that (if you can make it work) would offer fantastic tools for student support. Additional chapters follow on using data – qualitative or ethnographic – to improve user experience (which, though well done, seemed a bit of a gimmie), tracking web and social media metrics, and the potential risks of analytics (while the privacy concerns had occurred to me, the issue of a student accusing an institution of failing to use available data to prevent them from failing had not).
Throughout the books, the editor and contributors offer specifics and excellent follow-up references and resources. They also offer, constantly and necessarily, the refrain that most needs to be said in any conversation about data: namely, that data for data’s sake is useless. We must collect the data we need, rather than use the data that’s easiest for us to collect. That prescriptive, along with the theoretical and practical examples offered, makes LAM an excellent resource, if perhaps not the most fun thing I’ve ever read on a Friday night. ...more
The perennial draw of Conan Doyle and the popularity of the BBC's Sherlock has finally had a trickle down effect on teen fiction, giving us a recent sThe perennial draw of Conan Doyle and the popularity of the BBC's Sherlock has finally had a trickle down effect on teen fiction, giving us a recent spate of rewrites and re-imaginings starring variations on the inimitable Holmes and his stalwart companion Watson. Given the series' most famous (and apocryphal) catchphrase, I keep waiting for these to migrate down from secondary to grammar school, but for now it remains high school rather than elementary, my dear readers.
In this particular pastiche, the descendants of the ur-Holmes and Watson - both very real, and famous through the efforts of their chronicler, Arthur Conan Doyle - wind up not-so-coincidentally attending the same prep school in Connecticut. Shortly after Charlotte and James's first meeting, an unpleasant classmate winds up dead and the game's a-footing in a tale that harkens back to its titular reference without recreating it beat-for-beat. It's propulsive and fun, and slyly referential without being too winky.
The obvious draw of Cavallaro's version is the Sherlock-in-skirts angle, but though the gender-swapping could feel like a gimmick it's actually part of the novel's larger and more brilliant ploy. By making her leads descendants rather than updates, the author allows herself more latitude than a strict reincarnation of the characters would enjoy. Charlotte is a Holmes and James is a Watson, with all the emotional and historical baggage those bloodlines entail, but they're not the Holmes and the Watson, so readers are less primed to nitpick deviations from character canon. In fact, deviations can in this set-up even be read as deliberate choices, as both Charlotte and James struggle to separate themselves from the legends they're descended from. Thus far they hew pretty close to the family line - Watson is loyal, Holmes is smart - but with more nuance. James, for instance, struggles with anger issues. Charlotte is as broken as she is brilliant, and the famed Holmesian tendency to drug addiction is not softened or undercut here, for which I give Cavallaro extra points.
I approached A Study in Charlotte with more trepidation than enthusiasm, which I largely blame on a recent reading of Petty's Lock and Mori, but Cavallaro's update completely won me over. This is easily the best teen Holmes since Chris Columbus's in 1985.
This collection of essays offers eight individual visions of what libraries might look like in 2025 based on different theoretical approaches. After aThis collection of essays offers eight individual visions of what libraries might look like in 2025 based on different theoretical approaches. After an opening chapter by Bonfield that largely just recaps Michael’s Buckland’s 1992 manifesto on redesigning library services before offering a brief overview of the concept of the participatory library, we get chapters on radical trust, free-range librarianship, the necessity of creating a faculty commons in academic libraries, and what funding and international school libraries might look like in the future.
The strongest piece, by far, was Rundle’s chapter on free-range librarianship, or the public librarian as park ranger, which outlined not only the concept but the factors necessary to create a successful model program. Conversely, Malcezewski’s reflective chapter on meaningful space in the digital age offers little more than a nostalgic jones for his record collection and the somewhat nebulous takeaway that good design is important, neither of which I’ll argue with but neither of which seems terribly helpful on a practical level. (I’m not even sure what to say about Chrastka’s suggestion that major companies sponsor various library services for theoretical tax breaks, except to wish him good luck with that idea, as he’ll probably need it.)
In fact, as a whole, this is not the collection you come to for practicality. This is strictly to get your creative juices flowing as you start gearing up for that long-term strategy meeting with administration, to help you figure out how you might start to foster innovation (Hodge’s chapter on learning to mimic Google’s culture of innovation) or entice faculty into the library (Maloney on the faculty commons as the intellectual heart of the campus). Planning Our Future Libraries is useless as a primer; as a jumping-off point, however, it ain’t half bad. ...more
Through a fluke of interlibrary loan, I wound up with Learning Reconsidered 2 before I could put my hands on the original Learning Reconsidered, so myThrough a fluke of interlibrary loan, I wound up with Learning Reconsidered 2 before I could put my hands on the original Learning Reconsidered, so my experience is backward from what the authors intended. I’m not entirely sure that matters, however, as the editor’s introduction refers to this as an “amplification” rather than a follow up, and I certainly got the impression that the authors used the majority of the book’s 88 pages to simply rehash their original work.
The short-short version (the book itself is really already the short version) is that learning works best when it’s holistic, and reinforced by experiences outside of the classroom. In order to support holistic learning, student affairs representatives must first determine what the desired learning outcomes of the program/institution they support are, and then develop activities that support those outcomes. I’m presuming much of the step-by-step process of figuring out what the outcomes are is recapped from the original volume; Keeling’s intro specifies that the distinction between LR and LR2 is the focus on implementation. This would lead one to presume that there would be a few in-depth case studies contained here, carefully parsed to best demonstrate how different types of organizations implement activities gauged to support learning outcomes, but one would be wrong. There are lots of generic, sweeping statements, and a handful of examples described – mostly in chapter 10, and mostly in only a paragraph or two – and while those may be helpful in generating ideas, they hardly illuminate the process.
LR2 is a bit on the vague side, and certainly a bit more than vaguely soporific in its writing style, but it does at least offer a brief overview of the goal of creating a holistic student experience. If you’re looking for specifics on implementation, however, you’ll need to look elsewhere. ...more
Welcome to Night Vale reads like the authors are channeling Douglas Adams' less-talented evil twin who's emulating a multiverse version of H.P. LovecrWelcome to Night Vale reads like the authors are channeling Douglas Adams' less-talented evil twin who's emulating a multiverse version of H.P. Lovecraft who was making an effort to be commercially viable. In other words, it feels like a pose within a pose, meticulously structured to highlight the mise en scene of Night Vale but too static to accommodate narrative flow. Plots, by their nature, must move, and Fink and Cranor seem to shy away from having one for fear it will disturb their window dressing.
None of this will perhaps be a surprise - or a deterrent - to listeners who favor the podcast series on which this novel is based; based on the handful of episodes I've listened to, this kind of atmospheric snap-shot style is really what the brand is selling. Unfortunately, unless you're listening to the audiobook, the novel lacks the dulcet tones of Cecil Baldwin (despite being structured to include interludes of broadcasts from Night Vale's community radio, likely intended to stave off complaints from people who expected Cecil to be at the center of this book) to distract you from the fact that nothing much happens. The plot, such as it is, largely functions as an excuse to tour Night Vale and take in the tableaux. What action exists doesn't kick in until around the 250 page-mark, but which time I had put this book down several times to read other books that weren't trying so bloody hard.
The success of Welcome to Night Vale as a novel probably depends on what you assume the goal of such a project is. If it's just to provide the family and friends of existing fans a great idea for a potential Christmas gift, then huzzah, mission accomplished. If, on the other hand, you presume that this was a gambit to entice new citizens to move to Night Vale...well, the City Council may want to re-evaluate their sales pitch....more
Pulitzer prize-winning author Stacy Schiff turns her attention to a dark period of American history with this fascinating and in-depth look at the SalPulitzer prize-winning author Stacy Schiff turns her attention to a dark period of American history with this fascinating and in-depth look at the Salem witch trials. Schiff's research is meticulous, and the result of all her thoroughly-footnoted work is a compelling tale that reads like an episode of Law and Order: Salem.
A warning to the curious, however: riveting as The Witches is, it's not something you'll breeze through as if riding astride the back of a broomstick. The cast of characters alone is six pages long - and that's six pages in what looks like 10 point font - and less useful than it might have been, as it's grouped by type of person instead of strictly alphabetically, which makes it hard to look up people referred to glancingly in the text. And I'm not joking when I say meticulous. Schiff takes us through the entire chronology of the phenomenon almost minute-by-minute, a careful exploration that helps unpack the insanity of the trials but which can occasionally be just as exhausting as it is exhaustive. Though I suspect part of that reaction is because frustrated urge to reach back through the centuries and bitch-slap people wears you out after a while.
While occasionally daunting in its detail, Schiff's work brilliantly recreates the historical and cultural context of the witch trials, shedding light on just how something so insane could become the norm for much of New England for months and months. It's a masterful job, and one that's particularly worth reading in the current political climate....more
Information Services Today was the textbook assigned for my Foundations of Information Professions class, and as textbooks go, I've certainly had worsInformation Services Today was the textbook assigned for my Foundations of Information Professions class, and as textbooks go, I've certainly had worse. Sandra Hirsh edits the volume, composed of individually authored chapters that are pretty consistent in terms of ease of readability.
The text is divided into seven parts made up of between three and eight chapters each. In my opinion it's a bit front-weighted in terms of interest and usefulness: the first four sections focus on the cultural and historical landscape of information services, the various forms the profession can take, the different roles of information services in the digital age, and the users the services are intended to aid. Chapters contained therein on equity of access and user experience were particularly helpful, as are the brief chapters on the various professional options (school librarian, special librarian, digital librarian).
Section five, focusing on the various aspects of management related to libraries, I found to be glossy and reductive and nearly completely useless. Frankly, I'd advise reading just about any general management book, which would cover pretty much everything except the chapter specifically on collections management. From there the text moves to a section on information issues (open access, information ethics, copyright) before closing with another nothing-but-broadstrokes section on career management (be a lifelong learner! make a skill set to figure out what kind of job you want!).
Overall Information Services Today was helpful, particularly as it's clearly written and eschews the kind of academic jargon that can clog textbooks and drive students insane. ...more
The beauty of a James Rollins novel is the wild improbability of it all. If it turned out that he plotted his novels by settling down in front of GoogThe beauty of a James Rollins novel is the wild improbability of it all. If it turned out that he plotted his novels by settling down in front of Google, clicking I Feel Lucky a few times, and then just tying whatever happened to pop up together into the inevitable tale of rollicking high-adventure, I would not at all be surprised. How else to explain the plot of The Eye of God, which mashes up dark energy, Genghis Khan, and St. Thomas to create yet another perfect apocalyptic Sigma Force cocktail?
Rollins' Eye sees a few hellos and goodbyes for Sigma Force. The goodbyes are spoilery, so I'll gloss over those except to say that at least one is a few books overdue. The hellos include Duncan Wren, who I'm pretty sure is the direct result of James Rollins reading the same longform piece on biohacking I did several years ago. Duncan, who sports magnets embedded in his fingertips to sense electromagnetic fields, seems like he might turn out to be a bit of a one-trick pony, but I'm willing to extend the author the benefit of the doubt, particularly if he keeps rewarding my faith in him with attack eagles. (Yes. It happens. And it is glorious.)
As ever, Rollins ends his crazy pseudo-scientific pastiche with a section separating the truth from the literary license; I live in hope that he'll upgrade one day to an annotated bibliography. In the meantime, I'll just keep inhaling his novels like the pulpy confections they are.
Roy Peter Clark puts his money where his mouth is by keeping How to Write Short brief – only 239 pages sans index and bibliography. The chapters, all Roy Peter Clark puts his money where his mouth is by keeping How to Write Short brief – only 239 pages sans index and bibliography. The chapters, all titled with clipped imperatives, are only 5-7 pages, the last of which is dedicated to a Grace Notes section that offers prompts and practices based on the chapter’s contents for the reader who’s really serious about becoming the writer. Clark’s instructions for writing short aren’t that different from instructions for writing of any kind – collect examples of good short writing, follow writers who write well in short form, consider the structure of your writing as well as the content – but his examples (of which there are many) are pulled exclusively from the realm of brevity, and Tweets, poems, headlines, and quips abound.
As with any writing manual, readers will only get out of How to Write Short what they’re willing to put into it, but Clark’s work does an excellent job highlighting the immense amount of thought and effort that can go into crafting even the slightest of bon mots. In other words: Reading this only made me adore Dorothy Parker that much more. ...more
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