Review: Zen in the Art of Writing

Here's something a little bit different for the writing community. Unlike many other "method" books by established authors, Zen in the Art of Writing captures not the nuts and bolts and howtos of the craft, but the underlying emotions that drive a writer.

This is a series of eleven little autobiographical sketches cleverly disguised as essays. Each one stands well on its own, but collectively they tell the tale of how Mr. Bradbury discovered his voice as a writer. One surprising element: He's a strong advocate of poetry and recommends that writers read a poem every day.

It shows in his writing. There's some wonderful imagery in this book...

...Oh, and a very, very cute black cat across from the title page, too. I give this book two paws up.

Review: The Book on Mind Management

This is a self-help book on the general theme of "Control your thoughts, control the images in your brain, control your life."

Although a lot of what's in here has been said by... Well, by just about everybody in this particular genre... There is one particular gem nestled away on Page 190:

At a seminar, one of the participants protests to the author, "What you are having us do isn't real. We're just making this stuff up."

The response from Mr. Deaton: You're right; we are making it up... Just like we've made up all the other stories that rule our lives. "The question becomes," he goes on to say, "which movies are productive?"

If you don't care for anecdote after anecdote, this probably isn't the book for you. It also would have been nice to have a bibliography and a bit of research on how we use visualization in our lives. That said, this is an easy enough book to get through, and at very least it's a comfortable and thought-provoking trip.

Review: Lords and Ladies

Crop circles.

Angry bees.

Elves. Killer elves. Loose on Discworld...

This book fits into the "Witches" mini-series of the Pratchett canon, due to the presence of Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick. In this book, as Magrat prepares for her Midsummer Eve marriage to King Verence II (q.v. Wyrd Sisters), amateur witchcraft and outdoor theatre combine to provide a gateway for some rather nasty entities.

Lords and Ladies has a surprisingly dark tone, more horror than in previous Discworld novels. Offsetting this is the usual banter from Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, and a rich cast of supporting players that includes a contingent from Unseen University and the world's second greatest lover, the dwarf Giamo Casanunda.

And, thanks to some exemplary work by Greebo, the quantum physics of Erwin Schrödinger will never quite be the same...

Review: The Mindful Way through Depression

This book, subtitled "Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness", is a not-too-thick, no-nonsense volume that bridges the gap between talking about meditation and actually doing it. Being a cat, I knew most of this stuff already; but Mindful Way explains it really, really well.

Better yet, it explains without religion, without strange languages and secret handshakes, without a whole bunch of Seventh Level Yoga Hopping Trances or other such woo-woo. There is a yoga exercise in here, but if you want to call it "Paying attention to my arms and legs while I move them around", go right ahead.

The authors (Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn) do an excellent job of staying in the same room with the reader: Each chapter is a good, balanced mixture of anecdote, theory, exercises, and things to consider while you're trying the exercises. It's also an easy read.

Despite its title, Mindful Way isn't just about depression. I think that you could use it to deal with just about any problem of People Who Think Way Too Much... Stress at work; procrastination; chronic multitasking.

Quite possibly one of the best beginner-level books on meditation ever written.

Review: Warm Worlds and Otherwise

James Tiptree, Jr. was the pen name of science fiction writer Alice Sheldon (1915-1987). This collection of short stories and novellas dates back to the late 60's and early '70s and translates fairly well to the '00s.

(Except, perhaps, for that carful of stoned anarchic hippy xenophiles driving around Washington, DC. But I enjoyed that story, too.)

This is not, repeat, is not a book for very young or sensitive readers. My People informs me that she would have been too embarrassed to read many of these tales when they first came out.

Tiptree/Sheldon spins a fast-paced and rollicking good yarn, but expect to be titillated, horrified and challenged.

Challenged, especially. So much so that I feel like I've grown a second head --

(pauses and looks around)

-- Mea culpa. The second head belongs to my brother Walter. (yanks WW&O out from under a quietly snoring silver tabby) Hey! Get your own blog.

Warm Worlds and Otherwise by James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon):

• "All the Kinds of Yes"
• "The Milk of Paradise"
• "And I Have Come Upon This Place by Lost Ways"
• "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain"
• "Amberjack"
• "Through a Lass Darkly"
• "The Girl Who Was Plugged In"
  
• "The Night-Blooming Saurian"
• "The Women Men Don't See"
• "Fault"
• "Love is the Plan, The Plan is Death"
  
• "On the Last Afternoon"

Review: Dragons of Spring Dawning (Part 2)

Dragons of Spring Dawning, Part 2 completes the Devil's Due Publishing serialization of Weis and Hickman's Dragonlance Chronicles. Part 1 was reviewed here back in April 2008.

Most of my comments about Part 1 still hold true: The slower pacing of Spring Dawning works much better than the mad dash through the first two novels in the trilogy. The art is good, and also stable -- The characters look like themselves and stay looking like themselves. And, for the most part, the dialogue is spot-on.

Astreja K., who has several gazillion Dragonlance books lying around the house, has spotted one typo, one missing mini-subplot involving a door lock, and one green dragon who must've been on his coffee break when the pencil artists came by to rough out the scene. She also found the artists' rendition of Raistlin a bit jarring (being accustomed to the Larry Elmore and Matt Stawicki portraits), but admits that this version much better explains the average Krynnish person's reaction to Mr. Majere.

The included collection of comic book covers, particularly those by Jeremy Roberts, are a nice touch.

But I may need a bit of help trying to calm my People down -- Apparently DDP is going to do Dragonlance Legends next. (grabs Astreja K. by the ankle and hangs on for dear life)

Review: The Blind Watchmaker

This book is a slow, slow read. If I had a bag of cat treats for every time my People rubbed Her eyes and put the bookmark back in place (and Her head down on the desk)... Well, let's just say I would no longer have my svelte and girlish figure.

But oh! the information in here. And not just the big words, either. Professor Dawkins has taken a lot of time and an extraordinary amount of effort to explain exactly how complex stuff comes from simple stuff.

My feline understanding of the whole thing:

If you have enough time...

...And very, very small changes are taking place as a result of chemicals and biology and physics... (pushes Cartoon Guide to Physics off bookshelf and opens it with a few nudges of her nose) ...Like these 'gamma ray' things, here...

...And you only keep stuff that works better than other stuff...

...You will eventually end up with a cat who writes book reviews.

I *yawn* rest my case. Good night.