Book Review: David Crystal’s Spell It Out: The Curious, Enthralling, and Extraordinary Story of English Spelling
A tour through the history of English with 37 chapters to answer: “Why is English spelling so difficult?”
Genre: non-fiction
Book Review: James Scott Bell’s The Art of War for Writers: Fiction Writing Strategies, Tactics, and Exercises
The ultimate battle plan and more – it’s Sun Tzu’s “The Art of War” for novelists and features timeless, innovative, and concise writing strategies and focused exercises.
Book Review: Les Edgerton’s Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One & Never Lets Them Go
How to create the hook to drag your readers in and keep them fascinated and more about how to begin your story.
Book Review: Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot
Fiction writer and essayist Charles Baxter’s The Art of Subtext: Beyond Plot discusses and illustrates the hidden subtextual overtones and undertones in fictional works haunted by the unspoken, the suppressed, and the secreted. Baxter explains how fiction writers create those visible and invisible details, how what is displayed evokes what is not displayed.
Book Review: Dr. Linda N. Edelstein’s Writer’s Guide to Character Traits
‘The Writer’s Guide to Character Traits’ profiles the mental, emotional and physical qualities of dozens of different personality types. The guide also includes a section on child personality types.
Book Review: Tracy Kidder & Richard Todd’s Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction
Good Prose explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs. Kidder and Todd draw candidly, sometimes comically, on their own experience—their mistakes as well as accomplishments—to demonstrate the pragmatic ways in which creative problems get solved. This useful book that is the perfect companion for anyone who loves to read good books and longs to write one.
Book Review: Wendy Moore’s How to Create the Perfect Wife: Britain’s Most Ineligible Bachelor and His Enlightened Quest to Train the Ideal Mate
Stranger than fiction, blending tragedy and farce, How to Create the Perfect Wife is an engrossing tale of the radicalism—and deep contradictions—at the heart of the Enlightenment.
Book Review: Patricia Polacco’s Pink and Say
A picture book about the Civil War, and how a young black soldier rescues a white soldier, opening young readers’ eyes to the injustices of slavery and the senselessness of war.
Book Review: Patricia Polacco’s The Keeping Quilt
Patricia Polacco tells the story of her own family, and the memory quilt created from old familyt clothes, including Anna, Uncle Vladimir, Aunt Havalah , and Aunt Natasha.
Book Review: Becky Burckmyer’s Awesome Grammar
A short and succinct take on English grammar which dives deep in some areas and skims over others.