Book Review - On Writing by Stephen King
Great Advice for Writers
I was really impressed by the insight into the writing process that Stephen King shares in this book. The book is fairly evenly split into two parts. The first half of the book is mostly autobiographical but very inspiring as you learn from King's own struggle to gain success as a writer and how he paid the bills in the interim.
Before the remainder of the book begins, there is a thirty-page section called "Toolbox" in which King discusses the must-have tools you'll need like grammar, vocabulary, and others. It's here that King begins to relate his hatred for adverbs, something I found very interesting. "Adverbs, like the passive voice, seem to be created with the timid writer in mind... With adverbs, the writer usually tells us he or she is afraid he/she isn't expressing himself/herself clearly, that he or she is not getting or the picture across."
The second half of the book is where King really gets into the "meat" of good writing skills. He talks about how important it is to read A LOT in order to be a good writer. (An appendix in the back has a listing of all the books King read while working on this one, a very long list.) He talks about the environment that you need when you sit down to write. Then he talks about core writing topics like similes and metaphors, dialogue (good and bad), theme, plot, revising your draft, and more.
I can easily say that I will definitely re-read parts of this book in the future in order to re-familiarize myself with King's insight. By my definition, that is the requirement of a "5 star" book ranking.
"Words create sentences; sentences create paragraphs; sometimes paragraphs quicken and begin to breathe."
posted by Terry Smith @ 1:28 PM
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If you're a casual reader looking to learn more about Islam, this is not the book for you. If you're an academic, you'll feel right at home reading the incessantly dry, academic-worded style of this book, but you probably won't like the book either. The author spends an incessant amount of time on historical details that few would ever care about, but she doesn't cover them in such a way as to satisfy historians either. The only good thing one could say about this book, if coming from this point of view, is that it doesn't have a religious bias. On the contrary, it doesn't cover the religious tenants of Islam whatsoever! Moreover, the author is not honest. Every major religion has events and time periods that it's followers would rather forget (and often do), but Karen Armstrong is continuously politically correct and often an apologist. The author is full of information. It's unfortunate that she cannot write in an honest, encompassing, and educationally entertaining manner.
ROCKIN' DANCE ALBUM WITH EXCEPTIONAL VOCALS
Buy the CD, NOT THIS DVD!
This is definitely an album that you'll either love or totally hate. For me, it was the later. I find the never-ending repetitious beats obnoxious and incessantly uncreative. The only thing I found interesting in the least was "To Get Down" from which the words "What Goes Around" were changed to "Here Comes the Ram" for a series of Dodge truck TV commercials. It was interesting for a few seconds. I marvel at how one reviewer of this album remarked, nearly as soon as this album came out, "You can just see this one being used for various television soundtracks..." Obviously, he hit it on the money with a commercial at least. Personally, I think the techno riffs are at best decent for a low-budget Sci-Fi flick. There is much better music out there to blow your money on.
Great overview of the Trance genre...
For a compilation album, this is really great mix of trance music. The mix of songs by various artists even manage to flow well from one to the next. The three best trance artists from this era are all represented: Lasgo, Ian Van Dahl, and 4 Strings. Several other very popular artists (though not particularly favorites of my own) are also represented such as DJ Sammy, Darude, and Paul Van Dyk. If want a really good mix of songs, particularly if you're looking for a broad overview of some of the best Trance out there, then this is an excellent place to start.
Just You Average "Classics"
The vast majority of tracks on this two-disc collection are quite forgettable. That's not necessarily bad though (unless you're naive enough to expect an album with the name "Classics" in its title to actually be what it claims to be). Although there is nothing standout about them, this collection of tracks is perfect as background music to exercise to, listen to while working on the computer, etc. The first disc is much more consistent than the second in its mediocre-elevator-music-of-the-post-Y2K-era styling. Most of the songs on the second disc simply don't flow with one another very well; however, there are a couple of exceptions that out-distance the pack, "Saltwater" by Chicane and "1998" by Binary Finary are both very interesting tunes. All in all, this album is not bad, but nothing more than average either.
I regret to have found this book very disappointing. Susan McCartney's book on travel photography, Travel Photography: A Complete Guide to How to Shoot and Sell, is the very best book on the subject. I've read it twice, some sections even more than twice. I purchased Photographic Lighting Simplified with the same level of quality content in mind. Unfortunately, the book is more "simplified" than what I had hoped for.
How To Be Rich surprised me in many ways. J. Paul Getty offers a lot of advice to executives rising through the ranks and those looking to. There's plenty of very entertaining historical coverage of Getty's rise to legendary status starting with the first chapter, How I Made My First Billion, along with other first-hand accounts and stories of his colleges from the era interspersed throughout the book. The book's focus is on how "to be" rich, i.e. the responsibilities thereof, rather than how "to become" rich. Of course, in Getty's case he simply took the skills he learned from working with his father, went out on his own to drill a few holes in the ground, and started pumping oil. There are also chapters regarding investing on Wall Street, in real estate, and in fine art, the later being a particularly interesting chapter. The chapter Art of Individuality is a must-read for anyone who is utterly depressed by the total lack of creativity in today's corporate cubicle conformist culture.
