Any reader could multiply critical strictures, but this short book is in the Joycean’s path, may not be avoided, is constantly entertaining, and in many ways as enlightening as the more considered pronouncements of more conservative critics. Reviewed by Bob…
Category: Non fiction reviews
A review of Write, Publish and Sell Your Book by Patricia Fry
Throughout the book are anecdotes from Fry’s own experiences, sidebars, bits of humour, and re-useable templates for everything from queries to press releases. In some instances examples are taken straight from The Right Way to Write, Publish and Sell Your Book so…
A review of The Well-Fed Self-Publisher by Peter Bowerman
Bowerman has a particular strength in persuasion, and if you haven’t bought this book because you’ve already decided to self-publish, the first chapter will convince you why you need to. There are a number of other books on self-publishing, some…
A review of Jamie’s Dinners by Jamie Oliver
Clearly the impact of having a family has had a positive influence on Jamie Oliver and there is no hint of the dilettante about Jamie’s dinners. The food tastes superb, is easy to cook, is child friendly (really!), is nice…
New Stereotypes: Carroll & Graf’s Freedom in this Village
The book assumes that race and homosexuality (blackness and gayness) are real categories, and draws part of its authority from the social and historical importance these subjects have been given by many people through the years, but the idea of race is as suspect as the idea of strict sexual orientations. Skin is not a significant emblem of existential being (despite hundreds of years of western racialism, and the 1930s Negritude movement in Africa, France, Haiti, and Martinique, and the 1960s/70s black arts movement in the United States).
A review of Georges Perec: A Life in Words by David Bellos
Despite its length, this is an engrossing book. It may not rival those great achievements in biography that one can read for their own sake, but everyone with an interest in Perec will find it essential. Although David Bellos rather…
A review of The Frugal Editor: Put your best book forward to avoid humiliation and ensure success by Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Contrary to popular misconception, publishers will rarely take on a work that is in obvious need of editing (and to a publisher, every typo is obvious), so authors really need to be capable editors of their own work. Writing guru…
A review of Nietzsche, Godfather of Fascism? by Jacob Golomb and Robert S. Wistrich, eds.
The editors say that Nietzsche’s philosophy cannot be simplified, but that has happened periodically; and his work has been utilized by both conservatives and radicals. (It may be an irony that so accessible a writer requires interpreters.) Nietzsche’s high regard…
A review of Out of Whiteness: Color, Politics, and Culture by Vron Ware and Les Back
The commentary in the book is consistently intelligent and informed, featuring wide-ranging references, historical and current, and the tone of the book is austere; but this project seems drenched in a self-conscious piety, a dull redundancy of fact, and oddly…
A review of The Secrets of Writing Successful Short Stories by Drew McAdam
If you follow McAdam’s didactic advice to the letter, you will not only end up with a file of suitable markets with a calculated fog index, word count, and samples, but you’ll end up with a ready to submit piece,…